George Richmond-Scott, associate director of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, head of Performance at ALRA and Artistic Director of Both Barrels Theatre, will direct the first London revival since 2008 of Peter Gill’s Small Change at The Omnibus Theatre.
Peter Gills’ powerful memory play, set on the east side of Cardiff in the 1950s and the 1970s, about boyhood, the complex love between mothers and sons and the search for truth is revived by George Richmond-Scott at Omnibus Theatre from 14 September to 2 October.
You’re directing a revival of Peter Gill’s Small Change, how would you describe the play?
Small Change is one of Peter Gill’s masterworks. It’s a beautiful, intense, humorous, painful deep dive into family, home and love.
It is one of those rare plays that captures something fundamental about life and being human without spelling anything out or delivering any easy answers. It’s about someone’s quest to understand and release themselves and it’s about learning how to really let go and grow up.
What is it about Peter Gill’s writing that excites you the most?
There is so much about his writing that excites and captivates me. He has a genius for evoking place and how places make us feel often very complicated emotions.
He has captured the warmth, wit and driving rhythm of working class Cardiffians and the form of his play holds its meaning as much, if not more so than its content, in a myriad of extraordinary ways that we are enjoying discovering in the rehearsal room.
He also writes of love and all its intensity, contradictions and selfishness in a completely honest way. It is also funny, sometimes in the most surprising moments.
It’s had to be rescheduled because of the pandemic, what challenges have the last year given you?
It’s been hard to delay the play- you get to a point when you are ready to be active and do the thing and we have had to practise patience and trust that the time will come- as now (all fingers crossed tightly) it has. There have been changes to the team and cast as people have become unavailable, but we have on board right now a wonderful group of artists and I’m very happy and glad to be working with them all.
And have there been any positives to come out of the last year?
It gave us time to consider the design and for ideas about the space to percolate. It hopefully also allowed me time to absorb the play and its life and language more deeply than you sometimes can do in a quicker lead in time. Some of the people I most admire working in theatre such as director Sacha Wares sometimes spend a long time on this preparation phase with the text.
Tell us more about the new cast, what are you most looking forward to about working with them?
The cast are a complete delight – all four of them. They are extremely insightful about the play and their characters, and bring passion, intelligence and creativity to the room every day we work together. I feel extremely lucky and I’m excited to see where we go with it.
What would you say to anyone thinking of coming to see Small Change?
Come! Watching this play will be like having one of those strange but wonderful dreams when you wake up and suddenly understand something profound about life!
