JOHN
by David Mowat
Directed by David Mowat
Cast:
David Champion, Stanley Goodchild, Alexandra Gwynn, Michael Haines, Liz Parravicini, Yasuko Suzuki
THE AUTHOR
Born in Cairo in 1943, David Mowat was a British playwright, director and composer. By 1971 he had already had twelve plays performed, eight of them professionally, and five published by Calder and Boyars.
The Questors played an important part in his early career, sponsoring him for an Arts Council New Drama Bursary in 1970 and presenting three of his plays in successive New Plays Festivals: The Others (1970), John (1971) and My Relationship with Jayne (1973).
His work frequently explored characters confronting primitive instincts and unsettling forces beneath apparently ordinary behaviour. The Questors later staged The Midnight Sun in 1983 and The Almas in 1989. Mowat also worked in television and film and continued writing for the theatre until his death in 2004.
THE PLAY
John is an intimate five-character drama involving John, Vince, Glenys, Charles and Anna. Although presented in a compellingly naturalistic form, it continued Mowat’s characteristic exploration of what James Saunders called “the primitive borderline just this side of the unconscious”: the unstable territory beneath ordinary behaviour in which fear, desire and violence begin to surface.
The production, directed by Mowat himself with Peter Whelan as associate director, used music ranging from Bach’s St John Passion to contemporary composers, together with spoken Japanese, suggesting a drama shaped as much by atmosphere, ritual and submerged emotion as by conventional narrative.
PHOTOS
PRESS RESPONSE
Most reviewers found David Mowat’s John baffling, overlong and insufficiently communicative. Its extended wordless opening was repeatedly criticised, while the catatonic central character, the unexplained disappearance of his mother and the eccentric behaviour of the household left many critics uncertain about the play’s intentions. L.G.S. in The Stage dismissed it as a repetitive three-hour tale that badly needed cutting by an independent director; the Twickenham Chronicle similarly felt that its sparse dialogue and prolonged silences made it seem even longer. N.S. in the Brentford & Chiswick Times thought the dialogue artificial and concluded that the play “promised everything and amounted to nothing.”
There were nevertheless signs of a more intriguing work beneath the obscurity. N.H. in Amateur Stage called it irritating and baffling but also “curiously haunting,” recognising Mowat’s ear for dialogue and character while regretting his decision to direct the play himself. The local press praised David Champion’s difficult, virtually wordless performance as John and Alexandra Gwynn’s Anna.
Most strikingly, Walter Lucas in Drama Quarterly strongly dissented from the prevailing view, finding the play rich in humanity and compassion and admiring Mowat’s oblique, many-sided presentation of character. For Lucas, John established Mowat as a genuine playwright of promise; for most of the other critics, its underlying ideas remained concealed by its length and deliberate lack of explanation.
Amateur Stage
The Stage and Television Today
The Middlesex County Times
The Twickenham Chronicle
The Brentford and Chiswick Times
QUESTORS ARCHIVES
BLEACH