The production is co-directed and co-produced by Green Carnation Company’s two artistic directors Dan Jarvis and Dan Ellis, while award-winning young Leeds-based designer George Johnson-Leigh will bring the play’s 1980s world to life with stunning neon visual effects and an elegant, deconstructed set design.

smartgiles I loved MY NIGHT WITH REG – faultless production of a modern classic. The cast are all wonderful. Will I like it? My Night With Reg, the Olivier and Evening Standard award-winning bittersweet comedy about a group of gay men coming to terms with AIDS written by ‘Birmingham boy’, the late Kevin Elyot, makes a long-awaited appearance at The Crescent. What gives this production a special twist, is that it is directed by Rod Natkiel who was a friend of Kevin Elyot, a fellow drama student and who acted with him. Set in 1985, My Night With Reg is a story of friendship amongst a group of gay men, during a scary time in history – the AIDS epidemic. It’s a story of unrequited love, promiscuity, and the disastrous effects of that time. Wow! I just saw this one-man musical, written and performed by Benjamin Scheuer, at the St James Studio last night and I cannot rave about it highly enough. Certain aspects of the play don’t work so well in Andrews’ modern setting, and the director’s choice to use the stage resolve incessantly adds little, but there’s no doubt that his interpretation has breathed new life into another classic.

The Lion

Set in Guy’s London flat, old friends and new gather to party through the night. This is the summer of 1985 and, for Guy and his circle, the world is about to change forever, thanks to the mounting AIDS crisis. All three scenes are set in the sitting room of Guy's London apartment: during Guy's flatwarming party (Scene 1); after Reg's funeral, some years later (Scene 2); and after Guy's funeral (Scene 3). To summarize, My Night With Reg is an enjoyable revival of Elyotand’s humorous exploration of the lives of Guy and his friends as they lived through the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Between silly arguments, unkempt promises and grave accusations, they find themselves confronted by larger questions about grief and mortality as they struggle to come to terms with the exceedingly ordinary deaths from an extraordinary disease.

Kevin Elyot’s writing is gorgeous – it’s witty, and it’s really human. This play explores how a group of close friends cope with loss and use their humour, warmth and their friendship to deal with that. That’s something anyone can relate to. Gillian Anderson as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic Streetcar Named Desire On the eve of their deployment to Vietnam, a group of young Marines have one last blow-out in San Francisco. Surprisingly, at least for me, the “dogfight” of the title does not refer specifically to their battlefield actions, but rather to a cruel ritual in which the men compete to bring the ugliest woman they can find as a date to a party. When the tragic and the inevitable happens, revelations come to light at the post-wake gathering, and Guy must juggle the chaos of unrequited love, betrayals of friendship sworn to secrecy, loneliness, relationship breakdowns and the cruelty of consequence. The play is centred around kinship and betrayal, community and deceit, love and loyalty. My Night With Reg traces the story, from the summer of 1985, of six gay men in London as their world begins to unravel because of the AIDS epidemic. Three of the characters were at university together twelve years previously and those characters and their memories are strongly based on people and life at Bristol university in Kevin Elyot’s and Rod Natkiel’s time there as Drama students.

My Night With Reg

Time progresses and there is another gathering in Guy’s flat. This time it is not so cheerful as Guy, Daniel, and John, together with long term partners Bernie (Alan Turkington) and Benny (Stephen K Amos) are together following a funeral, one of many the boys have attended. The mood is sombre, and everyone seems to have a secret to share with Guy, who just wants everyone to be fed, watered and get along. Dogfight – book by Peter Duchan, music and lyrics by Ben J Pasek and Justin Paul – is another UK premiere of another contemporary American musical, produced by dynamo Danielle Tarento, who had such a hit with the UK premiere of another contemporary musical, Titanic, in the same space last year. There are things that happen in the dark between a man and a woman that sort of make everything else seem unimportant. The play opens with the delightful Eric (Francis Quinn), our resident Brummie interior decorator, listening to The Police on his headphones and singing to himself, blissfully unaware of the tension in the room. Guy (Joe Palmer) is preparing to host a small gathering in his flat, when his old friend, and the man he has pined for since university, John (Oliver Jones) arrives. A heartfelt soul’ … playwright and screenwriter Kevin Elyot, who died last June. Photograph: public domain