ajhlovestheatre

THE LINE OF BEAUTY 

based on the novel by Alan Hollinghurst

adapted by Jack Holden 

directed by Michael Grandage 

Almeida Theatre, London – until 29 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/the-line-of-beauty/

It’s been a while since I’ve seen something that so clearly has ‘West End transfer’ written all over it. Michael Grandage’s production of this adaptation by Jack (Cruise, Kenrex) Holden of the bestselling novel by Alan Hollinghurst (which already had an acclaimed BBC TV version back in 2006) sold out at the Almeida almost as soon as tickets became available. Admirers of Grandage’s spare yet glossy house style are unlikely to be disappointed, but fans of the book might be dismayed at the simplification of The Line of Beauty’s myriad complexities.

With Kenrex (transferring to The Other Palace at Christmas and under no account to be missed) and Cruise, Holden has proven himself a potent, highly original theatrical voice, but his work here feels more like that of a writer for hire. He’s provided a fleet, perhaps inevitably episodic, distillation of Hollinghurst’s novel, skittering between an ultra-privileged 1980s London with forays into its gay underbelly and rural, sun-drenched France. It covers all the plot points and principal characters, and is tremendously watchable, but doesn’t sear or devastate the way one might expect from a piece chronicling the fatal havoc AIDS wreaked on the penultimate decade of the twentieth century. 

It doesn’t help that the central figure Nick Guest, the middle class gay aesthete embroiled in the family life of upper crust Conservative MP Gerald Fedden and his wife Rachel having befriended their son Toby (Leo Suter) at Oxford University, is strangely unknowable on stage. Without the inner life a novel can afford, or the intensity of the screen which allowed us to experience Dan Stevens’ Nick at close quarters, there is a sort of blankness at the centre of the story. A lot of his actions, such as the dumping of Alistair Nwachukwu’s cockily charming working class Leo after a declaration of love, are unlikely to elicit much sympathy, and neither does his obsession with beauty – human and artistic – which is only expressed fitfully in the play. It’s not the fault of Jasper Talbot who gives a technically accomplished account of the role, mining it for as much empathy and humour as the script allows, but Nick remains out of reach and hard to like.

Certain scenes, such as Nick’s final, separate showdowns with Gerald and Rachel (Charles Edwards and Claudia Harrison respectively, both superlative) blaze into theatrical life, and there’s a wonderfully awkward comic sequence where Nick has dinner at home with Leo’s ultra-religious mother (Doreene Blackstock, delightful). A lot of the time though, the exchanges sound like prose from a book rather than legit dramatic dialogue, which occasionally leads to some rather stilted acting. 

There’s fabulous work though from Artie Froushan as the ridiculously wealthy, coke-snorting closet job who seduces Nick with his money and connections, and Hannah Morrish doubling as a comically inept budding actress and a disenchanted political secretary. Robert Portal’s boorish, insensitive, homophobic Badger, wildly rich from a career in asset stripping and a close family friend of the Feddens, is the epitome of clichéd Tory baddie, but is played to the hilt. Francesca Amewudah-Rivers brings a lovely presence to Leo’s all-seeing sister, and Ellie Bamber is appropriately volatile as the youngest and most unstable of the Fedden brood, who becomes Nick’s biggest ally.

The sense of gay men driven to furtiveness and extremes of bad behaviour by the lack of acceptance from the mainstream is a potent theme, but the characters are so unsympathetic that we find ourselves watching passively rather than becoming emotionally involved. Compared with, say, Mathew López’s epic The Inheritance, or Larry Kramer’s pivotal The Normal Heart, The Line Of Beauty seems a bit tepid, and watching wealthy people disporting in luxurious surroundings feels tone deaf in 2025, despite the erudition of the language and the slickness of Grandage’s staging, punctuated by invigorating blasts of 1980s pop bangers.

As if to point up the artificiality of it all, Christopher Oram’s set is dominated by a large, ornate white frame reminiscent both of a proscenium arch and the portico of the Kensington Palace Garden mansion in which much of the story takes place. The whole show looks great, Howard Hudson’s inventive lighting working wonders in transforming the space into the multiple locations. 

It’s a decent piece of entertainment which strikes an appropriate balance between the intellectual and the sensationalist, but it seldom cuts as deep as it should, coming across as an elegant potboiler with artistic pretensions, swirlingly staged. Undoubtedly a crowd pleaser and a big fat hit.