Peter Gill Plays 2

Cardiff East 'As scene melts into scene, one's appetite for knowing more and more about these people is constantly whetted, even for the ones one would avoid in real life. Each and every [character] rings true and resonates further... A play which is never less than gripping.' Mail on Sunday Certain Young Men 'The play is marked by a fast turnover of scenes, lots of brusque, vivid, wryly funny dialogue... articulate, arresting and as freshly performed as anything in town.' The Times The York Realist: Winner of the London Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play '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. Overall, the personal and political are subtly united in a study of English masculinity, class and culture. Such outstanding work.' Independent on Sunday Original Sin 'Hauntingly powerful.' Guardian

This is the first study of one of the most significant voices of modern international theatre, one of Wales's leading writers, and one of the most compelling and beautiful bodies of work in the last fifty years. To Bodies Gone is written by playwright Barney Norris, who has assisted in Gill's productions and possesses an intimate and personal knowledge of Gill's processes and values. He explores a career remarkable in its constancy from the groundbreaking stagingideas of the early productions to the extraordinary heights of the mature work, illustrated by the rave reviews for Versailles, Gill latest play. Norris's principle theme is the aesthetic Gill introduced to theatre, and which has remained the bedrock of his work, in its various manifestations across several decades: Gill's work as a writer and director has consistently revealed the extraordinary in the daily world. Analysing his career broadly chronologically, this study places Gill's work in the wider context of the theatre, providing a portrait ofBritish theatre in the second half of the twentieth century and contributing new insights into theatre history. To Bodies Gone includes chapters on Gill's early work, influences (Lawrence, Chekhov, Beckett), his translations and adaptations (Lawrence, Chekhov, Wedekind, Faulkner), his directing career at the Royal Court, Riverside Studios, National Theatre and NT Studio, plus his major plays - Small Change, Kick for Touch, In the Blue, Cardiff East, The York Realist and, most recently, Versailles, Gill's exploration of the new order following the first world war. The result is a major study full of insight into Gill and into British Theatre.

In the drawing room of the Rawlinson's late Victorian villa in Kent, life as it was lived before the war is quietly resuming. The family's son, Leonard Rawlinson, is among the British delegation sent to Versailles to draw up the treaty that will come to define Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world. With the ghost of a fallen loved one still haunting him, Leonard perceives that the choices made in Paris will shape the fate of millions for centuries to come. Versailles premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in February 2014.

A sharp and poignant comedy of contemporary manners, 'Certain Young Men' explores the lives of Stewart and Michael, David and Christopher, Andrew and Tony, and Robert and Terry. The play premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in January 1999.

Early 1960s, Yorkshire. Farm labourer George is cast in an amateur staging of the York Mystery Plays. His world is shaken when he falls for metropolitan assistant director John and the two men embark on a clandestine affair. Peter Gill's influential play is not only a finely drawn love story; it is also a touching reflection on the rival forces of family, class, and the origins and ownership of art. The York Realist was premiered by the English Touring Theatre at The Lowry, Salford Quays in November 2001; it moved to the Bristol Old Vic that same year and, in 2002, to the Royal Court Theatre, London. The play was revived by the Donmar Warehouse, London, in February 2018. Winner of the London Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play. 'As a love story, The York Realist is riveting and heart-rendering... Gill is always terrifically perceptive about male tenderness. The personal and political are subtly united in a study of English masculinity, class and culture. Such outstanding work.' Independent on Sunday 'Sensationally fine and poignant.' Evening Standard 'It has the Lawrentian qualities of emotional intelligence, raw honesty and fascination with the intersection of class and sex... It is about the way the English, however hard they try, can never finally escape their origins. But, far from being emotionally conservative, it is adventurous, witty and fresh... The play comes like a rare blast of reality.' Guardian

Essays on the use, and misuse, of the Middle Ages for political aims.

This second collection of plays by David Eldridge showcases the development of one of the most impressive playwriting talents of recent years. His plays combine emotional impact with complexity, realistic characterisation with humour, and are among the most powerfully moving dramas of contemporary playwriting. Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness moves between a dream story and real lives to tell an intricate, complex story of a young man dealing with the break up of his family and the legacy of race responsibility. Market Boy is a gloriously raucous rites-of-passage drama set in Romford Market in the 1980s. Bringing a market jungle to life with the decade's Thatcherite capitalist fervour, this spectacular, savage, and beautiful yarn is a tale looks at a boy's coming of age and loss of innocence. The Knot of the Heart has themes of love, family and addiction, and explores the creeping onset of self-destruction beneath a veneer of respectability. Full of David Eldridge's trademark lyricism within everyday family life and interaction, this is a play where emotions are high and relationships are sensitively written. The Stock Da'wa explodes the wafer thin bonhomie of a long-awaited reunion into a blackly funny maelstrom of pique and long repressed truth-telling - and with shocking consequences. Eldridge Plays 2 contains the definitive version of the four plays and an introduction by the author.

Previous surveys of the gay theatrical repertoire have concentrated on plays produced on Broadway or in London's West End. This comprehensive guide goes well beyond these earlier studies by introducing productions from Off Broadway, from regional theaters in the U.S. and U.K., and from Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Also included are Puerto Rican, Indian and Filipino plays written in English, as well as translations from other languages. Well over half of the works discussed here appear for the first time in such a study.