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My Night With Reg (NHB Modern Plays)

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smartgiles I loved MY NIGHT WITH REG – faultless production of a modern classic. The cast are all wonderful. Will I like it? When the director Roger Michell asked me if I’d like to come and replace John Sessions as Reg, I hadn’t seen the play yet. We had a jokey rivalry, and I was loyal to Beautiful Thing. But when I saw John Sessions in the role, I was utterly bewitched. I don’t think I’d ever been in an auditorium where the laughter was so uproarious and the aching, painful silences were so intense. As Guy navigates his unreciprocated love, the pair are joined by the newly Daniel (Peter Neenan), who spills all with tales of his recent sexual activities with his partner of nearly a year, the mysterious Reg, who will be attending the party that evening. The trio reminisce on their days of old, and we hear of further sexual encounters, including John and Daniel’s youthful and competitive promiscuity, in contrast to Guy, who has resorted to phone-sex with a stranger in an effort to be careful.

Oh yes, totally. I have a few friends who are gay and went through that time period, so I spoke to them and asked them about their experiences. I had to be quite delicate because it was such a harsh time, there was terrifying disease and no one really knew about it. [It] completely took out friendship groups, so I knew I had to be quite sensitive when asking people about it. The last time I saw My Night With Reg on stage there was no interval. This production does include one but I felt it could have been more evenly divided up. Whilst I appreciate the naked male body, the nudity in this play is irrelevant to the story and unnecessary – it would be great if there were a purpose to it. On the eve of their deployment to Vietnam, a group of young Marines have one last blow-out in San Francisco. Surprisingly, at least for me, the “dogfight” of the title does not refer specifically to their battlefield actions, but rather to a cruel ritual in which the men compete to bring the ugliest woman they can find as a date to a party. In a sense, the play was about its time, but the themes of yearning and lost love are universal and still resonate. Though it is set in the 80s, I don’t think it’s a play only of the 80s – it speaks to us directly and vividly now.

Streetcar Named Desire

The second half moves away from this reductionist approach and allows us to get a better sense of what’s not being said, by focusing more on silences and looks shared between the characters as they come to terms with Reg’s death and the uncomfortable conversations it prompts. The transition from the night of Reg’s funeral to the aftermath of Guy’s death is executed well, catching us by surprise to gently remind us of the debilitating AIDS crisis and its profound, almost inconspicuous impact on those who watched their loved ones pass away one by one. The light design is exceedingly minimal and unfocused, sometimes drawing our attention away from the characters onto the set. The set design by Lee Newby, whilst visually stunning, is used sparingly and only offers us an insight into the kind of life that Guy wanted to share with a partner but was never able to. The fresh production of Kevin Elyot’s modern classic, from Manchester-based Green Carnation Company, will tour to selected venues across the North and Midlands this Spring, opening at the Lowry at Salford from January 23-25. Both of your two West End productions to date have been with all-male casts. I presume that hasn’t been a deliberate move?! I don’t really know. I think we have our own little world, I suppose, and like anyone and in any situation you have to be respectful of what you say but there’s certainly a lot of banter around and everyone thoroughly enjoyed getting into our characters, so it might be different if there were other people in the play, but I don’t think so. I think it all depends on the work that you’re doing. If I was doing a tragedy, it would probably be slightly downbeat. I’ll have to let you know when I start working with women! My Night With Reg stars Nicholas Anscombe (BBC’s Requiem, Bread & Roses Theatre’s Under The Radar) as privileged yet lost John; Steve Connolly as prowling Benny; Marc Geoffrey as long-suffering Bernie; David Gregan-Jones (Russell T Davies’ upcoming Boys with Channel 4) as the flamboyant and Byronesque Daniel, and newcomer Alan Lewis (a trained dancer and singer-songwriter) as the insightful ingenue Eric.

