ELIZABETH GORDON QUINN

COMMENT

The first production in 1985 had three things that were fantastic about it. One was designer Dermot Hayes' stark white set. Given the references to dirt and poverty in the script this was counter-intuitive.

But although the play is set in a tenement it's not a "tenement play". Elizabeth is contesting the reality in which she lives - Dermot's design helped us to focus on this contest. Also, the more attempt there is to create a living-room, the more the piano is liable to look like just another piece of furniture. On a more abstract set it has an aura. Poetry.

The second great thing was the commitment of Eileen Nicholas to the character of Elizabeth.

Eileen is a fiercely intelligent actress but, in addition, she identified with the character. She was brought up by working-class members of the Communist Party. It was pretty unusual in 1950s Glasgow to belong to an optimistic household which believed in the future happiness of the working-class once the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established; it would have been a minority belief in 1950s Soviet Union, I imagine.

Her childhood was as happy as a Soviet pioneer's but when she was confronted with the part of Elizabeth Gordon Quinn she was able to make a very strong connection with a woman who had an alternative belief-system to those around her. She didn't see the character as an eccentric, at least she didn't play her that way; she grounded Elizabeth's detachment from reality in a rock-like certainty. She really was wonderful.

The third glory of the production was Ralph Riach as her husband. The depth of his love for Elizabeth was awesome. When he withstood her verbal destruction of him at the end of the first half, and then took his leave of her saying, "I cannot be both your clown and your husband", he left the audience in tears.

I rewrote the play for John Tiffany's 2006 National Theatre of Scotland production which I very much enjoyed. The revisions were a lot about expanding the roles of characters around Elizabeth - Aidan (Robin Laing), Maura (Lesley Hart) and, in particular, Mrs Black (Myra McFadyen)

One of the reasons for building up Mrs Black's role in the play is because she is everything Elizabeth is trying to deny. Elizabeth doesn't want to imagine she has anything at all in common with this woman. She's her hated double. I wanted to tease out the hugely dramatic possibility that if Elizabeth were to identify with another human being she might actually change, and the revised play now builds to a climax in Scene 9 where Elizabeth has a moment of humble identification with Mrs. Black on the tenement stair. Myra McFadyen and Cara Kelly were magnificent in that scene. And for me that moment is now the core of the play.