What links hetero and homo love? Both, according to Peter Gill in this astute double bill, are freighted with sexual and class-based apprehension.
Gill's two plays make for a short evening, but they prove that his writing has the same incisive clarity as his productions. Lovely Evening, written for radio, is a real treasure. The setting is Cardiff in the 1950s. All that happens is that Laurence, who lives with his father and uncle, goes out on a summer date with his fellow council worker, Marion. They stroll round Cardiff Castle, enjoy a fumble in the bushes and tentatively agree to meet for tea the following Sunday. Nothing could be simpler - yet Gill conjures up a whole world of rationed pleasure and corseted restriction.
As in David Lodge's How Far Can You Go?, the comedy stems from the tension between male desire and female circumspection. Benjamin Davies's Laurence craftily takes his mac with him on a summer stroll, while Nia Roberts's Marion, achingly sexy in cotton dress and white shoes, strictly guards her no-go territory.
But Gill suggests sex is constantly shadowed by religion and class. Laurence, who comes from a family of Catholic dockers, is haunted by the confessional and the middle-class pretensions of Marion's mum, with her Festival of Britain lounge curtains. Nothing is overstated - yet, in Daniel Evans's debut production as part of the exiled Young Vic's Direct Action season, you get an exact sense both of the limitations of 1950s life and the joy in small delights.
With In the Blue, written in 1985, we seem to be in totally different territory: a series of fraught encounters between Michael, a bookish hospital auxiliary, and Stewart, a boozing drifter. They are irresistibly drawn to each other, yet, as Michael explores the possibilities of their relationship, you realise that cultural and social differences prevent permanent bonding. Gay men, implies Gill, suffer exactly the same social and emotional inequalities as straight couples.
Paul Rattray as Stewart shrewdly suggests that he craves commitment far more than Toby Dantzic's educated Michael. But, while the actors are excellent, I miss the Lawrentian detail of Lovely Evening. As he showed in his masterpiece, The York Realist, Gill believes that sexual relationships are shaped by class and context. At his best, Gill supplies the hard evidence; with In the Blue, he leaves a bit too much to our powers of deduction.
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