WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Trafalgar Studios 2
WHEN: 8/4 (matinee), runs to 29/4
Do you remember the first time?
- Read on for reasons including why you should see this one-act play
Author Bill Rosenfield’s coming of age play transfers to the West End after a run at north London’s Hope Theatre in 2015.
Robert (Jay Taylor, left above, from ITV’s Prime Suspect ’73) is a British actor living in a theatrical hotel, address 46 Beacon, in 70s Boston when he meets usher Alan (Oliver Coppersmith, right above, from the BBC’s Grandma’s House and Dickensian).
Robert is older than Alan and senses a mutual attraction between them, invites him back to his hotel and we spend 83 minutes in their company in that room during this memory play as we work out what their relationship might become.
Coopersmith is believable as the impressionable teenager who sense an otherness about himself but isn’t quite sure exactly what that means.
Taylor has a tougher job to persuade us that his older actor is as interested in Alan’s progression in life as his own gratification.
That he succeeds, lends weight to the idea that this play records a history of gay men recognising themselves in a younger generation and easing their passage into a world when their ‘family’ might be less familiar but more welcoming than they could ever imagine.
monstagigz 