Review | ‘Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club’ at the Above The Stag Theatre, London
The play by Jonathan Harvey follows two brothers both looking for love
By Steve Brown
In the two years following the success of iconic (gay) play Beautiful Thing, Jonathan Harvey wrote three plays, including this one, in 1995, being staged as part of a retrospective season of the beloved playwrights work.
Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club is set in a flat where two brothers live together, one gay one straight, and a handful of other characters, either friends or neighbours from the block, are all looking for love – and are all having trouble finding or keeping it.
Shaun, the heterosexual brother is pining for his girlfriend who is away on holiday, while his gay brother Marti seems to revel in his independent life.
He begins as a comedy figure, always ready with a quip and quick witted put down, but reveals himself to be a damaged gay man wounded by his experiences of growing up gay.
His straight hairdresser brother has not always been as supportive as he seems to be now and Marti, underneath the bravado, believes he is unloveable and spends his evenings having no strings group sex in toilets because that’s all he thinks he deserves.
There’s comic relief from the two female characters, both lost souls in their own ways, and the music from the nineties really brings back memories of a strange time in our history.
It’s a reminder of how we navigated through the abject horror of the eighties towards something new and brighter that emerged from the end of the nineties, coinciding with the election of a government that would give us our rights and set off wider social change.
Though the cast feel a bit young to be portraying characters in their mid thirties they provide plenty of energy that brings Harvey’s sweet and sad script to life, reminding us yet again what a treasure to the LGBT community he is.
Rating: 4*
Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club plays at Above The Stage Theatre, Vauxhall until November 18.
Words: Matthew Todd. Images by PBGstudios.