Peter Gill, the acclaimed playwright and director, has died aged 86. His reputation was forged at the Royal Court theatre in London, where he made his name in 1968 by directing a trilogy of virtually unknown plays by DH Lawrence.
The Lawrence Trilogy
For the first time, said Christopher Hampton, the novelist was revealed as 'one of the alarmingly few really interesting early 20th-century stage writers'. These plays – The Daughter-in-Law (1912), The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (1914) and A Collier's Friday Night (1909) – were unperformed in Lawrence's lifetime, until Gill unlocked their treasures of working-class realism in a Nottingham mining community.
Gill was small, wiry, mercurial, with a piercing sense of purpose and seriousness about his work. He stuck to the Royal Court for many years before launching the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in the mid-1970s. He joined the National Theatre in 1981 to run his own company alongside that of Peter Hall, and also the NT Studio in 1984. He left in 1990.
Career Highlights
His signature play, Small Change (1976), had four actors and four chairs, depicting Welsh working-class life. He returned to the Royal Court in 2002 with The York Realist, a homage to his alma mater. His final stage play was Something in the Air (2022) at the Jermyn Street theatre.
He was appointed OBE in 1980 and elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019. He is survived by five nieces and nephews.
