CLIVE

Arcola Theatre

★★★

“the play, having built a world so rich with eccentricity, opts for a resolution that feels strangely cautious”

Thomas is working from home. He has been for years. But practitioners of this common condition will know immediately that something isn’t right about Thomas’s WFH set-up.

There is no pile of damp laundry, no mewling toddler pawing at his ankles wanting Bluey on the iPad, no mild burbling of Test Match Special in the background.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

In designer Mike Britton’s blistering set, Thomas’s home is antiseptic white. Clean-lined desk and chair. Laptop and phone. There’s a wall of white Ikea type cupboards upstage (which become a minor character in their own right thanks to Chris Davey’s clever lighting) and, finally and most impressively, the remarkable wipe-clean vinyl floor.

We meet fastidious Thomas with his mop shoes on, choo-chooing around the space, spritzing invisible germs with a bleach cleaner. Top half: shirt and tie for the Zoom; bottom half: boxers and bare feet.

Thomas tells us about life in his canal side apartment and, more particularly, we learn about his work in IT through video calls and emails, which he recounts to us with a bitchy relish. Actor Paul Keating does his best work of the hour as the office gossip, relaying who’s in and who’s out and the rise of the dreaded Naomi, the new COO.

He loved the office. He misses the sense of community. He was “the only person who reads the manuals” so he was on hand with the coffee maker and the faulty printer. He was a stalwart of cake-based gatherings and bantz.

Award-winning playwright Michael Wynne has a pitch-perfect ear for the soulless, jollying-along jargon of the modern hybrid office – “you’re on mute” – and later, when things turn dark, how this hollow dialect becomes the banal language of corporate oppression and bullying.

Because Naomi has Thomas in his sights. Oh yes, Thomas is next for the cull. There are meetings with the “Head of People”, bogus allegations of incompetence and his sociability is weaponised as inappropriate.

Thomas is defined by his job, so without it his sequestered life collapses into drift and disorientation. He loses perspective…

And here, sadly, is where director Lucy Bailey’s vivid and sharply designed production begins to falter.

Perhaps the surreal brilliance of Severance or Brazil hovers overhead and infects our expectations – because by now, with the eye-scorching whiteness of the set, the emptiness of corporate speech, and the quirks of isolated Thomas, we’re primed for something stranger.

But the play, having built a world so rich with eccentricity, opts for a resolution that feels strangely cautious. Thomas’s descent gestures toward a dramatic rupture but lands on something more recognisable – a soft undoing, wrapped in quotidian trauma.

Take, for example, Clive the four-foot cactus, headliner, and a prop of prickly promise. It remains just that – static and symbolic, never quite earning the weight the play seems to assign it. We keep waiting for the twist, the outlandish transformation. It never comes. It is briefly a metaphor – life is spiky, brush it the wrong way and it wounds – but then it retreats into anonymity.

None of this reflects on Keating’s personable, warm-hearted performance. He is a winning presence, never better than when re-arranging his baked beans “labels out”. The production is a short, witty takedown of WFH signifiers. It just runs out of invention 20 minutes too soon.

CLIVE

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed on 1st August 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Ikin Yum

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE RECKONING | ★★★★ | June 2025

IN OTHER WORDS | ★★★★ | May 2025

HEISENBERG | ★★★ | April 2025

CRY-BABY, THE MUSICAL | ★★★★★ | March 2025

THE DOUBLE ACT | ★★★★★ | January 2025

TARANTULA | ★★★★ | January 2025

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS | ★★★★ | December 2024

DISTANT MEMORIES OF THE NEAR FUTURE | ★★★ | November 2024

THE BAND BACK TOGETHER | ★★★★ | September 2024

MR PUNCH AT THE OPERA | ★★★ | August 2024

CLIVE

★★★★

“The writing is timeless and the acting faultless”

When “My Night With Reg” premiered at the Royal Court in 1994, Kevin Elyot’s depiction of the ups and downs of a circle of gay friends was seen to be ground-breaking and dissenting. A smash hit, it was considered to be the first gay play in which being gay wasn’t an issue. To revive it today there is the risk of it passing by unnoticed. The novelty value is obviously going to be diluted, if not dissolved completely, awash in a scene where much of London’s theatreland is championing the gay community. Yet it is the beauty of Elyot’s writing: his wit, compassion and insight, that make the task much easier. The writing will stand up at any point in history. Like his first play, “Coming Clean”, which tackles similar issues but when AIDS was still just a rumour in Britain, it doesn’t wave any flags or thrust articles of faith into our hands. It is a play about friendships and about how to keep those friendships alive; about lying and cheating and the subsequent costs of deception. It is about how we hold onto each other amid the barrage of adversity that is thrown at us.

And that is what comes across in Matt Ryan’s revival at the Turbine Theatre. It doesn’t try to replicate the storm that swept it onto the stage nearly three decades ago. Instead, it relies on a company of exceptional actors knocking back wonderful moments of nostalgia with their whisky chasers. Each cast member savours the language, embellishing it with their body language, mannerisms and silences that flesh out their characters.

Guy (Paul Keating) is nervously welcoming his university pal John (Edward M Corrie) into his flat warming party. The awkwardness stems from the unspoken and unrequited love that Guy feels for John. From the off we relish the realism that Keating brings to the shy Guy, fawning and fumbling in the face of Corrie’s cool composure. There’s a crackle in the air that is soon blown away when Gerard McCarthy’s Daniel storms in, buzzing with irreverence. The dialogue is swift and seemingly inconsequential, yet it skilfully establishes the relationships and connections between the ensemble. In the background is Eric (James Bradwell), Guy’s young decorator; initially an outsider but who very quickly wrangles a place centre stage. Alan Turkington and Stephen K Amos join the party as the bickering odd couple Bernie and Benny.

Never seen, but always present is the eponymous Reg. Reg is the one who binds them and can potentially drive them apart. It is no spoiler to reveal that each character onstage has had their ‘night with Reg’ at some point or other. It is the aftermath, the secrets and duplicity, the heartache, sorrow and dangers they each face after Reg has died that are the revelations in this skilfully constructed production. Lee Newby’s design, with its scattering of vinyl records and house plants, wonderfully mirrors the play’s mix of nostalgia and concurrence; concord and discord. The big picture is in the detail. And likewise, the big moments are found in the small gestures.

It seems irrelevant to harp on about the relevance of “My Night With Reg”. The writing is timeless and the acting faultless. The themes are shadowed by death, loss, grief, fear and sorrow but the strength of the personalities, not just of the characters but of the actors themselves, light up the darkest corners of the space, revealing the untidy dust balls of hope and optimism and the need to hang on to the delicacy of friendship that we can all relate to. AIDS is another central character, but the fact that it is never mentioned in the script, without diminishing its pertinence, enhances the play’s longevity and universality. And this heartfelt homage to Elyot will ensure the continued success and interest in his work.

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Mark Senior

Tag Archives: Paul Keating

CLIVE

★★★

Arcola Theatre

CLIVE

Arcola Theatre

★★★

“the play, having built a world so rich with eccentricity, opts for a resolution that feels strangely cautious”