The York Realist

by Peter Gill

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 22 February 2018

Robert Hastie directs Ben Batt as George, Jonathan Bailey as John, and Lesley Nicol as George's mother in this revival of Peter Gill's 2001 play set in the 1960s when a production of the York Mystery plays is being prepared in York using local amateurs for most of the parts.

'The York Realist' is the name given to the unknown author considered to be responsible for about eight of the four dozen pageant plays which make up the entire cycle. These are the pageants dealing with the passion and death of Christ, which render the episodes in 'realistic' Yorkshire vernacular. But the title could equally well be applied to the young farmer George, who has been encouraged to take part in the modern revival by Doreen, his would-be sweetheart, but who has ceased to attend rehearsals ostensibly because his onerous farmwork and his mother's illness require his complete intention.

John, the assistant director from London, comes to the farmhouse where George and his mother live, to see what has happened to someone he though very promising in the project - he has to come in person because there is no telephone; he has to come by bus because he has no other means of travel. But it is immediately apparent that the two men are attracted to one another, the fresh-faced John's expression of admiration almost shining across the stage, and the reticent George clearly pleased by the visit. In no time he engineers matters so that John should stay the night, share his room, and his bed. John, somewhat astounded at the casual confidence of all this, agrees but also insists that Gorge should return to the rehearsals.

By the time of the performances John is a regular fixture at the farmhouse, George's mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephew, and Doreen, apparently aware but not aware of his status. The crunch comes when the two men have to face John's imminent return to London, when it becomes painfully clear that neither can give up the life he leads to join the life of the other. A coda taking place after the mother's death, when it might be thought that George could change his mind, shows with enormous delicacy how impossible a future together would be. George's realism is inescapable.

The production is excellent. Peter McKintosh has designed a farmhouse living room and kitchen bound to look quaint and attractive to the urban John, but old-fashioned and difficult to manage for its inhabitants (they are all for stripping out the Aga which John enthuses about). In this setting the interaction of the two young men is played out with wonderful ease and intensity by Ben Batt and Jonathan Bailey. George's self-awareness and evident ease with his sexuality is conveyed with quiet confidence, but equally the cost of it is movingly revealed as he grieves for his mother: his stoicism only cracks when he hears that John has written a condolence letter to his sister but not to him. John's eagerness lights up the stage at first, but his unsuccessful appeal to George to come south at the end leaves him in embarrassment and pain, again superbly conveyed. Around these two the supporting cast provide a warm sense of unspoken tolerance (which would probably not survive articulation).

The very restraint of the times, both the natural reticence of the working tenant farmer and the awkward carefulness of the homosexual urbanite, means that the relationship between George and John is almost entirely conveyed by means of looks and discreet gestures. It is only by such fleeting revelations as that John knows where the mother's hot water bottle is kept in the kitchen, and her quick readiness to let him boil the kettle for it, that we understand how he has been accepted as a fixture. It is quite something in these more explicit days when a brief moment of affectionate neck rubbing can be the only overt physical contact between the two men that we see, and that it can contain an emotional charge that resonates more strongly than many less inhibited encounters.