Writer: Michael Batten
Director: Alan Souza
Remembrance Monday is the best new gay play in years. Tracing the relationship between ex-dancer Julius and portrait painter Connor, its examination of open relationships and childhood trauma may sound familiar. However, playwright Michael Batten has recast these common tropes and fashioned a razor-sharp thriller out of them.
Julius is in the bath watching Connor get ready for a night out. They joke about Julius’s nan who had a pithy saying for everything. She believed that going out too much could bring on TB. Connor goes to his friend’s birthday party nevertheless.
Despite the gentle early scenes and light-hearted banter, it quickly becomes clear that there’s something more sinister within their relationship. For a start, there’s Sarah Weltman’s ominous sound design that rumbles and clicks with unresolved tension. Jack Weir’s excellent lighting design at some moments clothes the bathroom in electric light while at others finds the two actors in spotlights, throwing the rest of the stage into darkness. With the audience on all sides, Andrew Exeter’s set is elegant and sexy. A freestanding bathtub sits atop a polished black floor, but while Connor is able to leave the bathroom, Julius remains trapped within it.
As the play begins to spiral out of chronological order, we begin to suspect that Connor is gaslighting Julius in some way. He ignores Julius’s pleas to stay at home, It’s a Monday after all and Soho will be full of students looking for cheap drinks. When the scene is played again, Julius is more desperate, a little ugly in his neediness and Connor is more dismissive.
We go back to their first date where, perhaps, Connor is a tad too confident as he swiftly discovers Julius’s vulnerabilities, giving him a nickname that Julius has already said was used as a slur against him. Their romance is sparklingly written and, in the main, we cheer them on, but there’s an undercurrent of menace in their exchanges.
Nick Hayes is outstanding as Julius, flamboyant yet troubled stretching out his body in fragments of dance moves that he cannot fully remember as he waits alone in the bathroom. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to recognise his own image in the mirror; Hayes’s study of a man on the brink is stunning and hypnotic. Matthew Stathers is just as good as the increasingly distant Connor, who brings up the notion of opening up the relationship after they’ve been together for some years. Julius agrees under duress.
Alan Souza directs with verve where every second counts. Pitched midway between noir and horror, some well-timed blackouts throb with uneasiness. Only at the end, when the play’s structure is needlessly explained to us, does Remembrance Monday lose its vice-like grip. But even here, Souza’s direction is taut and imaginative, ensuring that the story retains its nerve-racking pace. The final image where sound, lights, story and performance feverishly come together is unforgettable.
Runs until 1 June 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Razor-sharp
