Gundog: (Modern Plays)

About the Book

“Land beneath our feet. Got all our blood inside it hasn’t it? All that time. Belongs to us.”

On a farm in the middle of nowhere, sisters Becky and Anna try to hold their family together after the death of their mother. Time is always moving somewhere – but here it’s very quiet.
When they discover a stranger wandering aimlessly across the land, the three establish an unlikely partnership in their determination to survive.

Simon Longman's Royal Court debut premiered at the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in February 2018.

About the Author :
Simon Longman is a playwright from the West Midlands. His plays include Patient Light (Eastern Angles); Island Town (Paines Plough); Gundog (Royal Court); Rails (TBTL); White Sky (RWCMD/Royal Court); Sparks (Old Red Lion); Milked (Pentabus Theatre Company). He is the recipient of the 49th George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright and has previously won the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme. His work has been translated and produced internationally. He is represented by Judy Daish Associates.

Review :
A moving new play about the importance of family . . . a beautifully low-key family drama that purrs with feeling. . . . Simon Longman's sparkling new play . . . Longman's dialogue flows like water: it's natural and fresh and ripples with energy. . . . packed with subtle moments that brim with bruised meaning. . . . the despair and joy, loneliness and connection, which family can provide is bundled up in the very fabric of this show. Words pour out in a torrent in this new play by former Royal Court Young Writer Simon Longman. . . . A funny, dreamlike, but also achingly sad, new play about loss, hurt and the ties that bind us. “Capturing the restless uncertainty of youth with realistic undertones and yet presented with a gentle sense of surrealism, Milked is a play that delivers on several levels." Longman plays with the past and present and the unchanging cycles that tie the family to the land. This is a compelling, unforgiving glimpse into rural life, and one in which there is not a single fluffy, gambolling lamb in sight. The flinty humour that glints through Longman's script is evident from the opening scene . . . With a fine, rhythmic insistence, [the play] eloquently raises many existential questions . . . [T]he author has firm control of the poetry and humour. If one definition of talent is the ability to dictate the terms on which an audience receives your work, Longman must be accounted a playwright of distinct promise. [A]n earthy immediacy and prickly dialogue [A]n unlikely humour that makes me think of Chekhov, muddied over with the realities of 21st century rural poverty . . . Longman's Royal Court debut is a powerful antidote to chirpy, 'The Archers'-style depictions of 21st century agriculture as a problem that can be solved with organic sausage roll enterprises or positive thinking. Becky and Anna know they're out of step with the times and [Longman's] play captures their slow disintegration as the world keeps turning. The scenario is surreal, the writing pithy, often poetic, with echoes of Beckett and Caryl Churchill Longman, a former writer in residence at rural touring company Pentabus, has an evident affinity for the agrarian - the seasons and cycles of life, the intermingling of blood and soil . . . Longman's writing has a woozy, dreamlike quality