Wednesday 10 September 2014

My Night with Reg at the Donmar, or, Time, the Enemy in All of Us

Note: This is a slightly delayed review of the performance on Saturday 6th September 2014.

There's a moment towards the end of this play which is breathtakingly beautiful and utterly heartbreaking. Struggling to come to terms with a tragedy, Daniel (Geoffrey Streatfeild) puts on a record called Breakfast Disco and he and John (Julian Ovenden) dance for a few moments as if, by that physical action they can turn back the clock to one moment at university when a bond of friendship between three men was formed. Recapture that joyous carefree moment, escape the pain that they've since suffered. We know and they know that it's impossible, that the heartbreaks characters and audience have been subjected to cannot be undone, but that dance both brave and desperate longs for the world to be otherwise.

It's a moment that's a remarkably long way from where the play starts. At the beginning this is an almost farcical show, as we slowly realise that virtually everyone on stage has been getting off with Daniel's unseen boyfriend, the Reg of the title, without Daniel's knowledge. There's also a touch of the stereotypical at first glance to several of the characters – particularly the flamboyant homosexuality of Daniel, and the obsessive neatness of Jonathan Broadbent's Guy. But one of the clevernesses of Elyot's writing is that even in the often farcical first act there's a care to give human depth to the stereotypes. You think you know these types, the play seems to say, but you don't know these particular people and I shall make you know them.