Small Change by Peter Gill; Donmar Warehouse
davescunningplan/CreativeCommons
Call me a philistine, but Peter Gill's play wasn't my cup of tea. I'm one of those who, in Dominic Cavendish's words in the Telegraph, have taken against it, I'm sorry to say.
The play was originally staged in 1976, and in this revival is directed by the playwright himself, so there can be no complaint that the production fails to do justice to the artistic vision. It's the Cardiff of the 1950s: two mothers, played by Lindsay Coulson and Sue Johnston, have fraught relationships with their sons, Gerard and Vincent (Matt Ryan and Luke Evans). The play consists of monologues, fragmentary recollections and passages of dialogue cutting across time and mixing now with then, childhood with adulthood, so that we're not always sure exactly what's going on. Who's run away to sea? Why did she take in the baby?
The overwhelming feeling is of an intense, emotional despair in a working-class Catholic culture, but I have to admit I found all this suffocating as well as confusing, and I found the self-conscious lyricism - rightly identified by Michael Billington in the Guardian - off-putting. For me, this was a drama straining for deep, poetic meaning but failing to really engage me through narrative or dramatic development. There's a stasis about the play, and to be honest my mind drifted at times. No complaints about the performances: all four actors were strong. The production interested me too, all four characters appearing constantly on stage with only four chairs for props.
It was the play I had difficulty with - its self-conscious poeticism mixed with romantic class sentimentality failed to grab me I'm afraid. My friends Alan and Stephen were more taken with it, Alan saying he felt "enveloped" in the monologues I've mentioned. Perhaps if you like this sort of thing, you'll like it; and if you don't you won't.
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