By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? *****

WHEN? Friday 24 October, opens 29 October and runs through 29 November 2025 RUNTIME: 160 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Jasper Talbot as Nick Guest snorts a line of cocaine in the toilet at a party and then offers to dance with prime minister Margaret Thatcher to Don’t Leave Me This Way by The Communards.

• Read on for reasons including how this is a time capsule where deception is everything and little is as it seems

You join us between 1983 and 1987 where Nick (pictured above right) is staying in London with the family of a university friend he is crushing on with a Conservative MP at its head and a daughter he looks out for who is self harming at its heart.

He meets the charismatic Leo (pictured above left), played vividly by Alistair Nwachukwu, who physically embodies the titular line of beauty and is in many ways everything Guest is not – politically, professionally, socially and in terms of life experience.

Some of the play’s most moving moments contrast the closeness of Leo’s family – the religion and working class belief in Thatcher as a force for good of his mother played tartly by the superb Doreene Blackstock and the later kindness in despair shown by his sister Rosemary an outstanding Francesca Amewudah-Rivers (Romeo And Juliet, Duke Of York’s Theatre).

But life is cruel and offers many sliding doors moments and Guest is easily seduced by ease, money and lines of a different sort in that toilet before dancing with the PM to a song that in 1986 had become a left wing anthem and a plea for tolerance during a time of HIV and AIDS.

Jack Holden (Cruise) adapts the Alan Hollinghurst novel we’ve loved directed by Michael Grandage (Orlando, Garrick Theatre) and we’re biased of course because the Booker Prize winner is 1 of our favourite reads but does it work on the stage?

Some of our favourite songs of the time – Cruel Summer by Bananarama, You Spin Me Round by Dead Or Alive, I Feel Love by Bronski Beat and Self Control by Laura Branigan – are used to conjure up the decadent cheap thrill of the period.

But it’s the grounding of the story in a family where Guest’s homosexuality is covertly encouraged and then pivotal to his downfall, where nothing is quite as it seems and the illusion of beauty that is never quite the love that he enjoyed with Leo that captivates.

Act Two opens abroad by a pool in the sun with Guest and his university rowing friend Toby Fedden, played by Leo Suter (pictured right above) in Speedos where it becomes immediately and awkwardly clear of the attributes our anti-hero is seeking in his friend.

Holden is a talented adapter and Act One closes on an emotional and chemical high that is unforgettable while, inevitably, things go down hill from there.

The Line Of Beauty was written by Alan Hollinghurst 21 years after the period it begins to look at and this production follows a similar length of time later and allows us to wonder how much – or how little – has changed since then?

This play is a darling time capsule and peek behind the curtain of a world where deception is (almost) everything and little is as it seems.

• Main pictures by Johan Persson via Facebook courtesy Almeida Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a Alan Hollinghurst show before or read a book of his and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this preview? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook