Adapted by Jack Holden from the gay novel by Alan Hollinghurst, the play plunges us into summer 1983 when Nick Guest (Jasper Talbot @jasper_talbot) moves into the grand Notting Hill home of his university friend Toby and into the orbit of Toby’s father Gerald (Charles Edwards @charlesedwards) his elegant wife Rachel (Claudia Harrison @claudiaharrison) and their troubled daughter Cat (Ellie Bamber @elliebamber).
As Nick chases beauty - of body, privilege, desire - he discovers that for all its champagne sheen, the world of power is brittle and exclusionary.
What works: Talbot brings this outsider-insider sketch alive with sweetly awkward intelligence; Edwards nails the entitled Tory patriarch with velvet menace; Bamber gives Cat the wounded glaze of someone both invited and cut off. The production is slick, the setting luxurious but the undercurrent unsettling.
What slightly doesn’t: by weaving so many storylines into a compact stage work some threads - the gay relationships, the AIDS crisis - feel sketched rather than lived.
In short: if you’re game for slick 80s glamour that nonetheless cracks open its mirror, go. The Almeida Theatre may be in glitzy borough but beneath the chandeliers the truth is in the shadows.
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