Theatre
Fruit and nut
Mark Amory
Nuts (Whitehall) Coming Clean (Bush)
Nuts has had a triumphal progress. Starting on off-off-Broadway, it reached Broadway without alteration or re- casting, was a hit there and has now arrived in the West End via Southampton. The film, also written by Tom Topor, stars Jane Fonda, which is both the ultimate success and tough on Anne Twomey who has demonstrated how she too can shine as a bright-but-vulnerable heroine. The play seems a little too small for its boots, until you reflect that a likely formula for theatrical success is to take a familiar form and add challenging, modern ideas that are not too challenging or modern. Nuts is a traditional court-room drama, set in New York so the judge can say 'Objection over- ruled', just as he used to with Perry Mason on television. It is not, however, a criminal court but one in Bellevue Hospital and the decision is whether Claudia is fit to stand trial for manslaughter. She passionately wants to, otherwise she may be locked up for years without a chance to state her case.
`. . and another reason why you can't possibly call me boring is .. . '
The moment she arrives we can see thil, she is a bit odd; also my technical advi5" assures me that if she were made to We°, dressing-gown it would certainly not haveh; belt. She sits boot-faced through :1d". testimony of her parents, rarely going in I the inappropriate humour that we 119,d. been promised is one of her symptoms• i; act has much of the appeal of a favoun't radio programme of mine, So You Olt You've Got Problems, in which real peePj pour out their worries and grievances silt are told most convincingly that they ha h,' got it all in a muddle and are hating ree wrong people for the wrong reasons. As.' mother explains what a nice, lol middle-class family they used to be all, wonders how things can have gone ,• wrong, we have the pleasure of understanu ing more than she does. This is not ruin by being explained to us. The step-father; the same but much broader, and he !in realise that having offered Claudia Slut' in unlock her bathroom door when she Wasod, her early teens is not going to look ge b, Finally we reach Claudia's big sPeeche which implies feminist ideas, as when so tells us how her husband felt law school vii.e too difficult for her and we can see that sPoi is sharp as a needle, but again it is ,r1.0e spelled out. 'I am responsible' is the ais, towards which she builds and clearlY sheeely now, much saner than when she was,rriee's Is listening, but will the judge agree? MI the full of negative virtues. It avoids cliche, 'we characters are never quite stereotYPes'ten. are not treated like idiots, it is never Pre. drop
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tious. This adds up to a pleasant, abso .,0,, evening and if I cannot urge you to dr r everything and go, it is better than the,f;1111.itis will be with all its lurid flashbacks. An '. , a chance to see Anne Twomey who is 8°111°
to be a star. o ia
Coming Clean by Kevin Elyot is alsO f the tradition, though a newer one, that .,,e(I gay play. Ten years ago when there seeu'llt to be one in every lunchtime cellar or Pod backroom I used the word Veer,' 01e, 'gay' still does not come naturally We At but one does not want to give offeae:all, first gay plays were content to exist Wider then there were attempts to go a hit with and deeper than the casual encounter• se a. no evidence except special pleading and that timentality, I almost always suspecte ago they were autobiographical. Longer, ,,,y still, I received one of the shocks 0.1;;;S literary life when I opened James Baletw 0 Giovanni's Room and found that it begun something like: 'I looked in the blue eyes set wide beneath Yelic,g uP stared back.' Wha did he think he w`, 70;r1 to? The test was always to substitut_;:ec, I with such tive. the main character to restore Pet 'el tive. Coming Clean you then do. opy banal material that only an exceptly_ the world so quietly.
confident writer would dare offer It tv
a sne. Tony has been living with Greg, .,eais. ntirror.cuiris cessful novelist and lecturer, for five 7,, 0- Tony's friend William, unattached, t_edusget. citing stories of cruising, scoring aon,.worg ting beaten up. When a dishy out I actor comes to clean the flat, it is clear that he will succumb to one of them. One advan- tage of the gay play is that any answer is credible, another is that there is still some curiosity as to how such lives are arranged whether , "nether monogamy, fidelity or honesty are trlY more or less usual and difficult there. tileversing the sex of Tony is unfair here as pileth!Play is an examination of precisely these i111;gs which add up to the question: 'Is tb411,g love possible for gays, here, now?' If would enaracters were heterosexual, the theme are evaporate. As so often, the jokes funnier than the sentiment is touching, pillet Perverted lust and betrayal make as ,, asant an evening as madness and liarislaughter. lso, lo;Il: kissingwasmy distaste for given a further complica- „n, i ' I used to worry about an actor it is 11 probably safer as well as kinder to refer kisass One of our bachelor knights' having to 40,,Wornn evening after evening on stage. c„„'" d0 these actors feel about being twouPed on sofas and nibbling bare. bot- Ins? Are they all gay or is it taken in the ,strid e, as it were, of any professional? lhese thoughts distract.
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