The Line of Beauty

This adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel arrives freighted with the dismal ambition of being adapted from a much loved novel and also of becoming a great AIDS play - in the vein of The Inheritance or Angels in America. It achieves something sadly a little below the mark: a glossy, attenuated and messy mix of comedy, satire and nostalgia. Where Hollinghurst’s novel offered a unique peep hole into the diseased flesh of Thatcher’s Britain, this production feels too obviously performative and plot heavy. Jack Holden adapts and Michael Grandage directs to create an 80s mood-board, masked by clouds of cocaine. Into Kensington Gardens drifts Nick Guest, the horny Henry James scholar. As played by Jasper Talbot, he is a creature of soft focus and bookish sympathy. Charles Edwards and Claudia Harrison are brilliant ciphers for ruling-class decay and Ellie Bamber’s Catherine is a flurry of tics with twitching hands and a fragility that seems on the precipice of a cold, clear terror into collapse. Leo Suter as Toby Fedden’s primary contribution seems to be the quite astonishing removal his shirt to reveal his oiled up pecks and 10-pack. The rest of his performance is disappointingly shallow. All of this seems to suggest a rather glib evening - but that’s far from the case. It is very entertaining and funny - but for a play that I was so excited to see I could not help leaving a tad disappointed.