THEATRE REVIEW: Beautiful Thing, Arts Theatre London

Can it really be almost 20 years since I first saw Jonathan Harvey’s “Beautiful Thing” at the Duke of Yorks theatre? How time flies! And how things have changed since then.

by Greg Mitchell | 19th April 2013

★★★★★

Beautiful Jamie (Jake Davies) and Ste (Danny-Boy Hatchard)

Back in 1993, when the play was first premiered at the Bush, we still had an unequal age of consent (21 for men) and the loathsome Section 28, brought in by Thatcher, was still on the statute book. You’d think that a play so topical would have dated, but it has never lost its capacity to move and charm its audience, which is no doubt the reason why it has spawned so many productions all over the world. If the play has relevance today, it is because, at its heart, it is a universal story about the awakening of young love. You’d have to have a hard heart indeed to resist the playing out of 16 year old Ste and Jamie’s love story, set against the background of a Thamesmead council estate in post Thatcherite Britain. Maybe it is this gritty reality that helps along the story; beautifully and wittily written, the play never descends into mawkish sentimentality.

The action takes place on the walkway outside three flats in a low-rise block in Thamesmead, one inhabited by Ste and his drunken, physically abusive father (never seen in the play), one by 15 year old Leah and her mother (also never seen in the play), and the other by Jamie and his mother Sandra. Note that none of these teenagers is living in a traditional two parent household. Foul mouthed Leah, has been excluded from school (“kids are cunts”, she proclaims at the beginning of the play), and is obsessed with Mama Cass, whose music provides the soundtrack for the piece; sensitive Jamie hates games and loves musicals, but has as good a relationship with his barmaid mother as any teenager has with a parent; Sandra, his mother, is having a fling with a younger man, Tony, who thinks he is much cooler than he is (she knows he is only passing though, but he doesn’t); and Ste spends his life alternately looking after his father and trying to escape being beaten by him. It may sound grim, but actually it isn’t. The whole play is shot through with laughter, as the characters find humour in even the most miserable situations.

The performances are uniformly excellent in Nikolai Foster’s subtly paced twentieth anniversary production of the play. Jake Davis and Danny-Boy Jones, awkwardly fumbling towards their sexual awakening, their first kiss eliciting an audible “Aah” from the audience, play teenagers Jamie and Ste with a touching honesty that is totally captivating. The other majorly important relationship is that between Sandra and Jamie, and Suranne Jones captures to perfection the tenderness behind the tough, strong woman, who has had to bring up a son on her own; the scene in which she discovers that Jamie is gay being particularly moving. Much of the comedy comes from foul mouthed Leah, and Zaraah Adams’s timing was just perfect, whilst Oliver Farmworth did a great job projecting Tony’s benign, but somewhat nerdy, character; well meaning, but really a bit of a twerp. Strongly recommended.