Gundog

by Simon Longman

“Land beneath our feet. Got all our blood inside it hasn't it? All that time. Belongs to us.”

On a farm in the middle of nowhere, sisters Becky and Anna try to hold their family together after the death of their mother. Time is always moving somewhere – but here it's very quiet.
When they discover a stranger wandering aimlessly across the land, the three establish an unlikely partnership in their determination to survive.

Simon Longman's Royal Court debut premiered at the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in February 2018.

Genres: Plays

128 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2018

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fourth of this playwright's works for me to read - and the one I liked least. Several factors made this somewhat of a chore - first off, animal cruelty never goes down well with me - and here the titular character is ill and dies, while a sheep is shot in the head and another gives birth to a dead lamb; since the author specifies that 'Props and actions stated should be performed and present' (in previous plays the props were allowed to be pantomimed) I feel sorry for the props master - AND the actors. The structure of the play, which hurtles backwards and forwards in time with lightning speed, would also seem hard to actualize.

Also, the final moments require an expensive rain machine, prohibiting this from being performed by many companies, and there are stage directions that would be almost impossible to perform - the last of which states: 'The rain falls on them and years keeping (sic) passing. They pass and pass and pass and pass and pass. Everything is still. Everything is silent. And everything turns to ruin.' How ANY of that can be conveyed to an audience through stasis is beyond my capabilities as a director.

The play is also extremely repetitious (this is a feature of ALL Longman's plays)- it could be judiciously pruned. This all seems to have worked in the initial production, however, which got respectable notices.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/201...
https://www.sierz.co.uk/reviews/gundo...
https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-t...
https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/revie...
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/ent...
https://www.culturewhisper.com/r/thea...
https://www.stagewhispers.com.au/revi...
http://www.keithgow.com/2022/11/revie...