https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/theatre/beautiful-thing-theatre-royal-stratford-east-review-jonathan-harvey-gay-b1108883.html
Beautiful Thing at Theatre Royal Stratford East review: gleefully of its time but more timeless than ever
It is, indeed, a rather beautiful thing
By Tim Bano
Review at a glance
Discovering Beautiful Thing is like a rite of passage for teen gays, whether in the form of the cult 1996 film or in one of the many revivals starring the likes of Andrew Garfield, Jonathan Bailey and Jonny Lee Miller.
Who knew gay love could be depicted as something other than tragic? That working class gay love could be about acceptance and joy, not just homophobia? That it didn’t have to be all misty-eyed Merchant Ivory tastefulness, that there was room for gags about frottage?
Well Jonathan Harvey did. When he wrote his breakthrough play in 1993, set on a Thamesmead council estate, he wanted to counter the dehumanising language around Section 28 and to simply show two teenagers falling in love. Gay love not as buggery and sodomy and AIDS – the language used in parliament and the papers – but as, yes, a beautiful thing.
Thirty years later it’s still beautiful, and as Anthony Simpson-Pike’s solid but slightly stilted anniversary revival shows, it’s got this other quality about it too: gleefully of its time – aspic clings to the mentions of Autumnal Shades tissues – but more timeless than ever.
There’s football-obsessed Ste who escapes his abusive alcoholic dad by bunking next door with the more Cagney and Lacey-oriented Jamie. All those top-and-tailing nights lead to first fumblings under the duvet, then breathless agonising over the agony aunt column in Gay Times, and an unfurling first relationship.
Most productions have had white casts, but here it’s an all black cast except for Mama Cass-obsessed teenager Leah, a fabulously bolshy, sometimes devastatingly vulnerable Scarlett Rayner. It’s a deliberate gesture from Simpson-Pike: an embracing of black queerness, a widening of the net which the play casts out.
But it also shows how much Harvey’s play isn’t about race. It’s about class, sexuality, gender roles, poverty, domestic abuse, love, identity, but it’s not really about race. You really want the characters to acknowledge it, but they’re locked into a script that just doesn’t really go there. Still, in a way that doesn’t actually matter. Love is love. Simpson Pike brings out some wonderful performances, especially Raphael Akuwudike who finds the sweet spot as Ste, all wide eyes and innocent grin, alongside Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran as Jamie, stepping in heroically after previews had begun when Joshua Asaré was forced to drop out just a few days before opening. Jamie’s unfiltered pub landlady mother Sandra is a gift of a part, and Shvorne Marks seizes it with her walloping tongue and weary cynicism.
There’s a bit too much pastiching from Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge’s Tony, Sandra’s artist boyfriend, and a bit of patchiness in Simpson-Pike’s direction as jolting gear shifts – Jamie and Sandra hitting each other one moment and chatting casually the next – strain credibility. But maybe once Owokoniran is more settled it’ll smooth itself out.
And anyway, the scenes when Jamie and Ste slowly relax into each other’s company in the tiny single bed absolutely crackle, Simpson-Pike nailing those moments of softness and tenderness.
We’ve got Heartstopper now. We’ve got gender discourse. You’d think the radicalism of Beautiful Thing has dimmed. Far from it. Even if it clunks occasionally, Simpson-Pike’s production, without much fuss, renews the play’s claim to gay greatness.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/beautiful-thing-stratford-east-review/
Telegraph
5 stars out of 5
Beautiful Thing: a brilliantly refreshing and tender revival of a coming-out classic
5/5
Stratford East’s warm and nostalgic production of Jonathan Harvey’s 1993 queer drama does it full justice
ByDzifa Benson
When Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing premiered in 1993, headlines were still grappling with Aids and Section 28 –legislation introduced by the Thatcher government in 1988 which banned local authorities from “promoting” homosexuality (and which would not be repealed in England and Wales for another decade). Since then, this tender, character-driven play about two working class teenage boys falling in love on a south London housing estate, has been performed globally and made into a film.
Any new production, therefore, has to contend with the play’s storied legacy as part of the canon of LGBTQ+ theatre classics. By casting black actors as the protagonists, however, Anthony Simpson-Pike’s 30th anniversary revival distinguishes itself, foregrounding race as a core factor in Harvey’s witty examination of the intersection between class, gender and sexuality. It’s a simple but canny way to refresh the play for audiences who might not have even been alive during its first outing.
Neighbours and schoolmates 15-year-old Jamie and 16-year-old Ste couldn’t be more different in temperament. Jamie –played by Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran as an introverted but resolute young man – hates sports, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Sound of Music and, due to school bullying, is a habitual truant. Meanwhile, Ste’s (Raphael Akuwudike) popularity as a football star is counteracted by beatings meted out by his alcoholic, abusive father.
When Ste endures one too many batterings, Jamie’s mother Sandra (Shvorne Marks, in blistering comic form) – whose parenting style is best likened to a loving but short-tempered lioness – gives him refuge in their flat. Lacking an extra bed, she naively instructs Ste to top-and-toe with Jamie.
Thanks to committed and authentic performances from Owokoniran and Akuwudike, it’s in this inarticulate interaction, during which Jamie and Ste lean into their burgeoning queerness together, that the play finds its big, open heart.
As the boys explore their sexuality, the community also tentatively finds its footing. Sharing the walkway in front of the postwar concrete flats, cleverly designed by Rosie Elnile, is their neighbour Leah (Scarlett Rayner), who will become an ally to the boys and whose raucous spikiness, expressed in caustic barbs traded with Sandra, veils her own vulnerability.
Harvey’s spare wordplay and compelling characters are sharply astute. Wisely, Simpson-Pike’s direction, which isn’t afraid to use silence as an effective way to ratchet up the tension, gives the staging and actors ample space for the script to work its effervescent magic alongside a soundtrack of 90s tunes and Mama Cass songs.
It feels somewhat reductive to say that this is a queer play just because its protagonists happen to be gay when it is, in fact, a very human story that defies you not to leave the theatre wrapped in a warm, nostalgic glow.