Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

The late Kevin Elyot wasn’t a prolific playwright, partly because he didn’t write his first until he was forty (he started out as an actor) and partly because he played away writing for TV and film too. He produced just five original plays and three adaptations over a thirty year period, but he did write a late 20th century classic, My Night With Reg, recently revived at the Donmar, transferring to the West End. This play was written just before he died in 2014 and is now getting it’s premiere posthumously at the Park Theatre.

We start in the present day. Barry has invited an Estate Agent to value his mother’s north London home while she’s out for the day. The scene ends with the Estate Agent providing another professional service altogether. Back in the sixties we meet Isabella and soon realise she is Barry’s mother and is indeed pregnant with Barry, though she harbours a secret from her husband Basil (who’s dead by the present day). They’re going out for dinner with Uncle Charles and his ‘friend’ Harry, who share another secret. In one of our other sixties scenes, six years apart, the same four are going out to dinner again. Here we meet the gardener, who appears to have been providing services to both Harry and Isabelle.

All this unfolds in 75 minutes, very slowly, often quirky, with some moments seeming Ordtonsesque and some with a touch of Alan Bennett. It really is rather odd, especially with a false ending followed by a puzzling one. The cast do their best with the material, but it isn’t really worthy of their combined talents. Given the quality of his other plays, this seemed unfinished to me and I wondered if he would have approved of its staging as it is. I’m afraid I felt it might have been better left unproduced lest it tarnish his reputation and memory.