a new play by Paul Godfrey
directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Bristol Old Vic
Luck was on my side again. Phyllida Lloyd became associate director at the Bristol Old Vic. Notwithstanding the difficulties of our our most recent collaboration at Cheltenham, our friendship had grown, and this new step in her career presented an opportunity — several, as it turned out — to develop out working relationship, this time on a new play.
Inventing A New Colour had been presented in a one-off performance earlier in the year at the National Theatre studio, and this production in the studio space at BOV was to be its proper premiere. It was a lyrical play, a four-hander set during the Second World War, about a family — Mother, Father, teenage son — who take in a young refugee from the London Blitz. Phyllida assembled a cracking quartet of actors — Sam Kelly and Valerie Lillie as the parents, Simon Gregor and Nicholas Hewitson as the boys. The production eventually made its way to the Royal Court Upstairs.
There was no budget for me to compose anything, so Phyllida set me the task of finding something atmospheric to cradle the play. I have no idea how I came to Peter Maxwell Davies’ chamber piece Image, Reflection, Shadow, then comparatively new; it had been premiered only six years before. Until running across it, I had found the composer’s work unapproachable, but I found this piece captivating. It had a powerful influence on me, which I can now hear in the chamber music I began to write many years later.
