Writer: Peter Gill
Director: George Richmond- Scott
Peter Gill’s 1976 play Small Change is surprisingly modern in Both Barrels Theatre’s production now playing in South London’s Omnibus. It may be set in Cardiff in the 1950s and 1970s but its examination of time, mental health and masculinity are very contemporary concerns.
Small Change also makes Nick Payne’s Constellations, first staged in 2012, feel not so revolutionary. In an effort to represent the idea of quantum mechanics and multiple universes, Payne’s play consists of repeated scenes of all which have different outcomes. Gill tells his story in a similar way. Scenes are short and disordered. The four characters repeat questions as if hoping for different answers. There are glimpses of other narrative possibilities.
One minute Gerard and Vincent, next-door neighbours and friends, are schoolboys playing by the sea and the next they are in their late teens working in the docks putting in for a trade, an apprenticeship they really don’t want. Always waiting for them at home are their mothers who regale them with ‘Where have you been?’ when the boys finally walk through the door.
Gerard and his mother get on well enough. They argue and bicker, chasing each other around the kitchen table. Director George Richmond-Scott interestingly removes a layer of emotion from their relationship. At one point Gill’s words point to the fact that both mother and son are crying, but on stage they are clearly not crying and this makes them, especially the mother, colder and more phlegmatic than perhaps they look on paper.
Vincent’s mother shockingly claims that she doesn’t love any of her children. It’s only her husband she loves, but this passion is cemented in fear. She dreads becoming pregnant again. Money is a problem, of course, but she has no love left for another baby.
To escape their mothers and their feckless fathers, who we never see, the boys swim in the nearby ponds. One night Gerard points to the sky and explains that if they were to visit a star and then look back to earth they might see the pyramids being built, so slowly does light travel through space. And sometimes it seems as if we, too, are watching from afar, and time, like memory, plays trick and everything is out of order, and whole parts are missing.
Richmond- Scott demands a lot from his actors, moving them constantly around Liam Bunster’s set made from wooden girders. As Gerard, Andy Rush gives a sensitive performance especially when his character is older, and desperate. Toby Gordon’s Vincent plays by the rules and is decent and understanding; Gordon does well to ground him. Sioned Jones plays Gerard’s mother, and is edgy and flighty. It’s never certain whether she loves her son or not, and this ambivalence powers the relationship between mother and son. As Vincent’s mother, Tameka Mortimer is fragile and exhausted but the scene where she dances, her face lit up with rare joy, is one of the best in the play.
At times, you fear that Richmond-Scott is over-directing, taking the focus away from Gill’s words and themes. And yet, his vision is exciting and his busy aesthetic complements the clatter of memory and the vividness of childhood. It makes you wonder why Peter Gill isn’t performed more often.
Runs until 2 October 2021
The Reviews Hub Score
Vivid
