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The Pride

Published Tuesday 2 December 2008 at 12:00 by Aleks Sierz

Does your sexuality determine your identity? Alexi Kaye Campbell’s debut looks at two love triangles, involving two gay men and a straight woman, in scenes that are 50 years apart but speak to each other with an evocative emotional resonance.

In 1958, estate agent Philip and ex-actress Sylvia are married, but she suspects that her husband is not all he seems, especially when she introduces him to a homosexual writer, Oliver.

In 2008, Philip is walking out on his lover Oliver, who can’t break his habit of having sex with total strangers. Oliver turns to Sylvia for solace, a straight friend of his, whose own lover, Mario, remains unseen. In both of these eras, the longing for love is equated with a search for self knowledge, and the loneliness of the human condition is powerfully suggested.

But although The Pride is full of ideas, Campbell’s writing lacks individuality, and his dialogue is not always convincing, especially in the stilted fifties scenes. And, despite its gestures towards liberal politics, the play’s images of gay life are oddly old-fashioned - here the gay characters are suffering, repressed and miserable. Still, the emotional desperation of the characters is strong enough to pull you through the story.

What saves the play are its flashes of humour and its elements of fantasy, with spooky presences beautifully rendered in director Jamie Lloyd’s careful production. The cast - Bertie Carvel (Oliver), JJ Feild (Philip) and Lyndsey Marshal (Sylvia) - are better in the zesty contemporary scenes than in the clipped and taut fifties world, while designer Soutra Gilmour’s dreamy set, with its clouded mirror reflecting and refracting images of the audience, brings the stage world into the real one.

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