Alistair Nwachukwu and Jasper Talbot in The Line of Beauty [Johan Persson]

JACK Holden’s mesmerising adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Line of Beauty, is an evocative portrait of Thatcher’s Britain, 1980s’ gay culture (overshadowed by the Aids crisis), and entrenched class divisions.

Set between 1983 and 1987, Nick Guest (Jasper Talbot), a gay, middle-class Oxford graduate and aspiring Henry James scholar, moves into the sumptuous London home of his straight university friend Toby Fedden (Leo Suter).

Toby’s father Gerald (Charles Edwards), a newly elected Tory MP, and mother Rachel (Claudia Harrison), welcome Nick into their privileged world, asking him to keep an eye on their troubled daughter Cat (Ellie Bamber).

She is fascinated by Nick’s sexuality and insists he take her to the iconic London nightclub Heaven.

Nick meets his first partner Leo (Alistair Nwachukwu), a black left-wing councillor, through a classified ad. A committed aesthete, Nick nevertheless enjoys the family’s lavish lifestyle, country house parties and the thrill of mixing with the political elite, including the Iron Lady herself. He allows himself to be seduced by the charismatic but closeted Wani Ouradi (Arty Froushan), the son of a wealthy Lebanese businessman, and together they work on a magazine dedicated to beauty in all its forms.

Meanwhile, the Fedden family are about to fall from grace, undone by Gerald’s philandering and the shady dealings of family friend, the odious Badger (Robert Portal).

Nick recalls Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby – a witness to privilege and moral decay – tainted by his proximity to the Feddens, whose prejudice and homophobia surface in the play’s closing moments.

Slickly directed by Michael Grandage, the performances are first-rate, and Christopher Oram’s design deftly transports us through the play’s various locations.

The run is already sold out, but a West End transfer of this glittering and barbed coming-of-age tale surely awaits.

Until November 29
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