My Night With Reg (NHB Modern Plays)

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The Donmar title always brings you in! I’ve been there as a fan watching pieces for years, so to get a chance to play in the space is brilliant. I hadn’t actually heard of the play and then I read it and loved it. When I meant Rob [Hastie] the director and Kevin Elyot the writer, I realised what a special piece it was and what a great part Eric was as well. He goes from a boy to a man on stage and finds his own little area in the world and who he is. It was such a great arch to have as a character, so that was exciting. When I got [the script] through from my agent, Ben said ‘Okay, there are two things…’ You generally get, you know, ‘There’s stunts involved’ or ‘Are you okay to do this…’ sort of thing, and [with this] it was ‘Birmingham accent’ and ‘the character has full frontal nudity’. For some reason, the thing that fazed me more was the Birmingham accent! Going on stage naked, even though that’s a classic nightmare, wasn’t too hard. My Night With Reg was premiered at The Royal Court in London in 1994, transferring to the West End where it won accolades including Olivier and Evening Standard awards for best comedy. A veritable who’s who of British acting talent. Forthcoming Closer co-stars Rufus Sewell, Rachel Redford and Oliver Chris were taking a night off rehearsals alongside comedy favourites Miranda Hart and Sarah Hadland, stage regulars Clive Rowe and Nina Sosanya, former Corrie star Charlie Condou and Wolf Hall’s Jessica Raine. In a nutshell? But, for all John’s beauty, Daniel’s dirty double entendre or Lewis Reeves’ touching innocence as the drama’s young Eric, it is Jonathan Broadbent as Guy who will steal your heart. Caught somewhere between the glue that keeps them together and a misfit outsider, Broadbent’s performance as the angst-ridden Guy is flawless and lends the piece a tenderness that will stay with you long after the curtain falls. What should I look out for?

It’s hard to understand how anyone could classify sensible and pretty Laura Jane Matthewson (played Rose) as a dog, but some of my own worst high school insecurities came screaming to the surface as I watched her plight. Whatever the Marines’ wartime heroics or sacrifices, it doesn’t excuse such callousness in my book. But Jamie Muscato’s Eddie is redeemed.My Night With Reg is a nice show with a beautiful set design but I felt the themes of the show were glazed over somewhat and it was a missed opportunity to highlight an important story. Two hours after I’d spoken to Lewis Reeves during a break in technical rehearsals for My Night With Reg, controversy breaks. His bare bottom has been deemed unsuitable by TfL and banned from the underground.

I also can’t help wondering if he would have infused the play with more hope. Guy is the most self-loving and self-respecting of his characters but he’s sexually shunned by the others, including the man he’s secretly in love with, and isn’t rewarded with any kind of happiness by the narrative. In fact, there isn’t much redemption for any of the characters at the end of the play. Bearing in mind that since it was first performed the position of gay men in British society has improved immeasurably, I worry that this might now seem unnecessarily bleak. My Night With Reg stars Nicholas Anscombe (BBC’s Requiem, Bread & Roses Theatre’s Under The Radar) as privileged yet lost John; Steve Connolly as prowling Benny; Marc Geoffrey as long-suffering Bernie; David Gregan-Jones (Russell T Davies’ upcoming Boys with Channel 4) as the flamboyant and Byronesque Daniel, and newcomer Alan Lewis (a trained dancer and singer-songwriter) as the insightful ingenue Eric. Kevin Elyot’s original play was first produced in 1994 by the Royal Court London, directed by Roger Mitchell. At this time, the HIV epidemic had been decimating the queer population, and yet Elyot’s play won the Evening Standard Award for Comedy (1994), and the Olivier Award for Best Comedy (1995). Elyot’s text skilfully balanced bawdy humour and emotional devastation, and navigating this is a challenge for any director. On the eve of their deployment to Vietnam, a group of young Marines have one last blow-out in San Francisco. Surprisingly, at least for me, the “dogfight” of the title does not refer specifically to their battlefield actions, but rather to a cruel ritual in which the men compete to bring the ugliest woman they can find as a date to a party. The production is co-directed and co-produced by Green Carnation Company’s two artistic directors Dan Jarvis and Dan Ellis, while award-winning young Leeds-based designer George Johnson-Leigh will bring the play’s 1980s world to life with stunning neon visual effects and an elegant, deconstructed set design.I love doing everything, I don’t tend to say no that much because I think everything’s a great challenge! I want to be as versatile as possible. My ideal dream is to be that guy that someone goes ‘Who’s that guy? Oh yeah, he was in that thing.’ No one ever really knows his name, but he’s known for loads of different things. That’s my dream. As for Gillian Anderson’s Blanche, you just don’t want to take your eyes off her. This is a stealthy cougar with sharp claws, aggressively sexual and fatally wounded by rejection.

