Small Change

Small Change by Peter Gill

Writing for The National Times, theatre critic Barry Oakley reviewed La Boite’s first production for 1978, the Australian premiere of English writer Peter Gill’s innovative play Small Change.

He commented on the excellence of Billinghurst’s direction:

Director Rick Billinghurst has orchestrated these complex relationships of form, speech and movement with a masterly sense of rhythm, and his cast perform the difficult self-investigations with great concentration and timing, led by Eileen Beatson’s resigned, powerful reading of the character of the formidable Mrs Hare. [i]

On La Boite’s position artistically in Brisbane, he wrote:

This is an enterprising production from an enterprising theatre, which has consistently shown it offers more than an alternative to the Queensland Theatre Company – if the frontiers of Brisbane drama are going to be extended, it’s in La Boite’s little space that it will happen. While the QTC is planning an unadventurous piece by J.B.Priestley, La Boite will shortly be doing a play by Snoo Wilson who, like Peter Gill, is in the forefront of the British avant-garde.

David Rowbotham however panned the production: “Small Change at La Boite Theatre might be sufficient for an academic crap-game. But it is not likely to obtain a purchase on the public”.[ii]

Writer: Christine Comans