Adapting is never an easy job. You get the hardcore fans who will ask for every single detail to be included, but your ultimate responsibility is to translate a neat, clean, new work of art. And that’s Jack Holden‘s adaptation of The Line of Beauty, a neat work of art. Jack, known for Cruise and KENREX, has adapted the Booker prize winning novel of same name by Alan Hollinghurst.
The timespan of the play covers four years, and we follow clever and naive working class Nick Guest’s life with the ‘other half’, the posh Feddens in Thatcher’s Britain. Against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic. An indulging time for the rich Feddens and a transformative one for Nick.
Directed by the seasoned and highly awarded Michael Grandage this adaptation of The Line of Beauty has got charm and starts off captivating and amusing the audience from the first minutes. When we are still getting to know the MP family, where Nick Guest is going to become a lodger.
Nick Guest, played by Jasper Talbot, had the awkwardness and politeness of English middle-class gays. A spectacular portrait of classes, he navigates through the extravaganza of the rich, with his ‘work partner’ Wani Ouradi (Arty Froushan) and the working class ‘church friend’ Leo Charles (Alistair Nwachukwu). The love triangle is cheeky, sexy, provocative, and above all, secretive. A time where being gay can be tolerated so long as it is not talked about. The gay trio has the beauty that’s undeniable, but they show you their ugly side too, especially Wani, who can use the good boy Nick and still make us care for him.
The younger women of the play, Ellie Bamber playing Cat Fedden and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, playing Rosemary Charles, had to face the weight and the monsters of this play, and both with sweetness, tenderness, and sometimes with a funny, blunt knife, dealing with the hardcore themes of the play – self-harm, HIV and shady dealings.
The cast playing the more mature characters, on the other hand, had the job of playing immoral and abusive roles, where we find them disgusting and ugly. That is the aim of an actor, although they are also beautiful, to be seen as foul is the utmost prize I could give them. Well, except Doreene Blackstock who plays Leo’s mother, Mrs Charles, she was the sweetest old lady whose religious views are obliterated by art, we cannot not love her in the graceful scene where Nick talks about art and faith.
The play takes us on a journey of the symbolism of art and its importance without sounding preachy. The lines of beauty were present in this play from the simple setting to the nostalgic music. The line of beauty is a s-shaped form that defines what is beautiful, versus a flat straight line which represents stillness and death. So, if you fancy a trip into the 80’s to find out what is beautiful and can find a ticket, run to the Almeida for a ‘rad’ time. Because Jasper will show and tell you what beauty is.
