Actor Gary Essendine is preparing to go on an overseas tour, but his life about to spiral out of control as his various relationships attempt to gain his attention, and the situation descends into a farce.
This production of the Noel Coward play swapped the genders of two characters, as there are hints in the original script that Gary is bisexual and this swap made this obvious. I thought this worked really well, and apart from the fact that the play was first written in the late 1930s when it would have been far more difficult if not impossible to have an openly bisexual character in a play, I don’t think I would have noticed the change had I not read about it beforehand.
Andrew Scott was fantastic as the self-obsessed and overly dramatic Gary, managing to be both hilarious and also convey the loneliness of fame and the character’s neediness (as pointed out by Matthew Warchus, the play’s director, in the programme, Gary’s surname ‘Essendine’ is an anagram of ‘neediness’). I also enjoyed the ongoing theme regarding when Gary was ‘acting’ and when he was being himself – other characters never seemed to believe him when he insisted that he wasn’t acting.
All the cast worked together fantastically, but apart from Scott the stand outs for me were Sophie Thompson as Monica, Gary’s secretary and Luke Thallon as Roland Maule, an admirer of Gary’s.
I really enjoyed this and judging from the laughter throughout the performance, so did the rest of the audience. Well worth a watch before the end of the run or seeing the NT Live broadcast in November.
playsmanyparts 