It’s roughly ten minutes into this seemingly innocent two-hander about two old blokes who befriend each other on their daily dog walk that Ian McKellen makes a gag about deep-throating a cucumber.
It’s unexpected, certainly. The Hallmark-style poster and the programme full of slightly mad articles by producers and writers about ‘pooches I have known’ lead us to believe Ben Weatherill’s play will be all dog diets and doctors’ appointments. And while there’s plenty of that as McKellen and Roger Allam sidle into friendship, there’s more too: poppers, Pride and radical, ageless romance.
Frank and Percy marks director Sean Mathias’s third summer season at the Theatre Royal Windsor, and a return for McKellen who gave his Hamlet here in 2021. Now he’s Percy: Whitby-born, owner of Labrador Bruno, proudly gay. Allam’s Frank, meanwhile, is from Pontefract, his spaniel is Toffee, he’s a widower and a straight Yorkshireman who finds out over the course of several Heath-roaming conversations that actually he might not be that straight after all.
It’s a formidable duo. Allam is as brilliantly dry as ever, his face all guilelessness and impassivity. When romance emerges, the fact that Percy is a man is rather sweetly unremarkable to him. His buttoned-up naturalism clashes believably with McKellen’s camper, more dramatic style, full of flinging arms and his trademark long linger on the end of certain wordssss.
The odd couple effect comes through brilliantly: as Percy reminisces about a 28-year-old toyboy he once had a fling with, with reference to his own ‘dextrous tongue’, Allam’s face flickers between surprise, confusion, horror and delight while also barely changing at all.
It’s certainly not a flawless play: Weatherill, whose previous work has been in fringe theatres, struggles with a larger canvas. Several scenes could be cut and the play would be better for it, especially an unexpected and unexamined digression about climate change, conspiracy theories and cancel culture.
And despite an elegantly simple design by Morgan Large - a revolving wooden circle with benches and a woodland backdrop - there’s a fussiness in some of the direction that slows the pace down. Too much time is spent in scene changes, accompanied by long blasts of classical music while costumes are donned and props prepared.
But those quibbles recede when, in the midst of all the chat about spaniels and statins, we get the sight of two older men, one gay and one bi, properly snogging on stage. What’s abundantly clear is how much fun the duo are having. Behind that is something more profound as McKellen, now in his mid-eighties, still finds new ways to be a fierce activist for LGBTQ rights and representation.
With bark and bite in the most unexpected places, the play nips at the heels of those who claim sexual fluidity is the pleasure of just the young. And if you’ve ever fantasised about what Endeavour’s Inspector Thursday looks like in glittering rainbow short shorts, here’s your wish fulfilled. Woof.
