THE YORK REALIST by Peter Gill. Royal Court to 9 February.
London.
THE YORK REALIST
by Peter Gill.
English Touring Theatre at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs To 9 February 2002.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS 020 7565 5000.
Review Timothy Ramsden 15 January.
Transfers to the STRAND THEATRE 9 March-20 April.
TICKETS: 0870 901 3356.
A play where quietly accumulated detail speaks louder than many noisier dramas.
I'd rather have seen Peter Gill's fine new play anywhere but the Royal Court. Built round a gay relationship which develops during a 1960s production of the York Mystery Plays, it needs an audience who feel for the characters more than do some Sloane Square sophisticates.
The problem's not the intense yet awkward relation between George, the farmer with acting talent and John, the assistant director he meets when taking part in the medieval cycle of biblical dramas.
It's George's family and would-be wife Doreen who cause the difficulty. They represent a rural, unswung sixties but superior audience laughter denies their dignity. It also diminishes a play where the tension depends on George's choice between life as he knows it and as he finds it can be, one where in other respects life, and even death, happen with quiet regularity.
Many plays have shown the university educated 1960s generation unable to relate to their families. Gill takes an opposite approach. George enjoys his lover's metropolitan life, smart friends and ever-available arts, but returns to the family cottage and a life essentially stuck in the fifties. Making this the butt of laughter snaps the spring Gill has skilfully coiled. When George's sister nudges her friend with, 'I don't think he's for marrying, Doreen, you see,' and receives a simple 'No,' it's one of many beautifully understated, Chekhovian moments - and Wendy Nottingham catches Doreen's stolid heroism precisely.
There's a strong cast throughout, though Felix Bell looks too old for young Jack. Lloyd Owen gives George a taciturn authority, a mind used to not expressing itself in a tight-knit family that know what's what and what's not on. And William Dudley's set craftily arranges realistic elements unnaturally, creating a world slightly out of joint.
'You were a cruel bugger,' his Mother comments on George's performance in The Crucifixion, by the original 'York Realist', whose script injected everyday detail into the bible story. Gill himself is merciless in depicting quiet misery and defeated hope, but does so with a skill that gives them a dignity no audience can thwart.
George: Lloyd Owen.
John: Richard Coyle.
Mother: Anne Reid.
Barbara: Caroline O' Neill.
Arthur: Ian Mercer.
Doreen: Wendy Nottingham.
Jack: Felix Bell.
Director: Peter Gill.
Designer: William Dudley.
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp.
Composer: Terry Davies.
2002-01-25 14:25:44