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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 182 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
My Night with Reg
by Kevin Elyot
This play is a deserved winner of the Evening Standard’s comedy award. Great one liners pepper the dialogue; while the action is hurried along with excellent acting from all the six characters, with John Sessions superb as a rumbustious extrovert with a heart of gold.
The unfolding tale of six gay men’s relationships with the Reg of the title – who we never get to meet – and with each other, is alternately comic, poignant and moving. The audience is reminded of the deadly threat of Aids, without the writer moralising at us.
But this is not a play specifically about Aids or gay lifestyles. Instead it examines the nature of fidelity between lovers and trust between friends and lovers. It looks at both the stifling and liberating effects of long term relationships and the exhilaration of beginning a new one.
Its presentation doesn’t aim to convince us of a particular message, but is genuinely thought-provoking. It is easy to like the characters, even the staid, complacent and boring Bernard, without ever becoming too involved with them. This encourages a type of voyeurism, partly engineered by the structure of the play, helping us to draw conclusions about our own lives. Certainly the audience I was part of adored it.
Amazingly the play has not attracted the attention of the Mary Whitehouse brigade, given the combination of the nature of some of its scenes and its refreshing approach to family life.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable performance which everyone should make the effort to see, despite the steep prices charged by West End theatres.
My Night with Reg plays at the Criterion Theatre, London, in January and February.
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