The playwright Kevin Elyot, who has died aged 62 after a long illness, is best remembered for his brilliantly written and imaginatively structured tragicomedy My Night With Reg (1994). It is often claimed as a "gay play", but although Elyot wrote often about gay relationships, his real subject was the longing for love and remembrance of loves lost.
In writing about the human heart and the art of living which Proust defined as "making use of the individuals through whom we suffer" Elyot transcended categorisation and produced a small body of stage plays that will reward revival, and not just as period pieces. He approved the aphorism of another of his heroes, Nabokov, in saying that there was no such thing as a great idea; style and form are what matters. And his stage plays are striking in that regard. My Night with Reg is composed in three movements, each one divided by a period of time and death. In The Day I Stood Still (1998) the time hops forward from 1984 to the present, and then right back to 1968 in its emotional turmoil.
Continue reading...