Tory Boyz explores the fears and obsessions of a driven young Conservative party researcher who worries his sexuality will hold him back in his political career. Instead of presenting the audience with a ready-made or moralizing message, the play suggests answers to a difficult question, probing the hidden facets of a society where prejudice is no longer enshrined in law.

Much of the play’s intensity rests on Andrew Room’s performance as Sam, slowly painting the picture of a man consumed with fascination for the historic cover-up of Heath’s alleged homosexuality, and equally tormented by his unpleasant boss, whose sleaze is coaxed into life by a compelling Kyle Turakhia. Most of the narrative unfolds in the space between the two main characters’ desks and therefore there is much room for deftly deployed office politics – a wink here, a shouting match there, all the while snazzy lingo being thrown around at high speed. Conrad Jefferies completes the tumultuous scene by playing a hilariously apologetic intern (who also happens to be gay) to awkward perfection.

Outside the office, Room’s mournful, darting eyes add depth to the raucousness of well-choreographed classroom scenes. While ‘gay’ is used as an insult by the teenagers Sam works with as a party representative, his taunting boss reveals a subtler yet more disturbing attachment to heterosexuality. His attitude is the perfect embodiment of the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ mind-set – warning Sam to camouflage the aspects of himself that the “blue rinse, Daily Mail-reading, Church of England-going” mass of Conservative supporters will always despise. Only Sam’s left-wing would-be lover openly questions the basis of Sam’s loyalty to a party in which he is a “genetic deformity” – gay, Northern and working class.

What lets the play down are the leaps from past to present, which fall disappointingly flat - both in their attempt to draw broad parallels between Sam’s situation and Edward Heath's, and in their emphasis on vast chunks of the prime minister’s childhood. Equally, the metaphorical link between Heath and Sam was too tenuous to warrant their simultaneous appearance on stage. Certainly an interesting point was made in comparing the men’s two stories – one repressed by law and the other by social custom, both living a life not completely their own. But in exploring the tensions between young and old, left and right, straight and gay, Tory Boyz already had more than enough on its plate.