God, what a title. The Gathered Leaves. It sounds like a tremulous weepie about grief and endurance with a closing scene featuring three anvil-faced spinsters staring through the rectory window at an autumn bonfire. It’s not quite like that.
The play opens with some clumsy exposition revealing the political chronology. It’s Easter, 1997, and Labour’s shiny-fanged messiah is about to evict the Brixton mule from Downing Street. We meet the Pennington family, a high Tory clan nestling in a frondy corner of the Thames Valley, who are eager to heal an ancient rift. Their estranged daughter and her mixed-race sprog have been skulking in France for the past 17 years. They’re coming back. But when they return to the bosom of the family they get the bazooka. Grumpy old William, outraged that the arrivals have delayed his supper, blasts them with a spurt of ice-cold rage. It’s a horrible and fascinating start.
The play evolves into a masterful portrait of sophisticated posh folk coping with an interlocking series of crises. Horrid old William (played by Clive Francis) softens up a bit and manages to bond with his granddaughter over a litre of single malt. Adult siblings, Emily and Simon, bicker and peck at each other like an elderly married couple. Matriarchal Olivia (Jane Asher) watches over her sparring brood with a taut, weary smile. What raises the melodrama above the commonplace is the relationship between the middle-aged brothers.
Giles is a sleek but unhappily married doctor whose role in the family is to defend and protect his autistic brother. Samuel has a sky-high IQ and a puppyish, saintly personality. His interests are childishly random. He immerses himself in novels for hours on end and he loves to observe and collect ladybirds which he exhibits to passers-by with an explanatory lecture about their breeding habits.
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