This 20th-anniversary revival opened at
the Donmar Warehouse last summer only a few weeks after the death of
its author Kevin Elyot. However, its almost universal critical and
commercial acclaim was due less to displaced mourning than to the sheer
beauty of the work. Elyot wrote a peculiarly English “AIDS play” as the
tide of hysteria was barely receding from its high-water mark, but two
decades on the disease is almost entirely incidental; the script does
not name it once.
The titular Reg is a kind of cross between Godot and Macavity: little
by little we learn that he has bedded virtually every one of the knot
of old university friends and friends-of-friends, yet he never appears
onstage. He stands now less for the hidden vectors of illness than for
those of appetite and emotion: Elyot’s primary focus is the
long-unrequited love of diffident Guy (in Jonathan Broadbent’s
performance, the very essence of a romantically disappointed “dear
friend, but…”) for affable but unperceptive John (Julian Ovenden), and
the overlapping triangles of their friendship with old uni pal Daniel
and John’s affair with Daniel’s partner Reg.
Elyot balances the drawing-room comedy and the poignancy, and makes
sure that the latter is never restrictively “gay”, on scales so fine
they could be turned by the very shadow of a feather. I do not think I
have ever seen a stage work of such phenomenal delicacy. Robert Hastie,
in his first full Donmar directorial credit now fully deserving of the
West End transfer, shows himself every bit as sensitive to the balance
as Elyot. No nudge-nudge gag is allowed to draw too much or too coarse
laughter, however much a treat it is to see the always excellent
Geoffrey Streatfeild camping it up with such glee as Daniel. No plot
twist is gasp-worthy: even as we work out the transitions between the
three acts in this continuous 110-minute staging, and divine who has
died and who is now what to whom, we simply think, “Oh. Ah,” and carry
on being enthralled by these entirely human figures, feeling every bit
as much empathy with them as do writer, director and actors.
Written for the Financial
Times.