A review of Sanctuary, Jacob Sparrow's award-winning debut play showing at the Pleasance Dome as part of the Edinburgh festival 2026, praises it as a small-scale but surprisingly uplifting depiction of two gay men living with HIV/Aids in the 1990s. The Guardian's critic finds it a tender counterpart to the larger Angels in America revival elsewhere in the city, noting that Sparrow captures both the desperation and the hope of the era without reducing the story to unrelenting darkness.

The two-hander, directed by Josh Seymour and starring Matthew Tennyson and Richard Cant, is set in a house where people with HIV/Aids are offered sanctuary, reportedly inspired by real-life opposition to a planned Aids hospice in a Suffolk village. Tennyson plays a young, angry man recently diagnosed, opposite Cant's older, more settled character, as their conversation unearths backstory around love, loss and prejudice; the review commends both performances as delicately emotional, though it flags some predictable plot twists and an ending that feels tonally mismatched with the play's darker themes. Sanctuary runs at Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 31 August.