Blowing Whistles
Leicester Square Theatre
****

Lord Arthur's Bed
Drill Hall
**

It is a rare gay play these days that does not include some scene in which a desirable young man strips down to the bare essentials.

Matthew Todd fashions a scintillating comedy of gay sexual morals and manners in Blowing Whistles, while Martin Lewton’s Lord Arthur’s Bed draws forced, uninteresting comparisons between true-life stories of two Victorian gay transvestites and a pair of 21st-century queer lovers (all four roles well played by Paul Kendrick and Paul Spruce).

Both comedies are duly true to type and nudely revealing.

Yet while Todd and Lewton betray a similar, disturbing sense of sexual disillusionment about the fruits of gay liberation, with homophobic mothers in both plays disowning their sexually discontented sons, the less ambitious Blowing Whistles alone makes a serious, dramatic impact.

Audiences of all sexual persuasions should be absorbed by the dilemma posed in Todd’s play — a gay, contemporary equivalent of Ibsen’s Doll’s House but without its gravity.

Should partnerships, married and unmarried, gay-civil and uncivil, be sustained when one partner craves monogamy and the other wishes sexually to stray, relishing the challenge of irregular one-night stands?

The scene, in Pete Nettell’s vivid production, is a modish London apartment. Here, 10 years into their gay but not civil partnership, Stuart Laing’s Nigel, 37 but owning up to just 32, titivates in preparation for his latest Gaydar date, 17-year-old Mark. His disapproving lover, Paul Keating’s finely drawn Jamie, tries to stem the rising tide of sexual excitement with tart put-downs as he vacuums.

The needy Mark, played with assurance and conviction by impressive newcomer Daniel Finn, who sheds his clothes to the manner born, exposes, exploits and extends the gulf between the lovers.

By playing off one against the other in scenes of piquant hilarity, Mark helps precipitate a terrific showdown between Laing’s cheating Nigel and Keating’s masochistic Jamie who at last rousingly achieves his personal gay liberation.

Blowing Whistles closes 22 November (0844 847 2475).
Lord Arthur’s Bed closes 2 November (020 7307 5060).