Chris Hannan's unique depiction of a working class 'heroine' in 1915 Glasgow is one of the key Scottish plays of the 1980s.
The National Theatre of Scotland's revised version in 2006 has reminded audiences of the important place the play and its leading character hold in Scottish theatre history.
First produced at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, on 29 June 1985. Directed by Stephen Unwin.
Phil – Billy McColl
Elizabeth Gordon Quinn – Eileen Nicholas
William Quinn, her husband – Ralph Riach
Aidan Quinn, her son – Duncan Bell
Maura Quinn, her daughter – Frances Lonergan
Mrs Black – Carol Ann Crawford
Mrs Shaw – Irene MacDougall
Other parts – Simon Donald; Bernard Doherty
'I am not the working class: I am Elizabeth Gordon Quinn'.
'I'm afraid when your mother was a girl she swapped her conscience for a toffee apple.
'A kitchen dominated by the presence of a large piano. This should look rather splendid, of course, but out of place. Dirty kitchen pots full of water sit on top of it; and above it there’s a pulley on which clothes are hanging.'
– Act One.
During the Glasgow rent strike of 1915 a proud woman refuses to accept the reality of her poverty.
Elizabeth Gordon Quinn lives in a tenement flat that is bare apart from a piano she can neither afford nor play. She holds on to her pride whatever the cost to herself, her husband, daughter, and deserter son.
'That’s the problem with this family, we’ve got more imagination than we can afford.'
'The Quinns are of course exotics – their language and their selves are fantastic and extreme. But the orotundity of their language is about the energy and imagination required to divert from the actual poverty.'
– Chris Hannan.
'Elizabeth Gordon Quinn' was one of the key plays in a vintage season in Scottish theatre history – at the Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre in 1985. Its heroine is unique in Scottish theatre. She is a 'Marie Antoinette of the slums' – an intriguing tragic-comic figure who revels in her exotic speech as an outsider in tenement life.
Chris Hannan's use of language as a vehicle for the aspirations and imagination of the characters is outstanding.
Many Scottish playwrights have written about working class urban life '8211; but no-one else has conjured up a figure or family quite like this. All the familiar stereotypes of the tenement play are rejected.
'You expect that a play set in the Glasgow rent strike of 1915 will be a model of dour social realism but Chris Hannan's new play confounds all expectations. The result is both startling and provocative.'
– 'The Guardian'.
'Chris Hannan’s monstrous and magnificent heroine ... one of the best women's roles ever to emerge from Scottish theatre.'
– 'The Guardian'.
'With "Elizabeth Gordon Quinn", Hannan created a totally unsentimentalcharacter, unheroic, conservative, and completely uninterested in working-class mass action ... Critics of the first performance seemed divided as to whether the play was a celebration or a covert condemnation of a woman who cries memorably "I refuse to learn how to be poor" ... The diversity of views was both a tribute to the subtlety of Hannan's writing and a reflection of Eileen Nicholas's remarkable performance in the title role.'
– Alasdair Cameron, 'Scot-free'.
© National Library of Scotland 2010