The Line of Beauty
There are no wild directorial flourishes or big awards-bait performances in director Michael Grandage and playwright Jack Holden’s stage adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s seminal novel of the ‘80s. The wheel is at no point reinvented.
But, by Thatcher’s ghost, it does a tremendous job of cutting Hollinghurst’s period odyssey into a gripping, flab-free two-and-a-half hours of theatre. It is, above all, a great piece of storytelling.
If you’re not familiar, The Line of Beauty concerns Nick Guest (here played by Jasper Talbot), a young gay man who in 1983 moves into the ultra fancy home of his uni mate Toby Fedden’s parents as a lodger. ‘Welcome to Kensington Park Garden,’ intones Nick’s mother Rachel (Claudia Harrison), as she introduces Nick to the house she shares with her newly elected Tory MP husband Gerald (Charles Edward) and depressive daughter Catherine.
The story charts his journey through the decade: adjacent to the ruling classes but not a member of them, he is further removed from the mainstream by his sexuality, which he is entirely open about, but also othered by. A relationship with Leo (Alistair Nwachukwu), a Black councillor (one assumes for Labour) is largely conducted on the down-low. Though nominally invited in, Nick is wary of bringing Leo into the circle of the Feddens for a multitude of reasons. Some are clearly self-interested: the pointedly ‘apolitical” Nick is aware Leo is unlikely to get on with his Tory benefactors. Others are more...