Plays one

by Peter Gill

This is the first collection of Peter Gill's plays, spanning his work from 1965 to 1987. It features "The Sleepers Den", "Over Gardens Out", "Small Change", "Kick for Touch", "In the Blue" and "Mean Tears". Gill specializes in lyric yet painful studies of desperate entanglement.

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2002

Reviews

[Harry McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

These early plays of Gill are very much variations on a theme. Love and loss across time, time that can jump in just a couple of lines. They are not restricted by anything as boring as a 'set' and there's always that joke in my mind about how Gill simply had to direct all the first productions - because only he could work out how to stage the damn things. You're so aware of his class and his background in a way that would align him with the Angry Young Men if only he were a misogynist. As with all Gill, the power in these plays comes from their total restraint. The almost-underwritten quality to them that buries the wells of emotion - the last page of Kick for Touch is as remarkable as anything in post-war British drama. But these are early plays - and he goes on to hit far greater heights.
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The Sleepers Den: 3/5 - A delicate character study; the Lawrence influence looms large, as does the Royal Court of the 60s.
Over Gardens Out: 3/5 - This feels most like a precursor to The York Realist - burgeoning sexuality, mothers and sons, all in miniature.
Small Change: 4/5 - This has more in common with Constellations than anything else - glimpses of a friendship across time but within a couple of sentences.
Kick For Touch: 4/5 - "Oh kid. When you were little."
In the Blue: 3/5 - The shortest, and in many ways the most focused of these plays. An intensity even as you can see the stronger plays it's sandwiched between.
Mean Tears: 4/5 - Even his heterosexuals are gay.