"How to adapt a novel as big and shimmering as Alan Hollinghurst's 2004 Booker prize winner? It's a book that captures not just the hypocrisies of one elite, Thatcher-loving family but the hypocrisies of a whole era, with power and politics bristling beside the hedonistic explosion of 1980s gay culture. Maybe it needs an entire series (as in the case of Andrew Davies's TV adaptation), but Jack Holden, whose 2021 play Cruise traversed similar ground, makes a robust go of it here."
"He arrives at the dark heart of the book while filleting and mixing the order of things so that the timeline of the central three sections is shorter and slicker, but also less intensely lived. The focal point is the ruling-class Fedden family, whose bumptious patriarch Gerald (Charles Edwards) is a newly elected Tory MP, and in whose Kensington Gardens household the middle-class, timidly gay Oxford graduate Nick Guest (Jasper Talbot) becomes, well, a guest."
The stage adaptation condenses sprawling material into a streamlined play that reorders sections to shorten the central timeline while retaining core emotional beats. The story centers on the ruling-class Fedden family and Nick Guest, a timidly gay Oxford graduate who becomes a guest in their Kensington Gardens household and functions as an observing insider-outsider. Gerald Fedden emerges as a bumptious newly elected Tory MP. The production emphasizes class dynamics, political hypocrisy, and the clash between power and the hedonistic surge of 1980s gay culture. Strong performances include a balanced, bookish portrayal of Nick, a moving final monologue on beauty, and polished direction with sharp pace.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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