The Line Of Beauty (Almeida, London)
Verdict: Elusively soulless
The intriguing thing about Alan Hollinghurst’s best-selling 2004 novel, The Line Of Beauty, is that it swings both ways. Quite properly, it wants to have its cake and eat it, in the story of a young gay man’s ascent through upper-class life in Eighties’ Notting Hill, under the shadow of AIDs.
And that have-it-all attitude is caught nicely by Michael Grandage’s highly watchable staging of Jack Holden’s deft adaptation.
Our hero, Nick Guest, is played as a charmingly evasive aesthete by rising star Jasper Talbot (first seen at the National Theatre this summer as Rosamund Pike’s son in Inter Alia).
His surname suggests that he might be a social interloper; and the Oxford graduate duly ingratiates himself into the wealthy family of Charles and Rachel Fedden (Charles Edwards and Claudia Harrison), echoing Barry Keoghan in Saltburn.
But it’s hard to warm to Nick. He ditches his sincere, young black lover Leo (Alistair Nwachukwu) in favour of the closeted, cocaine-guzzling jet-setter Wani (Arty Froushan). And his pseudo Oscar Wilde-ish determination to follow beauty in life, love and antique furniture is also not particularly endearing.
Social climber: Nick (Jasper Talbot, right) and his secret lover, the jet-setting playboy Wani (Arty Froushan), in The Line Of Beauty
Famously, he does get to ‘dance with the devil’ – when Mrs Thatcher shows up for a party at the Feddens’ home and the pair have a shuffle to the strains of the Communards’ cover of Don’t Leave Me This Way.
It remains odd, though, that the Feddens allow him to stay and sponge off them…for four eventful years — ostensibly so he can look out for their bipolar daughter Cat (Ellie Bamber).
Where Grandage’s production succeeds is in freeing us from Nick’s self-absorbed perspective in the book, and giving Hollinghurst’s other characters a chance to breathe. Edwards’ Gerald and his friend Badger (Robert Portal) may be stuffed shirt Tories. But Cat, the free-spirited, disturbed daughter, does at least get to speak truth to power.
Beautiful people: Nick (second from left) revels in being part of the glamorous Fedden family
Grandage’s sold-out (and presumably West End-bound) production feels, like Nick, a little too in love with the wealth and status it censures — thanks partly to Christopher Oram’s elegant set.
Faultlessly acted and tastefully staged, Hollinghurst’s story, grounded in hedonism and interior design, nonetheless remains frustratingly soulless.
The Line Of Beauty runs until November 29.
The Line Of Beauty runs at the Almeida until November 29. It is sold out but for details on returns visit the website.
The Assembled Parties (Hampstead Theatre, London)
Verdict: Ropey but funny
Another social climber lies at the heart of Richard Greenberg’s The Assembled Parties, which was a hit on Broadway in 2013.
Greenberg died aged 67 in July this year, and his 12-year-old play now feels like a rambling homage to Woody Allen’s film Hannah And Her Sisters (starring Mia Farrow and Michael Caine).
The title puzzles, too. It should have been called The Ruby Necklace, since that trinket is the big story connecting two sisters-in-law.
One, Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) is a mousey, neurotically positive, cup-overflowing type who is, by coincidence, a dead ringer for Farrow.
The other, Faye (Tracy-Ann Oberman) — sister of Julie’s husband — is a vodka-swigging monster with big hair, big jewellery and outrageous opinions. Their lively exchanges form the show’s tastiest morsels.
A tale of two sisters-in-law: Tracy-Ann Oberman as Faye and Jennifer Westfeldt as Julie in The Assembled Parties, at the Hampstead Theatre
Less appetisingly, Greenberg’s plot turns on gauche hanger-on Jeff (Sam Marks) — a gate-crashing gooseberry who sticks like a burr.
He adopts the family, having been invited to celebrate Christmas with them in 1980 by Julie’s seemingly gay son Scotty (Alexander Marks).
Twenty years later, there have been a number of deaths. But he’s still there — now armed with a Harvard law degree, and telling everyone how to behave.
Blanche McIntyre’s production is cheerful enough, but can’t make the haphazard play cohere.
As spectacle it’s a Barbara Cartland nightmare on a vast prairie of pink shag-pile carpet anchored by an extravagant rocket of a Christmas tree…surrounded by pitch darkness.
Weirdly, a set of walls arrive in the second half, suggesting the opulent apartment — just when everyone says it’s falling apart.
Still, Greenberg’s numerous zingers help disguise a ropey plot.
The Assembled Parties is on at the Hampstead Theatre until November 22.Â
