Set on the brink of major social change in the early 1960’s, The York Realist is the poignant love story of two young men from diverse backgrounds, who are being pulled apart by cultural barriers and family allegiances.

After meeting at rehearsals for a local staging of the York Mystery Plays, middle-class theatre director John asks Yorkshire farm labourer George to return with him to London. George is faced with an agonising decision that highlights the depth of family roots and furthermore questions the ownership of art in an England fractured by class.

The York Realist premiered in 2001 at The Lowry, produced by English Touring Theatre, making its London debut at the Royal Court and transferring to the Strand Theatre. It was nominated for Best New Play at the Laurence Olivier Awards and Evening Standard Theatre Awards and won the Critics Circle Award for Best New Play.

The York Realist is staged at the Riverside Studios in the month that its writer, and the theatre’s founder, Peter Gill celebrates his 70th birthday.