Desire has rarely looked so dazzling, or so dangerous, as it does in The Line of Beauty at the Almeida Theatre. Adapted by Jack Holden from Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize-winning novel and directed by Michael Grandage, this production transforms a decade of excess, privilege and moral decay into a two-and-a-half-hour swirl of beauty and betrayal. It’s a world bathed in light and champagne, but haunted by loneliness, hypocrisy and the quiet, corrosive cost of belonging.

From the opening moments, Grandage makes it clear this is no soft-focus nostalgia trip through the 1980s. The story begins in 1983, as Oxford graduate Nick Gues – played with luminous subtlety by Jasper Talbot – moves into the Notting Hill home of his university friend Toby Fedden. As Nick becomes enmeshed in the orbit of Toby’s powerful, wealthy family, his fascination with their privilege turns from wonder to complicity. He becomes both guest and ghost, an outsider drifting through drawing rooms thick with charm and deceit.

Christopher Oram’s set and costume design conjure this world with remarkable precision. The costumes, rich with the sharp tailoring of the Thatcher years, shimmer under Howard Hudson’s glowing light. The effect is intoxicating – both seductive and faintly sterile. Adam Cork’s sound design infuses the play with the throb of 1980s pop and the hum of political ambition, giving the production its rhythm and pulse.

At its heart is Talbot’s Nick, a performance of extraordinary restraint and depth. He captures Nick’s duality – the aesthete intoxicated by beauty and the young man quietly undone by it. His gaze, constantly searching, reflects the audience’s own: complicit, curious and, by the end, complicity ashamed. There’s a devastating stillness in the final moments, when Nick stands alone as the elegant world he’s worshipped collapses around him.

Alistair Nwachukwu’s Leo provides the production’s emotional anchor. His portrayal of Nick’s working-class lover is tender, grounded and quietly heartbreaking; their dinner scene together, awkward and deeply human, is one of the evening’s highlights. Later, Arty Froushan’s Wani brings a different kind of electricity – a performance charged with arrogance, desire and decay, perfectly embodying the glamour and rot of the age. Charles Edwards and Claudia Harrison, as Gerald and Rachel Fedden, are faultless: he a charming Tory MP whose confidence conceals cowardice, she the graceful hostess masking steel with poise. Ellie Bamber, as their daughter Catherine, cuts through the family’s gloss with sharp, contemporary energy.

Grandage’s direction is elegant and assured. He moves fluidly between public splendour and private disintegration, giving equal weight to the play’s wit and its tragedy. The staging is full of precise visual metaphors – characters framed like portraits, light catching glass as though beauty itself might shatter. A surreal “dance with Thatcher” becomes the production’s emblem: seductive, absurd and chilling in its symbolism of power and surrender.

Holden’s adaptation, while streamlined, remains faithful to Hollinghurst’s sensibility. It condenses a rich, layered novel into a clear dramatic line, capturing the wit and melancholy of the original without losing its emotional weight. There are moments when the scope feels slightly compressed – the speed of the later scenes, particularly, leaves little space for reflection – but the writing is intelligent, elegant and alive to the nuances of class and desire.

Grandage and his creative team have crafted a work of intelligence, style and emotional precision.

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