When the tragic and the inevitable happens, revelations come to light at the post-wake gathering, and Guy must juggle the chaos of unrequited love, betrayals of friendship sworn to secrecy, loneliness, relationship breakdowns and the cruelty of consequence. The play is centred around kinship and betrayal, community and deceit, love and loyalty. The last time I saw My Night With Reg on stage there was no interval. This production does include one but I felt it could have been more evenly divided up. Whilst I appreciate the naked male body, the nudity in this play is irrelevant to the story and unnecessary – it would be great if there were a purpose to it.This man, who was such riotously good company, had a serious side, and nothing was taken more seriously than his writing. He worked with precision, and he was playful but meticulous with the structure required to contain and then reveal the secrets kept by his characters. There were always secrets. In real life, he kept secret the fact that he was writing a part for me. I’d always wanted to be in one of Kevin’s plays, but I don’t think I banged on about it. Then, suddenly, there was this finished play called Mouth to Mouth. I played a woman called Laura, whose best friend was a writer … It was produced by the Royal Court and transferred to the West End. This was the future our young selves could never have imagined.

Me and Jonny Broadbent also had the great honour and privilege to do a reading at his funeral after that. We did a small section of the play at the Actors’ Church, which was mental because that was even before rehearsals. It was only then and hearing the eulogies and all the people who had been associated with the play or with Kevin that I saw this huge community and how important [My Night With Reg] was to them. I had this great sense of pride to be involved in it and I kept the memory of that alive, but also tried to tell the truth of the story so I didn’t get too precious with it. But I held what everyone said, all their words, close to my heart. It was very moving and lovely. A Streetcar Named Desire continues at the Young Vic (closest Tubes: Southwark/Waterloo) until 19 September 2014. I read an interesting interview with Simon Callow recently about the effect of Aids on the gay community. Despite the horrendous human losses, he said, the disease had positive outcomes in terms of forcing people out of the closet and mobilising the community – with the eventual result being the de-stigmatisation of homosexuality. Reviving Elyot’s play, 20 years on and just after the legalisation of gay marriage, feels very fitting.From the brilliantly over the top Geoffrey Streatfeild as the gloriously flamboyant Daniel to an impossibly beautiful Julian Ovenden, who embodies the rich-as-he-is-idle playboy John with aplomb as he swans about with hilarious vanity in every step, collectively the brilliantly funny cast of six makes up a group so witty and eloquent, you would do anything to join their gang. All three scenes are set in the sitting room of Guy's London apartment: during Guy's flatwarming party (Scene 1); after Reg's funeral, some years later (Scene 2); and after Guy's funeral (Scene 3). An evening of laughter, heartbreak and celebration, Elyot’s razor-sharp wit will be brought to life in a stunning, visual feast that captures the decadence, celebration and uncertainty of 1980s London. To summarize, My Night With Reg is an enjoyable revival of Elyotand’s humorous exploration of the lives of Guy and his friends as they lived through the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Between silly arguments, unkempt promises and grave accusations, they find themselves confronted by larger questions about grief and mortality as they struggle to come to terms with the exceedingly ordinary deaths from an extraordinary disease. It’s an unusual uproar for an actor to find himself at the centre of, but one that I have no doubt that Reeves would have seen the funny side of. Keen to tell me all about how it feels to strip on stage – not to mention for the promotional posters advertising the show – the rising star is taking what he first describes as the thing of “nightmares” in his stride. And, let’s face it, nudity is probably the least interesting thing about the late Kevin Elyot’s drama. A seminal piece, it expertly treads the line between tragedy and comedy to tell the heartbreaking and often utterly hilarious story of a group of men whose friendship group is torn apart during the 1980s AIDS epidemic.