Variations or Exit Music

Justin Nott’s play unfolds as a pain-filled dreamscape.  Past and present slide into each other.  Memories force themselves into other memories.  Lovers from the past are present – and they speak.  Lovers from the future narrate.  The play is autobiographical and about ‘the ending of three big loves’ – that is, it is an attempt to understand those endings.  It is the kind of play that could so easily be maudlin or sentimental: it is neither.  It rises above all that by letting us in to these experiences so that we – queer or straight - can feel them and recognise ourselves.  Nott says his play is about queer love, but as he also says, ‘it’s a familiar story told in a unique way.’  His alter-ego ‘Justin’ tortures and humiliates himself as he struggles as much with himself as with the lovers that have left him, are leaving him, will leave him.

On a London morning, Justin (Matthew Connell) tries to reach lover Sam (Yuchen Wang), but Sam is closed off, if matter of fact; he has to go to work.  But Justin works at night, comes home at all hours, drunk – or high.  We can see it’s over: love has worn down to disappointing routine.  Nick (Joss McClelland), a former lover (and so different to Sam) is present – or rather a presence, ever present in memory, another failure – to comment, to mock…  Jason (Lachlan Martin) another presence, perhaps a future lover, narrates…

Later, it really is over: Sam is leaving for good.  With a gulf fixed now between them, Justin is abject, begging Sam to stay… It is mortifying for him and for us to watch Justin degrade himself as he desperately offers to do or be whatever Sam wants.  Sam is blank, expressionless, giving nothing back; all he says is, ‘I want you to stop.’

So, what went wrong?  Why did things come to an end – with Nick, with Sam, and likely with a future lover?  There is no definite answer, no trigger, no definite turning point.  But we can see in the searing honesty of the writing and in Matthew Connell’s naked performance (at times almost difficult to witness), that maybe Justin was (and is) too self-absorbed, too selfish, immature, demanding, needy…  But just the same, we feel the despair, the sick emptiness, and the loneliness of being left and alone.

Justin’s dreams and memories play out within Eloise Kent’s set, so intuitively correct for this text: a raised all white blank box with a ceiling, a single bed, a bedside table.  Like a trap, like a cell.  The ceiling is a constraint on Clare Springett’s lighting, but she overcomes that: her lighting is (as always) imaginative, reinforcing and enhancing text and performance.  The characters can be highlighted, isolated or flat, like ghosts.

And those performances are nicely judged: all four men are very different, clearly delineated characters.  Justin can be on the edge of panic, pathetic.  Nick is cool, knowing, ironic, amused.  Sam is stony but he’s the good guy; he’s closed down because he just can’t take it anymore.  And Jason is wistful, forgiving but clear-eyed.  

In this fevered dream, the dialogue is stylised but clear – and all the more searing when it descends to moments of clear brutal naturalism.  This mode of writing and performance is risky; it can so easily sound phoney, trying and failing to reach the heights – or the depths.  Nott’s writing avoids those traps and his cast go with it.  There are repetitions and at times a sense of straining for effect, but we are held for the full ninety minutes.  At the end, there is a coup de theatre, that gives us a sense of release and of hope – but we know what we know, and we can’t help fearing for Justin’s future.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Darren Gill