My Night With Reg (NHB Modern Plays)

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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. Me and Jonny Broadbent also had the great honour and privilege to do a reading at his funeral after that. We did a small section of the play at the Actors’ Church, which was mental because that was even before rehearsals. It was only then and hearing the eulogies and all the people who had been associated with the play or with Kevin that I saw this huge community and how important [My Night With Reg] was to them. I had this great sense of pride to be involved in it and I kept the memory of that alive, but also tried to tell the truth of the story so I didn’t get too precious with it. But I held what everyone said, all their words, close to my heart. It was very moving and lovely.

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. 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.Even more immediately accessible, Streetcar will be broadcast to cinemas via NT Live on Tuesday 16 September. Full NT Live listings and booking here. Finally, there is also talk of a transfer…

Opening in 1985 on an idyllic summer’s evening of booze and nostalgia, Kevin Elyot’s seminal piece about a group of gay friends and the titular – but never seen – Reg’s promiscuous ways sees the long overdue reunion of university friends mark the beginning of a catastrophic era that will affect all their lives. South of the Thames, near the old Battersea Power Station, is the Turbine Theatre. It’s a lovely small intimate space with a very welcoming staff, jars of sweets on the bar, and a reputation for putting on some first-rate productions. So, I was really looking forward to my visit there for their latest show, a revival of the modern gay classic My Night With Reg. Paul Keating (Guy) -My Night With Reg – The Turbine Theatre – Photo by Mark Senior. When the tragic and the inevitable happens, revelations come to light at the post-wake gathering, and Guy must juggle the chaos of unrequited love, betrayals of friendship sworn to secrecy, loneliness, relationship breakdowns and the cruelty of consequence. The play is centred around kinship and betrayal, community and deceit, love and loyalty.

Streetcar Named Desire

As for Gillian Anderson’s Blanche, you just don’t want to take your eyes off her. This is a stealthy cougar with sharp claws, aggressively sexual and fatally wounded by rejection. It’s an unusual uproar for an actor to find himself at the centre of, but one that I have no doubt that Reeves would have seen the funny side of. Keen to tell me all about how it feels to strip on stage – not to mention for the promotional posters advertising the show – the rising star is taking what he first describes as the thing of “nightmares” in his stride. And, let’s face it, nudity is probably the least interesting thing about the late Kevin Elyot’s drama. A seminal piece, it expertly treads the line between tragedy and comedy to tell the heartbreaking and often utterly hilarious story of a group of men whose friendship group is torn apart during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Dogfight – book by Peter Duchan, music and lyrics by Ben J Pasek and Justin Paul – is another UK premiere of another contemporary American musical, produced by dynamo Danielle Tarento, who had such a hit with the UK premiere of another contemporary musical, Titanic, in the same space last year.

This modern classic, which captures the fragility of friendship, happiness and life itself, won both the 1995 Olivier and Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy, after its premiere at the Royal Court and subsequent transfer to the West End. My Night With Reg, the Olivier and Evening Standard award-winning bittersweet comedy about a group of gay men coming to terms with AIDS written by ‘Birmingham boy’, the late Kevin Elyot, makes a long-awaited appearance at The Crescent. What gives this production a special twist, is that it is directed by Rod Natkiel who was a friend of Kevin Elyot, a fellow drama student and who acted with him. smartgiles I loved MY NIGHT WITH REG – faultless production of a modern classic. The cast are all wonderful. Will I like it?The words HIV/AIDS are never mentioned in My Night With Reg. But the deadly immunodeficiency virus that scythed through gay communities in the 1980s is the spectre that overshadows the action in this seminal drama. Matthew Ryan’s intimate production is staged in the Turbine Theatre under a railway arch at Battersea Power Station, and the rumbling of trains overhead for once seems to suit the action, accentuating the ominous sense of dread that builds towards the quietly devastating final scene. I read an interesting interview with Simon Callow recently about the effect of Aids on the gay community. Despite the horrendous human losses, he said, the disease had positive outcomes in terms of forcing people out of the closet and mobilising the community – with the eventual result being the de-stigmatisation of homosexuality. Reviving Elyot’s play, 20 years on and just after the legalisation of gay marriage, feels very fitting. I also can’t help wondering if he would have infused the play with more hope. Guy is the most self-loving and self-respecting of his characters but he’s sexually shunned by the others, including the man he’s secretly in love with, and isn’t rewarded with any kind of happiness by the narrative. In fact, there isn’t much redemption for any of the characters at the end of the play. Bearing in mind that since it was first performed the position of gay men in British society has improved immeasurably, I worry that this might now seem unnecessarily bleak. Without any prior knowledge of My Night With Reg, it might be hard to imagine that a play about the AIDS crisis could be anything other than devastatingly sad. But you’d be wrong.