Coming Clean

by Kevin Elyot

seen at Trafalgar Studios Two on 24 January 2019

Kevin Elyot, perhaps most well-known for his landmark play My Night with Reg (1994), wrote Coming Clean in 1982 but this, a transfer from the King's Head Theatre, is the first time the play has been seen in the West End. Adam Spreadbury-Maher directs Lee Knight as Tony, Stanton Plummer-Cambridge as Greg, Tom Lambert as Robert and Elliot Hadley as William and Jurgen, and the production is designed by Amanda Mascarenhas.

Tony, an aspiring writer, and Greg, a published author and academic, live in a somewhat scruffy flat in Tufnell Park (north London), and William, a very camp friend, lives nearby. He is far more friendly with Tony than with Greg, who, when he appears, is clearly ill-at-ease with all the badinage William revels in. But the immediate source of interest is Tony's decision to hire an out-of-work actor named Robert to clean the flat, as he is sick of being the default housekeeper.

Needless to say, Robert turns out to be both attractive and naive; Elyot has great fun with scenes in which the characters talk at cross purposes and then realise that they have been misunderstood, while Robert's earnest pronouncements show a young man barely out of boyhood trying to find his way out of the crushing opinions of would-be mentors. But even he is aware of cross-currents of unease as he prepares the dinner for Greg and Tony's fifth anniversary together.

More seriously, the play examines the nature of commitment, always tricky in a hedonistic milieu, but not yet made crucial by the AIDS crisis (never referred to: the play is blissfully set before its impact) as it becomes clear that Tony and Greg have different attitudes to the arrangements they thought they understood and agreed to. There are some interesting themes which are developed more poignantly in the later play, where AIDS is a complicating and fateful factor; and interestingly, the use of a piece of classical music as a leitmotiv for precious personal encounters, and tell-tale betrayals, is used in both plays. In this production, the music between the scenes and prior to the start of both halves consists of well-worn 60s and 70s pop songs; the immediate shift to Barber's Adagio on a couple of occasions when a scene begins is perhaps slightly too jolting; on the other hand the songs are exactly what William and Tony would enjoy on their nights out cruising the club scene.

The cast performed very well, and I'm constantly amazed at the versatility of the tiny acting space in Trafalgar Studio's second auditorium - sometimes totally abstract (for example Boa or This is Living), and sometimes intensely realistic (such as a bland airport hotel room in A Guide for the Homesick or, here, a scruffy flat). In such a confined sitting room the tensions can run high, the good humour and camaraderie can flourish, and moments of tenderness or anguish can take place; but there is nowhere for the cast to hide with the front row having their feet on the worn carpet of the flat. (Presumably the original venue of the King's Head is just as restricted, if not more so). It's to the credit of all four that both the comedy and the drama came across at just the right pitch - the rolling eyes of Greg signalling his long held frustrations, the forced cheerfulness of William cracking just the once; Tony's confusion for the most part masked, and Robert's development from an naif to something of a tart signalled by just one presciently disquieting impish grin and click of the tongue.