Two elderly men sit side by side, hand in weathered hand. You’d think they’d been together for ever, but no. Alex and Colin find comfort in one another, but theirs is a bond forged in the care home. They speak caringly but sparely to each other: each comes alive in memory, addressing the long-gone loves of their youthful London lives.
Peter Gill’s plays (Small Change, The York Realist) are ruminative, delicate. Although happily less conflicted in his sexuality, his sensibility can resemble Terence Davies’ cinema, delving through the past. Something in the Air is slim but not slight, a poignant portrait of how brightly remembered lives can shine.
There’s a sadness, too, about the way queer histories slip so easily through the fingers – neither Alex’s son nor Colin’s niece know that the men they refer to as “an old friend” or the “film chap” were crucial to their relatives’ lives. These relationships began with a frisson, something in the air, and in the air they remain – or in ageing minds, equally intangible.
The men summon the sex and, more, the chat: “an ecstasy of talk”, “the beginning of my cottoning on”. The remembrance of flings past is only enhanced by playing out so close to where we sit, near Piccadilly Circus: coffee houses in Soho, flats in Fitzrovia. Alex met Nick at a fancy-dress party – he was “dressed as a choir boy, which I thought was rather asking for it”. The relationship ends bitterly when Alex picks a woman, in accordance to his times; Colin and Gareth also break up, but their bond endures through to Gareth’s death from Aids.
Gill and Alice Hamilton co-direct – or, rather, conduct, because six fine actors perform an exquisite chamber symphony. Barely moving, they trace an intricate weave of dialogue around dense pools of recall. Sometimes too dense and intricate – it’s easy to lose focus as past conversations dart through present confidences, and the two younger actors get lost in the mix.
Claire Price’s silvery clarity and Andrew Woodall’s grumpy bass portray the visiting relatives, while Ian Gelder (Colin) and Christopher Godwin (Alex) spring elegantly from one memory to the next, stepping with distress or confusion into their present moment. It’s all the more affecting for being written on the wind.
Something in the Air is at Jermyn Street theatre, London, until 12 November.
