There is a similar range possible in the cast size of the play. While the doubling as suggested by the original production makes conceptual sense (as well as economic sense), I would love to see a production in which Leonie, Miss Latrobe, and the MC were played by additional cast members. This would provide two distinct advantages: it would accentuate the doubling of Tom/Rick which is valuable insofar as Coral sees both Tom and Rick as her lost son; and it would provide a handful more fairies to permeate the play, to wreak joy and despair on the holidaymakers in the same apparently arbitrary way that nature does in life. In particular the storm scene of III iv asks for a deluge of fairies and panoply of effects. And while, in keeping with the naïve production style, which the opening scene (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) seems to demand, these effects can be produced by thunder sheets, wind and rain machines, wind fans, water pistols and so on (ideally all clearly visible), there is every reason why they might also be reinforced by the modern technology of sound tapes, lighting effects, ‘flying’ fairies and so on. The maximum chaos here finds its natural and deeply touching counterpoise in the tranquillity of the following scene which ends the first half of the play. A bigger cast would add reinforcements to the hotel guests, campers, and school students who people other scenes. And I was particularly taken by the idea of hinting at the possibility that the malevolent campers of III iii might also be fairies. A good-sized band of mischievous fairies has indeed a delicious if expensive appeal.

It is a rare work, too, that has within it the flexibility to be interpreted in a variety of ways. I believe a great work is one that will continue to be produced beyond its time. A criterion of this continued life is the universality of the subject matter, the capacity of the themes to speak to any place at any time, and in turn to be reinterpreted in terms of any place and any time. The central subjects of Away – regeneration, recreation, restoration, resolution and resignation – are universal ones which find some of their most profound expression in Shakespeare, from whom Gow draws his inspiration.