Review: FRANK AND PERCY, Theatre Royal Windsor

Two men, advancing in years, exercise their dogs on Hampstead Heath. They fall into easy conversation - one is a professor, the other a retired teacher - as men will if given something other than themselves to talk about. But, two different histories bubble to the surface, fortuitously just ready to intertwine, but it’s a tangled thread that is spun between them, one that we see fraying then fixing, then fraying again.

Sir Ian McKellen and (probably choosing not to be Sir) Roger Allam are Percy and Frank, the two doyens of English theatre entirely at ease with each other and on stage for a gruelling two hours plus. They bicker, they split up, they make up, they learn about themselves, facing uncomfortable truths and discovering new delights. Percy is headstrong and, as all men who claim to have thick skin reveal, highly sensitive to criticism; Frank is easygoing, a man who long denied a part of himself as much for its inconvenience as for any opprobrium it might have attracted.

There’s a pleasure to be had in watching two craftsmen go about their work, but Ben Weatherill’s script has none of the bite of 2019’s Jellyfish, a play that sparkled with new perspectives, bold challenges to normative behaviour and a heartfelt poignancy. These middle-class men have had their challenges in life - we get a little anecdote or two addressing the appalling treatment of gay men 50 years ago and AIDS too is acknowledged - but does it make them interesting enough? Plenty of people find love late in life, but to hang a two-man play on that and a tacked-on jibe or two at cancel culture, feels a little underpowered.

What emerges under Sean Mathias’s direction, is a play that has a few wistful moments, a few laughs and, perhaps, more meaning for an audience who have some experience of the specific trials and consolations the two men portray. Others will think of men and women they know who are a little like Percy or a little like Frank and find that they are rather more interesting people with whom to spend an evening. Theatre should surely illuminate and enhance real life rather than present it with the brightness and contrast turned down a little.  

For a play with dogs at its heart, it’s somewhat disappointing to report that it has rather more bark than bite.

Frank and Percy at Theatre Royal Windsor until 22 July

Photo Credit: Jack Merriman

       

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