Review: Coming Clean (King's Head Theatre)

Just as the Park Theatre is giving us the premiere of the late Kevin Elyot's final play Twilight Song, the King's Head, as part of its ongoing Queer Season, presents the first London revival of his debut piece, originally seen in 1982 at the Bush.

Coming Clean very much feels like the archetypal 'promising first play' – it covers some of the same ground as his masterpiece My Night With Reg, but lacks the texture and maturity of that work. It's also incredibly dated – although that is not in this instance a negative criticism: it is fascinating to see an honest and accurate depiction of gay lives before the blight of HIV and AIDS, plus it's amusing to hear characters talk about Tufnell Park – of all places – as an area of North London where you'd vaguely be considered to be slumming it if you had to live there, as is the complaint about a pint of beer in a club costing a wallet-buckling 90p!

Adam Spreadbury-Maher's enjoyable, brisk production revels in period detail. Amanda Mascarenhas' vividly dingy set – the cramped, messy Kentish Town flat of lovers Tony and Greg – comes complete with wall mounted dial phone, old school record player (and vinyl records), 1980s West End theatre posters (anyone remember Amadeus at Her Majesty's before Phantom moved in apparently forever?), grotty wallpaper and beaded curtain. It's simultaneously homely and vaguely disgusting.

The play gets off to a cracking start as promiscuous, apparently carefree William (Elliot Hadley, utterly engaging) recounts his previous night's sexual escapades to more cautious, watchful Tony (Lee Knight, initially pushing a bit hard but eventually settling into a performance of genuine pain, pathos and charm). The dialogue is explicit, naturalistic and very, very funny. Capturing the way gay men of a certain age talk to each other – complete with inbuilt defence mechanisms, sudden moments of vulnerability and self deprecation, plus the occasional casual bitchery – is something Elyot excelled at, and Coming Clean foreshadows his later, more accomplished work in this. The friends' ribald revelations are disturbed by the arrival of the handsome young unemployed actor Tony has engaged to do the housework ("No wonder he's a cleaner. I've yet to meet an actor who actually acts!" William cattily observes). Watching Hadley's lascivious manoeuvring of Tom Lambert's fresh-faced Robert from one end of the sofa to another is a wonderful bit of comic business.

The play also introduces us to Greg, Tony's successful New Yorker boyfriend, and the idea that he would deign to live in a flat as rundown as this one is the first of several unfortunate strains to credibility that are built into this watchable but flawed piece. Without giving away too much, what becomes clear as the play unfolds is that Tony yearns for a monogamous union while Greg wants anything but. Their pain-inflected exchanges on this theme have the tang of authenticity, representing an issue that still affects some long term gay unions to this day, and once again demonstrate Elyot's unerring knack for capturing the way people really do talk to each other.

Less successful are some of the other exchanges where characters sit around abstractedly describing their relationships, as though taking part in a panel discussion on gay lifestyles, while worse still is the awkward scene where Greg describes the places he will take Tony to during their first NYC trip together, which sounds as though it is lifted wholesale from a guidebook to New York. Jason Nwoga's flat, unconvincing delivery of the lines doesn't help either.

Hadley's William is a terrific creation: unabashedly outrageous in his descriptions of his numerous sexual conquests, he is also unexpectedly touching in his support for his angst-ridden chum, and his fundamental – if possibly misplaced – belief in the strength of Tony and Greg's relationship. He is a constant delight, and his scenes with the likeable Knight are the undoubted highlights of the staging. Unfortunately, Nwoga's Greg and Lambert's surprisingly steely younger man come across as unremittingly wooden by comparison.

I assume that it is budgetary constraints that preclude the production from hiring a fifth actor to portray the German rough trade that Tony picks up at the end of the story, so instead we get the game Hadley in some dodgy leathers and sporting an even dodgier Teutonic accent. It's all a bit toe-curling and especially unfortunate given the fine work this same actor has achieved earlier in the evening, though it still succeeds in forcing home Elyot's point that everybody needs affection and human contact, and that love gone wrong can cause a hell of a lot of damage.

Coming Clean runs at the King's Head Theatre until 26 August.

Read our interview with Adam Spreadbury-Maher