Peter Gill, the acclaimed playwright and director, has died at the age of 86. His agent, Mel Kenyon, confirmed the news on Monday, paying tribute to a career marked by 'rare emotional delicacy' and work that was 'beautifully observed and finely tuned'. Director Michael Grandage, who devoted a season to Gill's plays in 2002, described his 'contribution to the British theatre' as 'quietly seismic'.
From Actor to Director
Gill began his career as an actor at London's Royal Court in 1958, while still in his teens. Over the next six years, he appeared in notable productions including Silvius opposite Vanessa Redgrave's Rosalind in Michael Elliott's lauded RSC staging of As You Like It, and took several roles in the British premiere of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Uncertain of his acting strengths, he shifted to directing, encouraged by Royal Court artistic director George Devine, who took him on as an assistant director. Gill would go on to stage as many as 100 productions, beginning in 1965 with A Collier's Friday Night by DH Lawrence, a writer he championed. He revived the play in 1968 as part of a trilogy of Lawrence's neglected mining plays, adding The Daughter-in-Law and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, and later staged The Merry-Go-Round in 1973.
Riverside Studios and the National Theatre
In 1976, Gill became the first artistic director of Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, where he staged productions such as The Cherry Orchard with Eleanor Bron, Julie Covington, and Michael Elphick, and The Changeling with Brian Cox and Robert Lindsay. He also established an international programme and the Riverside theatre studio, a series of actors' workshops to foster a company spirit.
In 1980, he became associate director at the National Theatre, where in 1984 he set up the National Theatre Studio to give playwrights and directors space to develop new work. He remained with the National until 1997, directing productions including Christopher Hampton's Tales from Hollywood with Michael Gambon, Billie Whitelaw, and Ian McDiarmid; Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd with Ian McKellen, Michael Pennington, and Jane Lapotaire; and Harley Granville-Barker's The Voysey Inheritance with Dominic West and Julian Glover. He also staged plays by Chekhov, Pinter, Orton, Shaw, Mamet, and Hare.
A Playwright of Ordinary Lives
Gill's own plays were equally impressive. His first, The Sleepers Den, about a family falling apart in a claustrophobic Cardiff slum, was produced in 1965 and starred Eileen Atkins. He returned repeatedly to the working-class Catholic Wales of his childhood, drawing out the extraordinary in ordinary lives and frequently focusing on male relationships, gay or otherwise.
Subsequent works included Over Gardens Out, about two teenage tearaways, and Small Change, a coming-of-age tale about two Cardiff boys, which he staged three times. In the Blue, an expressionist play about two gay men, was written to blur the line between reality and fantasy.
Later Works and Legacy
In 2002, Michael Grandage devoted a month-long season to Gill's plays in Sheffield, including the premiere of Original Sin, about an upwardly mobile Victorian street boy, and revivals of Small Change, Kick for Touch, Mean Tears, and Friendly Fire. The York Realist, staged by English Touring Theatre in 2002 before a West End run, examined the class system through an affair between a Yorkshire farmer and a London theatre director. Guardian critic Michael Billington ranked it among the best plays of the 21st century. His other later plays included Versailles, As Good a Time as Any, and Something in the Air.
Gill was appointed OBE in 1980 and published his book Apprenticeship in 2008. Kenyon said Gill 'loved actors and acting' and added: 'Whenever we talked, I walked away a wiser person … He was a singular man, a kind, generous and curious man. I will miss him greatly.' Tamara Harvey, co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, said Gill's 'unerring ability to capture the complexity of human existence will live on in his writing but he will, nevertheless, be deeply missed'.
Gill is survived by his nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his brothers Bernard and Paul, and his sister Mary.
