Theatre review: The Line of Beauty

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Oh no wait, it says Beauty.

  

Actor Jack Holden's second career as a playwright is really picking up steam this year, and after his breakthrough Cruise you can see why the Almeida might go to him to adapt Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 Booker-winner The Line of Beauty, another story of hedonistic gay life in the early '80s beginning to be haunted by the spectre of AIDS. But here the way the politics of Thatcherism tied into and affected that pandemic is even more explicit: In 1983, middle class Oxford graduate Nick Guest (Jasper Talbot) is transferring to London for a PhD, where he moves in with the family of his best friend Toby (Leo Suter.) His father Gerald (Charles Edwards) is a newly-elected Tory MP, tipped to rise quickly in Thatcher's government. The lodger is welcomed into the family, although there's a tacit understanding that he's expected to repay this by acting as a babysitter for Toby's sister Cat (Ellie Bamber,) who's bipolar and self-harms.

Nick is gay and has no hangups over his sexuality, but hasn't had much opportunity to explore it until now. So London's gay scene is as much part of the plan as his degree, and soon he's hooked up with Leo (Alistair Nwachukwu,) whom he met through a personal ad.

Hollinghurst's novel is a long one, and although the pace falters a bit in the second act Holden and director Michael Grandage do an impressive job of condensing it and making it both a relatively faithful adaptation (I think, inasmuch as I can remember a book I read twenty years ago) and a piece of theatre in its own right. It's also very funny, although unlike most other '80s set shows, like the soon-to-return American Psycho, it doesn't really get those laughs from fetishising the extremes of the decade.

In fact apart from the music (heavy on the queer anthems, including a particularly ironic use of the Communards) and a couple of preposterous party frocks and hairdos, Christopher Oram's designs eschew anything that would constantly remind us of the setting. Instead much of the play could be set at any time in the last forty years, reminding us of the theme that we're all Thatcher's children, and the repercussions filter down to today.

In fact there's something almost shocking in how warmly Nick is embraced into a family who know all about his sexuality, at a time we now associate with overt bigotry: We're at the tail end of big civil rights shifts in the '60s and '70s, and (almost) everyone is embracing them on the surface. It means when Nick's friends and lovers all start dying, starting with Matt Mella's old-school antiques dealer Peter, this doesn't become just another AIDS play, but looks at the way the pandemic made people feel legitimised in their homophobia and happy to start saying the quiet parts out loud again.

There's also subtler signs before this - it's implied that the reason Nick never introduces Leo to his surrogate family is because he's black. And honkingly unsubtle ones as well, like real-life Toast Robert Portal as Badger, a "consultant" who rails against the feckless unemployed, and whose own job consists entirely of making thousands more of them; he hides neither his dislike of Nick nor the reason for it.

I could have done with a bit more criticism of the lead, whom Talbot makes awkwardly likeable, but whose moral ambiguity starts to read more like hypocrisy: He claims to be "apolitical" which covers him cosying up to the Tory party while dating a left-wing local politician. His constantly-mentioned quest for beauty is also a convenient excuse for his actions, like saying he loves Leo then unceremoniously ditching him for millionaire Wani (Arty Froushan) who offers to take him on a classical tour of Europe. And lest his obsession appear entirely high-minded, the title's double meaning is of course a reference to all the cocaine being consumed.

His most convincing display of his aesthete credentials is when he manages to turn an awkward dinner with Leo's religious mother (Doreene Blackstock) around with a discussion of a painting she loves (for very different reasons to him,) while Francesca Amewudah-Rivers as Leo's sister Rosemary also gets to make an impact in a relatively small role.

In some sense the story is taking us through Nick's life as told through his romantic interests, starting with his unrequited lust for his best friend (despite all the knowingly witty lines, the biggest laugh of the night might have come from the reveal of Toby's preposterously muscular body,) through the sweet and sexy relationship with Leo, to the toxic but somehow genuine one with Wani. The Line of Beauty had more or less sold out long before it opened, so if the production has a further life that won't be surprising. While imperfect, it's good to be able to report that it does for the most part live up to expectations.

The Line of Beauty by Jack Holden, based on the novel by Alan Hollinghurst, is booking until the 29th of November at the Almeida Theatre (returns only.)

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.