Working Class Wonder

If the spirit of DH Lawrence hovers above this work, it’s hardly surprising.

Writer and director, Peter Gill, directed a celebrated series of Lawrence’s plays at the Royal Court in the sixties and the underrated Welshman’s work covers similar emotional terrain.

In this often blistering work from 1976, which is flawlessly directed by Gill himself, Lawrentian themes such as suffocated passion between men and stifling relationships between sons and mothers are strikingly in evidence.

Gill was an unjustly neglected voice in British theatre until 2002, when the artistic director of Sheffield Crucible theatre, Michael Grandage, launched a month long season of the playwright’s work. And now Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse presents the first major staging of Small Change in almost a quarter of a century.

Set in Cardiff between the 1970s and the 1950s, in a gritty working class environment, the play introduces us to Gerard and Vincent, two young lads who are flailing their way towards adult identities.

However, their development is stunted by the less than nurturing households in which they live. The talented, but over- sensitive Gerard’s relationship of mutual dependence with his self- martyred mother (the superb Sue Johnston) is decidedly unhealthy. And their Catholic faith is both a blessing and a curse.

Nearby the more solid, but inhibited Vincent lives with his alienated and spiritually adrift mother, Mrs Driscoll. Both women are trapped in loveless marriages.

Despite the earthy subject matter, Gill eschews a naturalistic structure. Instead, his dialogue, with its non- linear loops and recurrent themes and phrases, suggests an experimental musical score. While this Beckettian approach to language tellingly mimics the nature of human memory, it also makes large demands on the audience’s attention.

Anthony Ward’s set, a raised crimson platform which is expertly lit by Hugh Vanstone, glows like some purgatorial limbo and serves to brutally highlight the language.