When youre bored with Hampstead Heath youre bored with life. So says one of the characters in Jonathan Harveys campy comedy about a group of friends gathering to watch the Eurovision song contest in 1995. This gives you some warning about the level of aspiration of the largely unattractive personalities that inhabit this play.
About Turn TC have put together a good, funny take on this in what is a rather cramped space. Lee (Jonathan Allison) is the host of the party, but hes in love with straight Nick (Phil Wallace, who also directs) but hes going out with Tania. She in turn is loved by Wendy . oh well, you get the point. The play is broadly a farce, with misunderstandings aplenty. As things unravel and the guests get drunk or wired, there are strong echoes of that seminal gay play The Boys In The Band. In that pre-Stonewall play, the character of Michael laments If only we could not hate ourselves so very much. Forty years down the line, to judge by these characters, Michaels wish has not been granted.
The acting is pretty uneven. Theres a strong performance from Bea Taylor as Tania and Dan Hyde is acerbically witty as Steph, Lees best friend, who does his best to get over the recent death of his lover, but only Jonathan Bullock as Roy maintains a similar energy level. At times there seem to be several different acting styles going on.
The script is full of funny one-liners, Harveys forte. What it lacks is any of the charm of his heart-warming Beautiful Thing. Its hard to warm to any of the characters, who seem to inhabit the same grotesque, somewhat sordid and hopeless world of Harveys sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme. Its all very funny, often hysterically so, but what its saying about gay people and their hopes and aspirations is so negative as to make one wonder if the gay movement of the last half century achieved anything positive at all.
That said, if youre at a loose end there are enough good performances and laughs in this production to make it worth the trip. Its closer than Hampstead Heath.
