James Karas
There is no play by D. H.
Lawrence called Husbands and Sons but if go to the National Theatre in London
you will see parts of three of his plays performed together on the same stage.
Ben Power has taken A Collier’s Friday Night, The Daughter-in-Law and The
Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd and adapted them so that each play can be
performed in a different area of the stage. We jump from the story of one
family to the other seamlessly and the three stories are told fully.
The result is riveting theatre as
we get a terrifying picture of life in a coal mining community in northern
England early in the twentieth century. It reflects on the roots of Lawrence
himself whose father and grandfather were miners.
The Company of Husbands & Sons. Photo by
Manuel Harlan
Lizzie Holroyd (Anne-Marie Duff)
is married to Charlie (Martin Marquez) an abusive and foulmouthed drunkard who
picks fights and comes home beaten up. He is unbearable. She has the
electrician Blackmore (Philip McGinley) visiting and he says he is in love with
her. She is torn between loyalty to her husband and attraction to Blackmore.
Walter Lambert (Lloyd Hutchinson)
is another drunk. His wife Lydia (Julia Ford) must deal with him and her two children:
her growing daughter Nellie (Tala Gouveia) and her son Ernest (Johnny Gibbon)
who goes to college and is in love with Maggie (Cassie Bradley).
In the Gascoigne family, Minnie
(Louise Brealey) despises her husband Luther (Joe Armstrong) because he is a
gutless lump of coal. He is in trouble because he has left a woman pregnant and
her mother wants to hush up the whole thing for a price.
These are the central conflicts
that the three families face. Even though the title of the play is Husbands and Sons the most powerful and
interesting characters are women. Anne-Marie Duff is outstanding as Mrs.
Holroyd who has endured physical and emotional abuse and cannot tear herself
away from her husband.
Julia Ford as Mrs. Lambert is a
woman that must endure the pain of separation from her son who confides in and wants
to be with his girlfriend to the exclusion of his mother. Her husband feels
left out and is accordingly bitter.
Louise Brealey gives a tough and
snappy Minnie. She wants her husband to be a man and not a dishrag and goes to
great efforts to change him. Mrs. Gascoigne (Susan Brown), Luther’s mother is
another tower of strength who must deal with a rebellious daughter-in-law and
her two sons.
The cast provides powerful,
dramatic and moving performances. What at first blush appears like an impossible
attempt to put the stories of the three families on stage at once and rotate
the action among them, turns out to be a triumph of staging, directing and
performance.
Director Marianne Elliott does a masterful
job of creating the tense and dramatic atmosphere of the mining community, the
love, the abuse, the fear, the pain and the struggle to survive.
Lawrence’s plays are rarely seen.
This production should act as a sharp reminder to theater companies that they
are denying us the chance to see some extraordinary drama.
__________
Husbands and Sons
adapted by Ben Power from D. H. Lawrence’s A Collier’s Friday Night,
The
Daughter-in-Law and The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd continues
at the Dorfman Theatre in the National Theatre, South Bank, London, England. http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/
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