My Night With Reg

Last year the Donmar Warehouse celebrated the 20th anniversary of Kevin Elyot’s award-winning play with its first major London revival. Its current transfer to the Apollo for this strictly limited run features all the original cast and cements the importance of the work as a piece of late 20th century British drama. Unrequited love, mistaken identity and sexual superiority are all common devices in post-war British comedy and Elyot develops each of these with the economy of Ayckbourn and the cut-throat precision of Orton.

Directed by Robert Hastie, now firmly established as the Donmar’s associate director, this production celebrates the comedy of Elyot’s play as much as the underlying fragility of friendship and pain of loss. The original thrust staging threw up a few sightline problems, which have been solved somewhat by pushing the action behind the proscenium arch and Peter McKintosh’s realistic set sits relatively easily in its new space without sacrificing the intimacy of the production.

The slick cast temper the humour with a gradually deepening sense of fear as an unspoken illness gradually threatens to carry each of them off. Jonathan Broadbent as the reticent Guy still delivers the achingly accurate portrayal of middle-aged awkwardness that grounds the play. It is dominated, however, by Geoffrey Streatfeild’s confident Daniel, whose journey from chief joker to chief mourner is coloured with flashes of old-school camp. Richard Cant and Matt Bardock are extremely good value as the bickering, mismatched couple Bernie and Benny while Lewis Reeves remains the voice of innocence amid the tears of deceit and regret.