A Guide for the Homesick

by Ken Urban

seen at Trafalgar Studios Two on 22 November 2018

Jonathan O'Boyle directs Douglas Booth as Jeremy and Clifford Samuel as Teddy in this intense play about the encounter between two young men in a bland Amsterdam hotel room (or more likely, a hotel near Schiphol Airport, as there is often the sound of planes outside; set design by Jason Denvir).

Jeremy is returning to the US after a stint with Médecins sans Frontières in Uganda; as Teddy brings him to his hotel room he claims to have missed his connecting flight and to have no room booked for himself. Teddy has evidently has the room for a few days, and has been sharing it with a now vanished friend on a sort of private stag trip before the friend's wedding.

Both men are gay, though Jeremy finds it impossible to say so whereas Teddy is open about it. More to the point, both have had uncomfortable experiences in their immediate past; the conceit of the play is that these matters might plausibly be unburdened by each of them to a perfect stranger, with perhaps unintended consequences in terms of an uneasy but undeniable growth of intimacy. The by-line of the play is 'Can you confess your greatest fear to a stranger?' but in this case the more pertinent question is 'Can you confess your greatest shame to a stranger?' since the real point is that both men are reeling from the consequences of their actions or inactions in relation to someone precious; the stories they are barely able to confess show how far they have fallen below their own standards of right behaviour, thus tarnishing their self-images.

It's a demanding play, even at 90 minutes, for the two young actors, requiring a huge emotional rage, and an assured technical ability to switch between the present moment and the reminiscence of the events which have led each of them to the hotel room and their current crisis of confidence and self-belief. Clifford Samuel portrays the easy confidence of a successful young businessman and its brittle nature, while also inhabiting the character of one of Jeremy's friends in Uganda with great sensitivity. Jeremy, on the other hand has the nervy uncertainty of a young man unwilling, if not actually unable, to face up to his own sexuality, and yet he is as full of idealism and optimism as of self-doubt. In an enormously sympathetic portrayal of a character who could otherwise be intensely irritating; Douglas Booth reveals Jeremy's inner disquiet by means of nervous glances around the room, the awkward hesitancy which prompts him at one moment to leave and at another to stay perfectly reflecting the dilemma of a young man walking on eggshells to wall his private self off from the public world. In complete contrast, his embodiment of Teddy's friend, increasingly manic in Teddy's recollection, is equally convincing.

It's a tour de force for the two young actors, and a fascinating picture of the collision between the  idealism of the privileged young and the unpleasant power of the wider world to confront and batter those who have the best intentions but not always the strength and experience to put them into action.