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Dateline: 8th September, 2002 Latin in Brighton Activated Image's acclaimed revival of Latin!, Stephen Fry¹s award-winning comedy chronicling paedophilia in a boys' public school, is to transfer to a theatre in Brighton specialising in gay-themed work. From Tuesday 17th September to 22nd Sunday September, Brighton¹s Marlborough Theatre will play host to the bizarre tale of how prep school latin master Dominic Clarke¹s intimacy with his 13-year-old Rupert Cartwright is discovered by cantankerous senior master Herbert Brookshaw leaving Chartham Park Preparatory School in amo, amas, a mess. The Marlborough Theatre is opposite Brighton¹s Royal Pavilion and attached to the Marlborough Arms, a renowned gay and lesbian bar. This is thought to be the first time that Fry¹s work has been performed in Brighton. The Marlborough Theatre maintains a proportion of gay-related work in its programming brief of putting on new and cutting-edge drama; its last production was Jonathon Harvey's play Beautiful Thing, about a relationship between two teenage boys. Activated Image¹s revival dogged by controversy after a Tory counsellor (who'd neither read nor seen the play) decided to object to its content drew huge crowds and rave reviews in its recent month-long run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Company members appeared on Radio 4's Today Programme, Sky News and numerous local radio stations to defend the show against accusations that it and Fry were "promoting paedophilia". Fry's skill lies in the profound understanding with which he captures the crumbling institutions of old England floundering in a new age. How, he asks, could anyone think that packing boys away to bizarre, isolated estates, run by people accountable to no-one and who make their own rules, is a good idea? The way that so many institutions in the last century have proved a cover for uncontrolled sexual energies is paralleled in the way that this play about paedophilia reduces audiences to tears of laughter. Activated Image presents Latin! for a new generation and asks: What do Chartham Park's values of "religion, sex and public school life" mean to us now? Activated Image was last year nominated for a Fringe First award at Edinburgh for Amy Evans' Strike. This year the company also produced The Straight Man, a highly acclaimed new play. Previously the company has produced dream.2000 (1999) and The Tempest (1998). The company hopes to continue touring Latin! over the coming months
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