Other Worlds

Robert Holman's play Other Worlds is a historical drama set in an eighteenth-century fishing community on the isolated North Yorkshire coast, during the time of a threatened invasion by France. It was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 6 May 1983. The play is set near the village of Fylingthorpe and the small town of Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast, in July 1797, and (in Act Two) twenty years earlier. When a boat is wrecked off the coast during a ferocious storm, the locals fear that it signals the start of a long-expected French invasion - and a gorilla found wandering on the beach is taken for a French spy. Simmering beneath the unrest and paranoia is a decades-old feud between the local fishing and farming communities, fuelled by suspicion and class rivalry, and a deep-rooted fear of the unknown. The premiere production was directed by Richard Wilson, and performed by Paul Copley, Paul Luty, Anita Carey, John Holmes, Rosemary Leach, Juliet Stevenson, Jim Broadbent, Lesley Dunlop and Peter O'Farrell.