TheatreReviewTheatre Royal, Windsor
Ian McKellen and Roger Allam star in a rambling but unabashed depiction of desire after middle-age
Walking their dogs on Hampstead Heath, the widowed Frank (Roger Allam) and the blithely single Percy (Ian McKellen) hit it off, their pattering small-talk about hip ops and hearing aids getting bigger as they share confidences as well as umbrellas. That’s essentially all there is to Ben Weatherill’s two-hander, Frank and Percy, an undemanding, over-extended meander through a friendship that blossoms into romance.
Each man has something to teach the other. Frank, with his unquestioning liberalism and his dubious statistics gleaned from Facebook, is shown to be more complacent than the proudly XR-loathing Percy. At least the older man has nuance and research on his side, as well as a lifetime’s wisdom from the LGBTQ+ struggle, though he is also prone to shutting down. From Frank, he learns openness while their pets supply a soundtrack of offstage barks and yelps.
Allam, previously seen with McKellen under Sean Mathias’s direction in Aladdin, is sweetly bumbling, though given what we discover about Frank’s past, he rather overdoes his initial surprise about Percy’s sexuality. McKellen is better when flashing his claws than in, say, a monologue about watermelons that recalls Peter Cook’s EL Wisty. A high point is his on-stage, pre-Pride costume change performed with a flourish.
Mathias prods the actors vaguely this way and that on Morgan Large’s ridged wooden set, which rotates so that its steps and levels can double as the seats in a restaurant where the men bicker over Percy’s contentious views. The backdrop is dominated by images of the verdant heath until Nick Richings’ lighting transforms the space into a karaoke bar or a hospital waiting room.
Not all Weatherill’s attempts at topicality pan out: an entire scene is lost to a dead-end digression on no-platforming. But there are instances of genuine pathos, such as when each man reflects on how long he was married: “Too long,” for Percy; “Not long enough,” for Frank. And it’s heartening to find an unembarrassed depiction of desire after middle-age. Even as mortality and ideological differences impinge on the men’s happiness, however, the play doesn’t build, leaving it with the cosy air of a hug-a-gay event for anyone still on the fence.
At Theatre Royal, Windsor, until 22 July
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