By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: **** RUNTIME: 120 minutes (including 20-minute interval)

WHEN?: Saturday 7 October (matinee), runs until 7 October 2023 Then Leeds Playhouse 18-28 October Tickets & HOME Manchester 31 October – 11 November 2023 Tickets

We took our 1st tentative steps out of the closet in Devon in 1993, the year that this Jonathan Harvey (Mother Goose, Duke Of York’s Theatre) play premiered at London’s Bush Theatre starring Jonny Lee Miller.

• Read on for reasons including why Leeds and Manchester have a beautiful treat in store

We’ve never actually seen the play until today but we caught the film in 1996 when we were living in Portsmouth where we would eventually meet our husband-to-be and move to Blackheath near Greenwich where some of the action in Beautiful Thing takes place.

It’s the story of 15-year-olds Ste, a sporty and popular Raphael Akuwudike bullied by his father, and Jamie, Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran who was a late addition to the cast as an introverted PE-dodger bullied by his classmates, almost 30 years before Heartstopper told a similar story from a middle-class perspective.

Jamie’s mother Sandra, here played by a suitably brassy Shvorne Marks, is currently going out with middle class hippie Tony, given life by Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge, and has aspirations to run her own pub.

1 of the highlights of the film was Tameka Empson as Jamie’s next door neighbour Leah who has been expelled from school and loves Mama Cass.

1 of the joys of Harvey’s writing is that he has an ear for everyday naturalistic language (‘Kids are c*nts’, observes a character at 1 point) that would stand him in good stead as he went onto write comedy Gimme, Gimme, Gimme for Kathy Burke (Lady Windermere’s Fan, Vaudeville Theatre) and Beautiful People for Samuel Barnett (Allelujah!, Bridge Theatre)and Strictly’s Layton Williams (The Understudy).

Asked why she prefers Cass to the more 90s-friendly Madonna, Leah answers: ‘She’s a slag.’

In fact 1 of the plays we 1st saw in London was Harvey’s Out In The Open at Hampstead Theatre directed by Burke. He would go on to write favourites of ours including musical Closer To Heaven and MUSIK with Pet Shop Boys.

This 30th anniversary production keeps its setting and writing but flips the cast from predominantly-white to black which shows the universality of the work.

We see it as London is enjoying its own late indian summer which accentuates the luxuriant restlessness of the action and reminds us of the importance, as Cass might have put it, of making your own kind of music and singing your own special song.

Like Heartstopper, it stands out because of its youthful enthusiasm – here for products like peppermint foot lotion – and we can say for certain that the theatres in Leeds and Manchester which next host this production have a beautiful treat in store.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Theatre Royal Stratford East Tickets
• Have you ever seen a Jonathan Harvey play or TV show before? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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