Other Worlds (NHB Modern Plays)

'If the French do come, it'll be on a night like this.' A gorilla is taken for a French spy by an eighteenth-century fishing community on the isolated North Yorkshire coast. Robert Holman's play explores the suspicions, antipathies and fears of the unknown that divide communities, and the bonds that can transcend those divisions. In the end 'we're equal when we die, except f'the coffin'. Other Worlds was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May 1983, directed by Richard Wilson.

Robert Holman is a renowned and celebrated playwright in British Theatre. His plays include: Mud (Royal Court Theatre, 1974); German Skerries (Bush Theatre, 1977, and revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, 2016); Rooting (Traverse Theatre, 1979); Other Worlds (Royal Court Theatre, 1980); Today (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1984); The Overgrown Path (Royal Court Theatre, 1985); Making Noise Quietly (Bush Theatre, 1987, and revived at the Donmar Warehouse, 2012); Across Oka (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1988); Rafts and Dreams (Royal Court Theatre, 1990); Bad Weather (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1998); Holes in the Skin (Chichester Festival Theatre, 2003); Jonah and Otto (Royal Exchange Theatre, 2008, and revived at the Park Theatre, 2014); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, co-written with David Eldridge and Simon Stephens (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, 2010); and A Breakfast of Eels (Print Room at the Coronet, 2015). He has also written a novel, The Amish Landscape.