ELYOT, Kevin 1951-

PERSONAL:

Born Kevin Ronald Lee, July 18, 1951, in Birmingham, England. Education: University of Bristol, B.A. (with honors), 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Norman North, The Agency, 24 Pottery Lane, London W11 4LZ, England.

CAREER:

Playwright and actor. Actor on stage, and in films, including Scandalous, 1984; Murder East—Murder West (television film), 1990; and Wild West, 1992.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Writers' Guild of Great Britain award for best television play, 1991, for Killing Time; Samuel Beckett Award, 1982, for Coming Clean, 1982; Writers' Guild award for best fringe play, London Evening Standard award for best comedy, Lawrence Olivier award for best comedy, and London Critics' Circle award for most promising newcomer, all 1995, all for My Night with Reg.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

Coming Clean (produced in London, England, 1982), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1984.

Consent, produced in Basingstoke, England, 1989.

The Moonstone (also see below; adaptation of the novel by Wilkie Collins), produced in Worcester, England, 1990.

Artists and Admirers (adaptation of the play by Alexander Ostrovsky), produced in London, England, 1992.

My Night with Reg (three acts; produced in London, England at Royal Court Theatre, 1994), Nick Hern Books (London, England), 1995.

The Day I Stood Still (produced in London, England, 1998), Nick Hern Books (London, England), 1998.

Mouth to Mouth (produced in London, England at Royal Court Theatre, 2001), Nick Hern Books (London, England), 2001.

The Chain Play, produced in London, England at the National Theatre, 2001.

Forty Winks, produced in London, England at Royal Court Theatre, 2004, Nick Hern Books (London, England), 2004.

RADIO PLAYS

According to Plan, 1987.

The Perfect Moment, 1988.

The Double Dealer, 1995.

TELEVISION PLAYS

Killing Time, 1990.

(Adaptor) Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1996.

My Night with Reg (adaptation of Elyot's play), 1997.

No Night Is Too Long, 2002.

Five Little Pigs, 2003.

Poirot: Death on the Nile, 2004.

The Body in the Library, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

British playwright Kevin Elyot is perhaps most well known for his award-winning play My Night with Reg, the first Royal Court Theatre production to go directly from the Royal Court Upstairs to London's prestigious West End since The Rocky Horror Show in 1972. There is a sadness in this play, in part because its gay characters are concerned with the fact that they are heading into middle age, but mostly because the central figure, Guy, who, because of his fear of AIDS, has limited his encounters primarily to phone sex, dies by the third act from the one actual sexual act in which he indulged.

My Night with Reg takes place over a period of years, and as it opens, Guy is hosting a housewarming party to which he has invited university friends John and Daniel, the latter an art dealer who is living with Reg, the subject of the play, but who never appears in it. When Reg dies, the grieving friends return to Guy's apartment, where John opens up to Guy about the affair he had been having with Reg. The romantic Guy, who is desired by none of the others, has had a long-time crush on John, and listens to his pain as he deals with his own. It seems that everyone except Guy had slept with the sexy Reg at one time or another, including partners Bernie and Benny who have stayed together and become homebodies for the same reason Guy has avoided sex.

San Francisco Chronicle reviewer Steven Winn wrote that in My Night with Reg Elyot "is neither coy nor heavy-handedly ironic in the way AIDS plays its hand. The men move on, pairing up, breaking off, and dying out through the years. They do what they can, sometimes honorably and sometimes not, muddling on in irrational times." New York Times critic Ben Brantley felt that My Night with Reg "is far less celebratory than such similar works as David Dillon's Party and even Terrance McNally's tear-dotted Love! Valour! Compassion! But it is also less garishly self-lacerating than the granddaddy of them all, Mart Crowley's Boys in the Band [1968]. The central premise of Boys was that beneath the flashy exteriors of its wise-cracking gay men lay irreparably broken hearts. Part stripped down to reveal hearts that were sweet and compassionate. The hearts of the characters in Reg are simply lonely, aching for obscure objects of desire that can never be fully claimed."

The protagonist of The Day I Stood Still is Horace, isolated gay man who in this case has loved his straight friend Jerry since their school days. Jerry carefully rejected Horace's careful advances, they remained friends, and when Jerry marries Judi, Horace became the godfather of the couple's son, Jimi. Horace leads a very quiet existence, watching televison, reading, and occasionally bringing in a partner for hire. The day of the title is the day on which Judi, now a widow, and Jimi visit Horace, and he is immediately struck with the fact that Jimi closely resembles his father. Jimi, who is recovering from a failed gay relationship, may offer the unfulfilled promise that Horace never experienced with Jerry.

Reviewing the play in the New York Times, Benedict Nightingale compared The Day I Stood Still to My Night with Reg, calling Elyot's work "a rueful and wittily written comedy about the desperate, droll longings of the terminally unattractive in a world of sexual plenitude. The feelings at its center happen to be gay, but they could equally well be heterosexual, and they are certainly very English."

In Mouth to Mouth, Laura, whose husband is leaving her for a nineteen year old, discovers that her teenaged son, Phillip, has been seduced in Spain by a young women whose name is now tattooed across his crotch. Quick to inspect the site is Laura's friend, HIV-infected playwright Frank, who has kissed Phillip—hence the title—and who reveals to Laura his feelings about her son before he begins pursuing the boy. The play ends with Laura and Frank overcome by guilt and self-recrimination when a motorcycle accident takes Phillip from them. This compelling scene that both begins and ends the play.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Dramatists, sixth edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, July 22, 1997, Dick Scanlan, review of My Night with Reg, p. 61.

Back Stage, June 27, 1997, William Stevenson, review of My Night with Reg, p. 40.

Back Stage West, August 23, 2001, Les Spindle, review of My Night with Reg, p. 14.

Guardian (Manchester, England), January 23, 1998, Michael Billington, review of The Day I Stood Still, p. 2.

New York Times, June 13, 1997, Ben Brantley, review of My Night with Reg, section C, p. 15; March 15, 1998, Benedict Nightingale, review of The Day I Stood Still, p. 2.

San Francisco Chronicle, Steven Winn, review of My Night with Reg, section F, p. 5.

Spectator (London, England), February 7, 1988, Sheridan Morley, review of The Day I Stood Still, p. 41; April 23, 1994, Sheridan Morley, review of My Night with Reg, pp. 43-44; February 17, 2001, Patrick Carnegy, review of Mouth to Mouth, p. 48.

Time, March 27, 1995, Christopher Porterfield, review of My Night with Reg, p. 75.

Variety, June 16, 1997, Greg Evans, review of My Night with Reg, p. 40; February 9, 1998, Matt Wolf, review of The Day I Stood Still, p. 80; February 19, 2001, Matt Wolf, review of Mouth to Mouth, p. 50.

Village Voice, June 24, 1997, Michael Feingold, review of My Night with Reg, p. 95.

Washington Post, March 20, 1999, William Triplett, review of My Night with Reg, section C, p. 1.