In 1952, the reception given to Rodney Ackland’s play The Pink Room, about a Soho nightclub as WW2 ended, was so hostile that it effectively stopped his successful writing career dead. Thirty-five years later he rewrote it as Absolute Hell, eschewing the pussyfooting that had been necessary in the days of theatrical censorship, and saw it greeted with acclaim just before he died. The National Theatre staged it in 1995 and is now reviving it under the hand of Joe Hill-Gibbins, who directs a cast of nearly 30 without losing focus either of onstage orchestration or of the content.

The play is still rather shocking, not so much for its depictions of homo- and bisexuality, casual libertinage and a kind of determined alcoholism, but for the unjudgmental yet unyielding gaze with which it regards them. Ackland is candid that these people are throwing themselves into such behaviour in order to escape the various pressures not only of war but also of the dawning post-war era: the play’s four scenes take place between late June and late July 1945, just as the Attlee government is being elected, and when the war in Europe is over but it, and in particular the discovery of what the play refers to as “the horror camps”, cast long shadows.

Both leads are desperate in their flight: Kate Fleetwood’s bohemian-imperious Christine runs the club as her personal fiefdom, secure (temporarily) from the realities outside; Charles Edwards’ Hugh, even when in his cups or a G.I.’s pants, can never quite shake the awareness that both his writing career and his gay affair are in their terminal phases. Other figures include Danny Webb as an Austrian exile, Sinéad Matthews as his unfaithful beloved, Lloyd Hutchinson as a drunken painter, Eileen Walsh as a religious crackpot (from Belfast, of course) and Jonathan Slinger as a venomous film producer.

Hill-Gibbins makes the play seem simultaneously like an ensemble piece and the skilful interweaving of several well-defined plot strands. Lizzie Clachan’s design, too, hits a perfect cheap-but-not-outright-shabby note. Ackland’s revised version feels contemporary both to the events depicted and to the audience now watching them. It’s sometimes deceptively difficult viewing, but it’s well worth meeting the challenge.

Written for the Financial Times.