30 October 2025
Jack Holden is too young (born in 1990) to have lived through the 1980s and have been personally aware of the rise of Thatcherism and the terrible impact of AIDS on the gay community. But just as fellow rising star playwright James Graham (born in 1982) wrote thrillingly about the last gasps of the Labour government in 1979 in his debut play, the Olivier-nominated This House, Holden has become something of a go-to expert on the 80s. He set his Olivier nominated unforgettable debut play CRUISE in that decade and he now delivers a truly wonderful pitch perfect adaptation of Alan Holinghurst’s epic state of the nation Booker Prize winning novel set in the very same era.
Holden has completely smashed his task out of the park, editing Hollinghurst’s 400-page period odyssey into a gripping two-and-a-half hours of theatre that fairly flies along and thrills to the core. It is a fantastic piece of storytelling and a rollercoaster evening of great acting, brilliantly directed by Michael Grandage, making his first return to the Almeida theatre in over a decade.
Set in London in the summer of 1983, directionless but fearless gay student Nick Guest becomes a long term lodger in the Notting Hill home of his university friend Toby, where he finds himself living with Toby’s father Gerald, a newly elected Tory MP, his wife Rachel, and babysitting their troubled, forthright daughter Cat – “Are you a poof? I love poofs!” – who has an obsession with knives and cutting herself. On the surface they all get brush along together but that won‘t last long… He’s soon shagging black council worker Leo Charles over a steaming compost heap in the communal gardens, and then his first line of cocaine leads to a globe-trotting co-dependent relationship with closeted Wani Ouradi, the son of a rich Lebanese businessman.
Nick is swept up in a world of money, power and privilege, his love of beauty and refinement blinding him to the family’s moral ugliness. It’s a world that promises everything – and exacts a terrible personal cost. As he pursues beauty in all its forms, Nick soon finds himself caught between the freedoms of desire and the rigid boundaries of class, sexuality and public image in a rapidly changing Britain.
A top drawer cast (casting by Sophie Holland) is led by Jasper Talbot, who made an astonishing debut as a swaggering Mick Jagger in Redlands at Chichester Festival Theatre He is on fire as the central character Nick, a gay aesthete adrift in a homophobic world. He is a star of the future – and in the same vein as Ben Wishaw and Andrew Scott I’m excited to see whatever he does next.
There are also excellent performances from Charles Edwards, smoothly assured as the MP who on the surface is a devoted family man but who’s actually shagging his private secretary, and Leo Suter striking as his son Toby. Ellie Bamber, who began her stage career at 13, when she was directed by Trevor Nunn in Aspects of Love and who is currently in cinemas playing Kate Moss in the movie biopic Moss & Freud, really shines as troubled daughter Cat. But to be frank there’s not a weak link.
A shiny floor and the Almeida’s stunning vaulted and curved back brick wall are central to Christopher Oram’s set that uses minimal furniture to deliver a linear production that switches venues with ease, but he really comes into his own with the era’s excessive fashion disasters on show in the party scenes that feature a scene-stealing cameo appearance by Margaret Thatcher.
Peppered with nostalgia-stirring pop sounds from The Communards to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Line of Beauty is a bittersweet evocation of a momentous decade that continues to cast a long shadow today. It has humour and also plenty of tears. I bloody loved it. This is a must-see event. Sold out at the Almeida a West End transfer surely must be on the cards.
