BWW Reviews: HIS GREATNESS, Finborough Theatre, April 27 2012

It is 1980. Three men meet in a Vancouver: one, a playwright whose work was once great but is longer; another, his assistant, a vituperative Jeeves with an solution to every problem each wrapped in verbal barbed wire; and a rent boy whose life is drifting into a Midnight Cowboy style slide.

His Greatness (at Finborough Theatre until 19 May) traps these men in a hotel room, lights the blue touch paper and retires as the fireworks explode. The playwright (though not named) is Tennnessee Williams (Matthew Marsh) raging (and drinking) against the dying of the light, his creative and sexual powers waning and his behaviour increasingly infantile. The Assistant (Russell Bentley) copes and cajoles, partly for old times sake and partly because he knows his own life is now marching in step with the playwright's, for good or ill. The Young Man (Toby Wharton ) shows them a little of what they were, seduces them with his youthful good looks, but has the brains of neither and eventually realises as much. All three men were soon gone from this world, the playwright clutching a bottle and the younger men swept away by the tidal wave of bad blood that claimed so many men like them in the 80s.

Canadian writer, Daniel MacIvor, injects this bleak tale with plenty of wit and plenty of reflection on the impact of age on creativity, reflection on the dependency of men on each other and reflection on the deceitful temptation of physical beauty. The three actors circle each other with the necessary combination of lust and menace, with Toby Wharton bringing depth to a character who could easily be a superficial beefcake in the hands of a less skilled performer.

Staged in a theatre not much bigger than a hotel room, His Greatness, is a piece that provokes a few laughs and plenty of thoughts. It doesn't make you rush out and read some of Tennessee Williams' huge body of work (that is not its intention) though it does make you look at your date of birth and consider what one might do as it recedes, ever more quickly, into the past.

 

 

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