The Fight for Barbara

Synopsis

When Barbara Tressidor leaves her wealthy husband and elopes to Italy with the son of a coal miner she has known for only three weeks, she sparks a scandal which strikes at the whole of polite. British society and has a huge impact on her titled family. In this comedy, each of the affected parties makes their way to the isolated Italian villa to do battle in the fight for Barbara. Their displays of jealousy, incomprehension, common sense and emotion are charged with the humour and pathos of real life. Whether Barbara will be persuaded to act with her head or her heart is uncertain until the very end.

Our Review:

14 July 2003

D H Lawrence had the ability to write like an angel and to bore for England. The Fight for Barbara shows evidence of both. Billed by the author himself as a 'comedy', the play is heavily drawn from his own early domestic life with Frieda, formerly Baroness von Richthofen, in north Italy.

The play finds us in familiar Lawrentian territory: Jimmy Wesson, the scion of coal-mining stock and bearer of the sacred life-force, has run away with Barbara Tressider, the daughter of an aristocratic family, who has left her husband to live in straitened circumstances in an Italian Villa.

The first half consists in the main of ponderous dialogue a world away from the badinage of Design for Living, with which this play is in repertory in Bath. 'You want to swallow me and take my will away', is a fair example of the conservation tinkling here among the coffee cups.

Rebecca Hall fizzes with vivacity - and talent - as the frankly infuriatin...

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