Reader Reviews
When We Are Married (Liverpool Playhouse, Liverpool)
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 | This production of J B Priestley's play When We Are Married (seen in Leeds) should be compulsory viewing, for it is guaranteed to lift the spirits of anyone who sees it! And despite the fact that the play itself makes no bones whatsoever about being set in the Yorkshire of the early 1900s, amidst a group of chapel-going people with important positions in the local community and for whom middle class respectability is paramount, its exploration of marital relationships still strikes a very loud chord – particularly, it seems, amongst those who have themselves been married for a significant length of time! It is not only what the play has to say that makes it so alive for us today, however - the way it is said is just as important, for the piece is full of humour of a kind which, as it is based on the foibles of human nature and the ups and downs of interpersonal relationships, will never become out of date. And that humour is superbly captured in this production, so that you start laughing almost from the first moment and when you leave the theatre at the end of the show you still have a very broad smile on your face! Colin Richmond's detailed set, complete with wooden armchairs and a sofa that are upholstered in a number of different fabrics, a piano and numerous ornaments, family photographs and pot plants, is superbly in period and makes ingenious use of a transparent back wall to let us see the stairs and dining-room beyond the sitting-room where the action takes place. Before the start of each half of the performance, and in between the scenes, appropriate brass band music is played and a distinctive Yorkshire touch is reserved for the curtain calls. There are fine performances from the entire cast. The mild-mannered Herbert Soppitt, as played by Les Dennis, is so completely under the thumb of his battleaxe of a wife Clara (Polly Hemingway) that we can scarce forebear to cheer when he finally turns the tables on her, and we share the delight of Gabrielle Lloyd's Annie Parker when she believes she can assume a new independence from her domineering and pompous husband Albert. Eileen O'Brien shines as the charwoman, Mrs Northrop, whose knowledge that the Helliwells (her employers), Soppits and Parkers share her own working-class origins makes her unafraid to challenge them, whilst Tom Georgeson is excellent as the drunken photographer whose own marital circumstances provide the pivot on which the plot resolution turns. This play is in some senses a satire on the kind of society it depicts and indeed on the institution of marriage itself. Despite this satirical aspect, however, and even though a wry twist threatens to restore the status quo, it is also a beautifully observed comedy of manners with a very warm heart. And you could not hope to see a finer production of it than this one, so I strongly urge you to catch it if you can! - Janet Polson | 27 Apr 09 |
