Chains

Synopsis

In the new sprawling suburbs of pre-First World War London thousands of young men commute six days a week to their clerking lives with no hope of respite until retirement arrives, while their wives struggle to make ends meet. But consternation is caused when one of them announces that he is to emigrate to Australia to find a new life. Will Charlie now leave Lydia and his job, will Maggie go ahead and marry Mr Foster, should Percy commit himself to Sybil? Just what are the chains that bind us to our country, to our families, to our homes and to our work? And how strong are the chains of security when freedom seems to beckon? Elizabeth Baker’s 1909 play captures a world of lower middle class life with all its hopes and fears that is seldom reflected in the theatre of the time.

Our Review:

19 November 2007

This has been a wonderful year at the Orange Tree, with an abundance of interesting discoveries, and the latest “lost” play Chains by Elizabeth Baker (1876-1962) is, at the very least, a valuable companion piece to the Grossmiths’ Mr Pooter and H G Wells’ Mr Polly.

But in its authentic study of life among the lower middle-class suburban population in pre-First World War London, it deals as no play in my experience has ever dealt with the quotidian anxieties of “making ends meet” in the new commuter belt. As a documentary, it is fascinating. As a play, it rambles a little, but bristles with intelligence and sensitivity.

Auriol Smith’s production opens with a line of bowler-hatted clerks crossing the stage in a diagonal in step to some serial music that sounds suspiciously like Philip Glass. This proves a false overture to the more mundane level of conversation between Charley and Lily Wilson: “The day we lose the bathroom, Lil, I’...

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