The York Realist ( Archived )

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Pictured (L to R): Lloyd Owen, Richard Coyle; Wendy Nottingham, Anne Reid, Ian Mercer, Lloyd Owen; Lloyd Owen Photography by Ivan Kyncl.

Director: Peter Gill, Designer: Hartley T A Kemp, Composer: Terry Davies.

Cast: Felix Bell, Richard Coyle, Ian Mercer, Wendy Nottingham, Caroline O’Neill, Lloyd Owen, Anne Reid.

‘This may be a risky declaration to make in January, but I wager that – come next December – The York Realist will rate as one of the finest productions of 2002.

‘…As a love story, The York Realist is riveting and heart-rending, performed with fine-tuned naturalism that’s quiet and unhurried. Gill is always terrifically perceptive about male tenderness – as evidenced in his previous pieces, Certain Young Men and Cardiff East. Here, the men’s hesitant passion is full of telling details – as John, for example, unconsciously fiddles with the airing towel then jolts back in embarrassment, as if George is wearing it. This is also a domestic comedy that satirises rustic ways and cosmopolitan superciliousness. What’s great is Gill’s ensemble manages to be funny while steering clear of potential caricatures, moving instead towards complex emotions and surprising mores.

… Overall, the personal and political are subtly united in a study of English masculinity, class and culture. Such outstanding work makes one eager to see the Peter Gill retrospective season, scheduled for late sprint at the Sheffield Crucible.’

Independent on Sunday

‘Peter Gill first achieved fame for his theatrical restoration of DH Lawrence. And his new play, presented by English Touring Theatre, is like a glowing tribute to the Eastwood exemplar. It has the Lawrentian qualitites of emotional intelligence, raw honesty and fascination with the intersection of class and sex.

‘In outline it sounds like a gay love story. George is a farm labourer who gets involved in an early 1960s production of the York Mystery Plays: John is the shy assistant director who comes to woo him back to rehearsals when he withdraws, ostensibly to look after his widowed mother. The two men’s physical and emotional rapport is palpable. But Gill shows, with rigorous honesty, the obstacles that lie in the path of a long term relationship.

‘Significantly, sexual bigotry is not one of them: even if th eplay has echoes of Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law it never turns into a battle for possession of George between his mother and lover. What Gill is writing about is the dual stranglehold of class and roots.

‘… Gill’s production has the same spare honesty, very much in a 1960s Royal Court tradition, as his writing and is superlatively played. Lloyd Owen, a fast-rising star, endows George with exactly the right blend of Yorkshire grit and unashamed delight in his sexuality: it is Richard Coyle, a sathe supposedly sophisticated Londoner, who is the more tentative. And there is exemplary support from Anne Reid as Goerge’s mother whose love takes the form of unspoken understanding, from Wendy Nottingham as a quiet chapel mouse who adores George, and from Felix Bell as his amusedly observant nephew. The play comes like a rare blast of reality.’

The Guardian (5 stars).

‘It comes as a relief in these sexually up-front times, when simulated buggery is all the rage on stage, to discover a play about gay lovers that goes no further than one unexceptional kiss, a restrained embrace and a little, light hand-holding. But The York Realist by veteran dramatist Peter Gill is sensationally fine and poignant. It exposes more interesting facets of love than mere flesh. Since the play concerns a Sixties gay affair between George, a 35ish farm labourer and John, a younger theatre director from London, leathery cynics may still imagine an evening of soft-focus gay romancing has been arranged. All wrong.

‘Gill’s play, one of the finest written on the theme in 30 years, puts homosexuality back where it belongs – in the family. The love affair – all stiff or tight-lipped and reticent – is played out in the midst of northern, working-class chapel fold who believe alcohol after a funeral is far too unseemly. It’s wrecked, though not through guilt or discovery – this being a time when gay sex, even in the case of adults consenting in private, could lead to gaol. Gill shows how differences of class, culture and tradition, an unfair educational system and the push and pull of family values, conspire to end the chaps’ attachment. So this is not just a play about love, it’s a dramatic reminder of how affairs are often moulded and marred by forces of society.

‘…His own meticulous, exquisitely acted production registers 59 varieties of social unease and conformity. And when John first comes visiting, ostensibly to persuade George back to act in an amateur production of The York Mystery play, th extraordinary occurs: George’s assured surreptitious wooing of the hesitant John is conducted in verbal code, in full though uncomprehending family view. Their affair subsequently becomes something understood and accepted, but unmentionable. Lloyd Owen’s performance as the farm labourer; with the talent and longing to be an actor, is astonishing in its power, throttled fury and sadness in the sight of lost love and discarded ambitions. And Richard Coyle, though his accent is all over the place, affectingly catches the ardour and desolation of the hopelessly besotted theatre director who triggers this rich, rare family drama.’

Evening Standard

‘Peter Gill is one of the great figures in the history of the Royal Court.

‘… The play is rhythmically structured, so that ordinary domestic business carries a full charge, even in the silence, and an apparent slightness of writing takes on, by the end, an insinuating irresistible momentum.’

Daily Mail

‘… My favourite scene is the beautifully observed sequence when the family comes back from seeing the Mysteries. Without a trace of either condescension or reverse sucking-up, Gill shows us people who have clearly enjoyed a profound experience – a point all the more eloquent because of their awkward inarticulateness. It tells you more about the power of great art than a year’s worth of Late Review.

‘“It was very Yorkshire, wasn’t it. Not that I mind” declares the mother (a lovely performance from Anne Reid). The York Realist is full of such unforced distillations of its cultural wisdom. It certainly whets the appetite for the Peter Gill season, which starts in May, at the Sheffield Crucible.

The Independent

‘Early days as it is, I might well have just seen the best new play of the year, The York Realist, beautifully written by Peter Gill. He first attracted attention at the Royal Court in the Sixties for his productions of D.H. Lawrence’s plays charting working-class life in the Nottinghamshire mining community.

‘Fascinatingly, his new play, which opened at the Royal Court this week, has a strong whiff of Lawrence – its themes are desire, love, class, roots and a powerful sense of place – and harks back to the tradition of the Court’s grittily naturalistic kitchen-sink dramas.

‘…the real skill of this piece comes from Gill’s extraordinarily powerful creation of authentic atmosphere and relationships.

‘… This is engrossing theatre, sensationally performed.’

Mail on Sunday

‘Gill, who directs the play himself, attends to his characters with the brooking care of a father and the precision of a surgeon.

‘…The play is about the price of change and the price of remaining the same. Gill’s writing has a muscular delicacy: it reminds you of As You Like It or The Tempest, some of David Storey’s plays and indeed the York Shepherd’s Plays. Half-finished sentences hang in the air with a sense of finality, haunting and bruising. The acting is spellbindingly simple: the characters seem each to create a space around them that is both impenetrable and longing to be filled. A hard,

beautiful, heartbreaking and consoling play.’

The Sunday Times