Peter Whittle talks to playwright James Graham 

 Gays on the political centre-right - and there are indeed many - will without doubt be making their way to the Soho Theatre in London over the next few weeks. On Friday 15th, a new play, Tory Boyz, opens there and is billing itself as 'a bold and acerbic political comedy that shines a light on the hidden faces behind the Conservative Party' - i.e., the gay ones.

Written by the award-winning young playwright James Graham, the play features a portrayal of Edward Heath (possibly his first such stage recreation) and offers an examination of 'the young, exciting men and women who don’t exactly fit with the stereotype.' The play claims to confront questions over the Conservatives' traditionally perceived intolerance and prejudice against gays, and will ask the question of whether it is possible that the party which passed Section 28 maybe also elected Britain’s first ever gay Prime Minister.

Not that Graham will be actually outing the former PM, who's portrayed as a young man in his play. 'This past year there's been some speculation about Heath's sexuality,' says Graham, when I spoke to him recently. 'The play doesn't actually say he was gay, although of course in some senses he was absolutely text book - an overbearing mother, a repressed manner.'

This isn't Graham's first foray into the backrooms and history of the Tory party. He was awarded the Catherine Johnson Award for the Best Play of 2007 for Eden's Empire, which was praised by the Guardian's critic Michael Billington as a 'gripping, dramatic piece of living history.'

Following this, he took on Margaret Thatcher - a figure who in some respects is still proving too big for dramatists - in Little Madam, which looked at the career of Britain's first woman prime minister through the prism of her childhood as plain Margaret Roberts. 'A remarkable conceit,' said The Stage, 'and one that comes off superbly.'

Why the fascination with the Tory party, I ask Graham, who grew up in an ex-mining community. He's not really sure, he says, although its characters certainly interest him dramatically. Tory Boyz is not, he says, a right-wing play. Politically, he is, he says, a mess. 'Some aspects of the left attract me, such as its compassion; and similarly I like aspects of the right, such as the individualism. And I don't like other aspects of both.'

For Tory Boyz, Graham (who's straight) did a fair amount of research and much of it he found eye-opening. The play focuses on the younger gay activists. 'The people I've spoken to, the young Tories behind the scenes, are very explicit and proud,' he says. He went to Village Drinks, a gay networking party circuit which holds gatherings specially for politicos, spoke to Tory gay groups and looked into the plethora of blogs and forums which now exist. 'One of the things that came across was this idea of the individual - that you can rise from your background and go on and achieve.'

This is especially true perhaps in the case of conservative gays who came from lower-middle-class backgrounds, and the often stifling conformity which, traditionally at least, went along with that milieu. However this still doesn't account for the perception that there is, if anything, a disproportionate amount of gays active in centre-right politics. I suggest to Graham that it sometimes seems that the further left you go, the straighter things become. 'I think you're absolutely right, he says. 'I find it fascinating.'

There is also that strain on the right of what one might call High Church, high camp queenery, of the type characterised by Norman St.John Stevas. This brand of gay Toryism had much to do with the very aesthetic of the right - the opportunity for theatricality, flamboyance and social status of a more traditional sort, and by comparison, the general aesthetic of the left appeared downright boring. Perhaps this kind of gay toryism is fading from memory now, so it wasn't surprising, when I mentioned it, to find that it wasn't something which Graham (who's twenty-six) had much exposure to when researching and writing the play.

He hopes that his play will be seen as 'forward thinking and progressive.' He certainly thinks that those in the theatre community with, shall we say, an unsympathetic view of the right and the Tory party should find it interesting. Does he agree that when it comes to political drama, most stage writers are on the liberal-left?

''Yes,' he says. ' I think its a shame.' He describes how he was depressed at the reaction of young writers at a Royal Court workshop when, after Nicholas Hytner had made his call for 'right wing plays', the issue was discussed. 'It was very much ''why would we want to do that? We're not right-wing, our audience is not right-wing, we find some right-wing issue uncomfortable."

'We're missing a trick', says Graham. '50% of the country has views which are right-of-centre, and it's looking increasingly likely that we'll be having a conservative government. Writers can either carry on congratulating ourselves and seeing our world view as unchallenged, or we can go out and challenge ourselves on these things.'

TORY BOYZ runs at the Soho Theatre from August 15th to September 13th. www.sohotheatre.com