A veritable who’s who of British acting talent. Forthcoming Closer co-stars Rufus Sewell, Rachel Redford and Oliver Chris were taking a night off rehearsals alongside comedy favourites Miranda Hart and Sarah Hadland, stage regulars Clive Rowe and Nina Sosanya, former Corrie star Charlie Condou and Wolf Hall’s Jessica Raine. In a nutshell? Given that theatre is not exactly an art form synonymous with staunch heterosexuality, it’s surprising how few shows about LGBT lives make it into the West End. But Kevin Elyot’s poignant comedy ‘My Night with Reg’ is deservedly doing so for the second time. Robert Hastie’s pitch-perfect 20-year-anniversary revival for the Donmar has bagged itself a transfer, as did the original Royal Court production. Well he had this great presence. I think he was very ill at that time, but he just had a great, regal posture about him and he studied everything I did. I think he only said hello to me and at the end, as I was leaving, he leaned slightly over the table and said ‘And are you actually from Birmingham?’ I tend to talk a lot in these slightly stressful situations, and I really wanted the job, so I said ‘No, I’m from Yorkshire originally, I’m from Doncaster, but my mum moved up and down with the pub trade so I’ve moved around the country, I’ve got a really good ear for accents’, really trying to sell myself. And you could sort of almost see a smirk behind the stern glare. And that was that. I shook his hand. But I think Kevin loved it. I spoke to my agent and he said ‘They really want you’ which is what makes it feel very special, for me, that Kevin did want us. Casting its painfully accurate spotlight on the fragility and unpredictability of life, it is of course devastating for all the reasons you would expect, but it’s also devastatingly heart-warming and absolutely face achingly, wonderfully, devastatingly funny. You won’t find a more life-affirming way to spend two hours in London. This is truly British drama at its very sparkly best. Who’s in it? This is not entirely a source of hilarity: Aids looms over ‘My Night with Reg’, with two of its acts set in the aftermath of funerals. In certain respects, Hastie’s production feels like a period drama about a chapter in recent history now largely closed (in the West, at least). But it’s about more than just the ’80s: it’s about a specific generation of gay men, who came of age during a period of great liberation, only to find Aids and social respectability curbing their lifestyles. It is telling that of all Elyot’s characters, affable youngster Eric (a winsome Lewis Reeves) is the one who displays a moderate attitude towards sex.Over the course of three gatherings at Guy’s flat, a host of friends pass through his doors, but the titular Reg remains unseen. The long-term partner of flamboyant Daniel (Geoffrey Streatfeild, a hoot), Reg, it transpires, has slept with more or less everyone in the play apart from poor, celibate Guy.

Geoffrey Streatfeild brings camp-free flamboyance to Daniel, the life and soul of the party whose world implodes, while Downton Abbey’s Julian Ovenden exposes the frailty and longing at the heart of easy-life-living John. My Night With Reg was premiered at The Royal Court in London in 1994, transferring to the West End where it won accolades including Olivier and Evening Standard awards for best comedy. Gillian Anderson as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic Streetcar Named Desire This man, who was such riotously good company, had a serious side, and nothing was taken more seriously than his writing. He worked with precision, and he was playful but meticulous with the structure required to contain and then reveal the secrets kept by his characters. There were always secrets. In real life, he kept secret the fact that he was writing a part for me. I’d always wanted to be in one of Kevin’s plays, but I don’t think I banged on about it. Then, suddenly, there was this finished play called Mouth to Mouth. I played a woman called Laura, whose best friend was a writer … It was produced by the Royal Court and transferred to the West End. This was the future our young selves could never have imagined. And then there’s Eric, the naïve Brummie 18-year-old who’s just moved down to London and, whilst coping with sorting out his own sexuality, finds this group’s lifestyle bewildering and their promiscuity upsetting.But, for all John’s beauty, Daniel’s dirty double entendre or Lewis Reeves’ touching innocence as the drama’s young Eric, it is Jonathan Broadbent as Guy who will steal your heart. Caught somewhere between the glue that keeps them together and a misfit outsider, Broadbent’s performance as the angst-ridden Guy is flawless and lends the piece a tenderness that will stay with you long after the curtain falls. What should I look out for? Also like Invincible, Muswell Hill – as its title makes even more obvious – centres on middle-class Londoners, asks questions about creativity and assessing talent (here, it’s a would-be novelist rather than a would-be painter) and employs an excruciating dinner party as a jumping-off point.

An evening of laughter, heartbreak and celebration, Elyot’s razor-sharp wit will be brought to life in a stunning, visual feast that captures the decadence, celebration and uncertainty of 1980s London. When it comes to the acting, I don’t think it can be faulted, and I’m really going to single out Paul Keating here. Of all the characters in the show, Guy is the one I most identify with. Getting on in years, single but in love with someone that doesn’t love them, being the one people talk to, a bit socially awkward, and the person everyone calls ‘nice’, Guy and I have so much in common and Keating brings all that to the stage perfectly. He is helped in this by Lee Newby’s set design which is not only realistic but is pure Guy. The most popular of the gay circle is Reg, who is conspicuously absent from the party. Reg has had a long-term relationship with Daniel, but Daniel himself suspects Reg of occasionally being unfaithful to him. In fact Reg seems to be sleeping with every man he can get hold of (as it seems, even with the vicar). In the course of the play, John, Benny and even his seemingly faithful companion Bernie have secret sex with Reg. They all confide in Guy. It hurts Guy most to hear that John – whom he himself fancies – is having an affair with Reg, thus betraying their mutual friend Daniel. After his fling with Reg, Benny panics because he thinks he might have contracted HIV, but he does not confess it to his partner, Bernie.

Updated Nov 2014: My Night with Reg transfers, with full original cast, to the West End’s Apollo Theatre for a limited season from 17 January to 11 April 2015.

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