The Romans in Britain is a deeply serious play… the climax of its first act is as fine and thunderstriking as anything seen or heard on the London stage for a very long time. (Harold Hobson, letter to The Times, 29 October)

The Romans in Britain is a very good play indeed … From the outset Mr Brenton faced one very difficult problem; to find appropriate language for his Celts, Druids, Roman and Dark Age Britons … Mr Brenton achieves it with great skill and effect …

The rape scene is handled with a casual certainty that robs it of all offence, except to those determined to be offended … It is fully justified in its context, written with obvious dramatic and moral honesty, and in any case brief; it is also horribly plausible … (Bernard Levin, The Times, 11 March 1981)

The play continued its run. Its final performance was on 24 March, by which time nearly 22,000 people had seen it. But before it ended, there was the small issue of a court case to be settled. On 15 March, the play’s director appeared at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey), accused of procuring the commission of an act of gross indecency by Peter Sproule and Greg Hicks. Bogdanov was also accused of being a party to an act of gross indecency. He faced, if convicted, up to two years in prison. The summons had been brought by a Mary Whitehouse, Secretary of the National Viewers and Listeners’ Association, self-appointed guardians of the nation’s morals. She had failed to bring a prosecution under the Theatres Act of 1968, but found, because of the latter’s poor drafting, that section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 might work. Section 13 was designed to control homosexual behaviour in public (homosexuality was then still a criminal offence).

The threat was to all performances if it was accepted that there was no difference in law between reality and pretence, i.e. that simulation of gross indecency was not in itself grossly indecent. The trial lasted four days. On the third day, Mr Justice Staughton, whose first important High Court case this was, ruled that there was a case to answer. The ruling was immensely dangerous. Simulation and reality were not now automatically indistinguishable, and were to be tested.

Then, and very surprisingly, Ian Kennedy for the Prosecution asked for an adjournment, and told Lord Hutchinson, for the Defence, that he did not wish to continue. He asked that Michael Bogdanov be informed. Finally, an irate Attorney General, to whom the matter was referred, had no alternative but to enter a plea of Nolle Prosequi (an unwillingness to prosecute), and the trial ended, with Mrs Whitehouse claiming victory. The bulk of her costs was paid anonymously.

It was over – sort of. Bogdanov and his actors had endured considerable pressure, and threats before the trial, and he was cheated of the opportunity to have his say. In his Theatre: the Director’s Cue (2013, 152–3), he wrote: