[A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE PLAY]
Stephen: I wouldn't say anything about you behind your back.
Julian: You wouldn't?
Stephen: No I wouldn't. Anything I'd say I'd say to your face.
Julian: Oh Yeah? Look at the bags under my eyes. Like what would you say? Is this shirt OK?
Stephen: Yeah.
Julian: It's not.
Stephen: It is.
Julian: But what would you say behind my back?
Stephen: Stop it.
Julian: My hair...
Stephen: I'd say.
Julian: What would you say?
Stephen: I'd say. He's got nothing and he is everything.'
The love story kind of goes like this: Stephen loves Julian, and apparently has for quite some time. Julian is fond of Stephen, but he falls in love with Nell. Nell has been living with Keith, and she is not willing to give him up. Paul is Stephen's best friend, but Julian thinks he is. [We don't really get to know Paul very well, other than he is nice to Stephen when Julian has been mean to him.]
'Mean Tears' is like the best Salinger or Hemingway ever wrote. And the residual feeling towards the characters is overwhelming and lasting. At the end, you just feel so sorry for Stephen. And you feel so angry at Nell for hurting Julian, and so sorry for Julian when she hurts him. And sorry for the both Stephen and Julian, because Julian won't accept the comfort Stephen offers.
[Things get kind of confusing because we have Stephen playing Julian and Christopher playing Stephen. So I am going to refer to Stephen Billington as SB.] One of the critics said SB nailed his part as Julian. Nothing surprising in that, SB always nails his part. But the thing that is hard to accept in this play is that Peter Gill has Nell walk away from SB's Julian. Granted, Julian is a little self-centred at times, but he looked and sounded like SB. No one in their right mind would walk away from SB. Which is why Stephen makes a lot more sense to me. He can't. When push comes to shove, and he has a chance to hurt Julian 'in the only way that would matter' to him, he doesn't. He just gives the knife up to Paul. He loves Julian, and though Julian has hurt him in the past, Stephen can't and won't hurt him back. We love who we love, how they behave does not change that fact.
You can purchase *Mean Tears* in the collection 'Peter Gill: Plays' through amazon.co.uk, by going HERE Definitely a good read. Heartily recommend it. Wish I'd seen it!!!!! [In the first act, the stage directions say, 'Julian begins to sing "Born in the USA"'. Wouldn't you just have loved to have heard Stephen sing that?!?! I sure as heck would have!!!]
Another accurate assessment, 'he is everything'. This time of Stephen!
Peter Gill is a powerful writer. For instance, this passage SB's Julian read to Nell, just because he thought it was 'great':
A very accurate assessment by Julian, wouldn't you say?! Lovely poetry! But I wouldn't want you to think his writing is overly formal. Quite the contrary! All of his dialogue is quick and clever. Very fun. Like this passage:
'Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in Passion's golden purity...
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames...
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing mind, one life, one death,
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation...'
'Julian: What would you say about me behind my back?