Mary Broome

The invaluable Orange Tree has uncovered another Edwardian gem: Allan Monkhouse’s forgotten Mary Broome (1911), which charts the subversive liaison of a young aesthete and a housemaid in a middle-class Manchester family.

Monkhouse, no relation of Bob, was a Guardian critic and literary editor, and a member of the Manchester School in our first repertory company at Mrs Horniman’s Gaiety Theatre. He wrote five plays for them reflecting the social upheavals of the time.

This play, which has elements of Shaw’s Pygmalion and Upstairs, Downstairs, makes you want to see the others, perhaps, instead of yet another revival of the better known Harold Brighouse’s Hobson’s Choice or Stanley Houghton’s Hindle Wakes.

Mary (a tremulous, affecting Katie McGuinness with an accurate Pennine accent that sets her apart) has been “taken advantage of” by Leonard Timbrell (poised, posed, cruel, yet susceptible Jack Farthing, very impressive), a situation that explodes on the morning of another wedding in the family.

Really intriguing is how the mis-matched couple make a decent fist of it before inevitably parting, resisting the censorious fury at home, living in penury – Len is a writer in a trade where “the better you are, the less you make” – and how it all knocks on into his parents’ less than ideal marriage.

Timbrell senior (Michael Lumsden on fine, florid form) is a pillar of society who rounds on his son with, “You dare to suggest, sir, that your mother is no better than your wife?” before terminating his meagre allowance. And Len’s mother, in a nicely judged performance by Eunice Roberts, is not immune to Mary’s position – “There’s something in what these suffrage people say.”

There’s something, too, in the way a play like this still reverberates with older members in the Orange Tree audience, and Auriol Smith’s production follows the serpentine plot twists and subtle arguments with close attention and a finely nuanced sensitivity.