Happy Depths of a Homophobe

Happy Depths of a Homophobe examines different attempts to escape from a constricting life. The principal characters’ lives intersect in London, on a Greek island and in Russia. Unemployed actor Luke, married to school teacher Meg, in the park with his infant son meets Suzie, recovering from a breakdown. A free spirit, she enables Luke to find ‘a kind of freedom’. In a bid to save his marriage, Luke books a family holiday on a Greek island.

At a men-only pond, elderly and celibate Mark, befriended by Harold, psychologist and long married, breaks free of what soon proves to be an unsettling friendship by taking a holiday coincidentally on the same Greek island as Luke. There Mark befriends the young man and his family. A heatwave tests relationships and brings memories. Mark recalls childhood abuse. Luke separates from Meg. Miranda, a foreign resident on the island, writes her Island Tales about the island’s foreign community, which are interwoven into the main narrative.

Meanwhile another bather at the men-only pond, Russian asylum seeker, nicknamed Nijinsky, a mineralogist, becomes homeless and mentally ill. Richard, a solicitor obsessed with Nijinsky and wanting to help him, goes to Russia hoping to learn why he sought asylum. Mark, returned from the island and having learned of Harold’s death, also tries to help the disturbed and disturbing Russian.

THE AUTHOR
A playwright and translator, Peter Tegel’s works include Blim at School and Poet of the Anemones at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. His performed translations include Baal by Brecht and The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman, both by The Royal Shakespeare Company, and Rozovsky’s Strider at The National Theatre.

He has written numerous radio plays, which have been broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and abroad. They include The So What Club, Rocklife, Men’s Group, and The Well of Life. His play Happy Depths of a Homophobe, broadcast by Radio 3 with Derek Jacobi as Mark, is an adaptation of part of his novel of the same title.