MY RELATIONSHIP WITH JAYNE
by David Mowat
Music by Don Kincaid
Directed by Brian Watson
Cast:
Caroline O'Reilly, Ken Ratcliffe, John Turner
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
The Festival publicity was unusually guarded about My Relationship with Jayne: both Mowat and director Brian Watson specifically asked that its plot should not be revealed, arguing that a straightforward synopsis would give a misleading impression of a play whose interest lay in its underlying complexity.
Its four actors play six roles: Timon, his father and Mr Danny, and Jayne and Deborah, with the doubling itself suggesting a shifting and uncertain world of relationships and identities. The result is less a conventional narrative than an exploration of Timon’s emotional experience and his attempts to define his relationship with Jayne.
PRESS RESPONSE
David Mowat's play produced the widest range of critical reaction. The Sunday Telegraph was the most enthusiastic, admiring its mysterious and surreal qualities and Mowat's treatment of the writer's tendency to turn experience into art; its reviewer concluded that Mowat had not yet completely fulfilled his promise but seemed destined to become one of the leading playwrights of his generation. Garry O'Connor in the Financial Times also found it an "interesting" play, but felt that something was missing, either in the writing or Brian Watson's production, and wondered whether the essentially naturalistic acting had obscured the more elusive, fantastic nature of the piece.
The local critics were similarly divided. Philippa Bryant in the Acton Gazette found the first half painfully slow but thought the second well worth waiting for, particularly praising the subtle humour, Ken Ratcliffe and Caroline O'Reilly, and Watson's imaginative staging. The Thames Valley Times, while recognising the interest of Mowat's theme of writing versus living, thought the play too rambling and disjointed, although it praised Ratcliffe and O'Reilly. The Stage believed the play's chief virtue was its subtle wit but felt that this had been largely obscured in performance. Amateur Stage welcomed Mowat's attempt to find new theatrical forms and particularly enjoyed two strongly comic sequences, but regarded the play largely as an experiment from which it hoped a more completely realised comedy might eventually emerge.
Overall, the critics recognised an ambitious and intriguing piece, rich in ideas and humour, but were uncertain whether its deliberately shifting style had been fully brought under control.
Acton Gazette
The Stage and Television Today
Brentford and Chiswick Times
Financial Times
Sunday Telegraph
Amateur Stage
Thames Valley Times
QUESTORS ARCHIVES
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH JAYNE