Review: Beautiful Thing @ Royal Exchange, Manchester (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Review: Beautiful Thing @ Royal Exchange, Manchester

2:23pm Friday 18th November 2011 in Stage: Show reviews By Rick Bowen

HOW refreshing it is to watch a play that portrays gay people as real people and not just camped up figures of fun.

Another beauty of Beautiful Thing is that the play, currently playng at the Royal Exchange Theatre, makes the wider community question its preconceptions without the writer whipping out his soapbox.

Beautiful Thing is laugh out loud funny, sensitive and thought provoking, with the magical music of The Mamas and The Papas providing the perfect soundtrack to a love story with a difference.

Jamie and Ste live on a tough council estate, the sort of place where many men communicate with their fists - Ste is his father’s official punchbag - and people point at cats with tails.

The odds against their relationship surviving are hopelessly stacked against them but while Jamie looks like he couldn’t knock the skin of a rice pudding, he’s determined to keep his man.

The characters in Jonathan Harvey’s superb play are very real and in Jamie and Ste he reminds us of the awkwardness of adolescence, when the world seemed a crazy place and grown ups were from another planet.

A great play deserves great performances and director Sarah Frankcom has certainly nurtured memorable ones in Matthew Tennyson and Tommy Vine as Jamie and Ste, Claire-Louise Caldwell as Jamie’s mum Sandra and Alex Price as her hippy like boyfriend, Tony.

My favourite character is the Mama Cass obsessed Leah, played to perfection by Tara Hodge.

Beautiful Thing - a beautifully observed piece of theatre.

* Until December 3. The box office is on 0161 833 9833.