"Two hours of French people talking - I couldn't see the point." Kevin Elyot's play My Night with Reg substitutes a group of gay friends for the French people but the point of this play, although subtle, should not be so hard to see, by anyone's standards.  It is simply a play about relationships - their complexities, their highs and their lows - although the self-referential comparison with French arthouse cinema is probably not unfounded, given the constant cigarette-smoking and heavy focus on words rather than actions.  This should not put off those who typically like their theatre more - well - theatrical.  The humour in the script and the real, human qualities of the various characters are more than enough to carry the audience right through to the end of the play and indeed, draw them in almost without their being aware of it.

The play is set entirely in the flat of Guy (James Bounds), who in the first scene is engaged in a convincingly awkward conversation with his university friend John (Michael Reed), the object of his affections.  John, however, is in love with Reg, who never appears in the play but binds together all its principal characters by his appearance in their love lives at one point or another.  The fact that most people's involvement with Reg only stretches to a casual fling highlights the issue of AIDS which could put the play at risk of being sanctimonious and mawkish but in fact, the theme is barely more than an undertone.  It is the tangle of relationships, and how that tangle is unravelled, and not AIDS or indeed sex that is the focus of the narrative here, and it is done very well indeed.

The interplay between the characters is engaging and well-drawn, and particular credit should go to James Bounds for his portrayal of the nice but tragic Guy.  Each character is distinct and the director (Simon Tavener)
has ensured that the uniqueness of each character is maintained, as opposed to slipping into stereotype which might be easily done in a play exclusively involving characters who are gay.   The changes in tone of the play,
particularly from the flat-warming party in the first scene to the subsequent funeral, are successfully achieved, and credit for this should go to the technical side of the production as well as to the actors themselves.

Although it is not unusual to see a play where male characters are in the majority, My Night with Reg is different to most other male-dominated drama, and perhaps worth seeing on that recommendation alone.  But it is also an entertaining and enjoyable play that really has an impact - in spite of (or maybe because of) it being just two hours of people talking.

Alison Gowland, 21.10.04