Yorkshire dates for Townsend Productions' We Will Be Free!

On 31 January Townsend Productions’ Winter/Spring production of We Will Be Free! opens at Barnsley Civic at the start of a tour that takes in nearly 40 venues – theatres, arts centres, memorial halls and union headquarters – before finishing at the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond in May. Between Barnsley and Richmond, We Will be Free! plays four further Yorkshire venues.

The company’s immensely successful tours of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists brought the Labour movement’s most iconic piece of literature to a modern audience. Now producer/director Louise Townsend and writer/actor/musician Neil Gore have turned to one of the movement’s most iconic historical events: the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

Ironically, trades unions had finally been made legal a few years before the formation of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers in Dorset in 1832. When a local landowner sought to suppress the society by law, all that was available was an out-of-date law relating to the swearing of oaths to each other.

Gore delights in telling how this led to the release of the Martyrs when it was discovered that the Orange Order swore oaths similarly and the King’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, was a member and had sworn the oath. Thus the men of Dorset were brought back from the Antipodes to save the Duke from prison!

We Will be Free! was a major success at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, with at least two reviewers using the word “charming” about it. Rather an odd word for a piece of left-wing agitprop, I surmise, but Neil puts me right on that. The play focuses on George Loveless, Methodist preacher and leader of the men who included his brother and brother-in-law, and his wife Betsy. Neil explains:

“It’s very personal, as much a love story as a political narrative. We know very little about Betsy Loveless, about any of the wives or mothers, just a couple of signatures on letters. What I’ve tried to do is to tell the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs as seen from Betsy’s point of view.”

In many respects, We Will be Free! follows the model of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It’s a two-hander, Gore and Charlotte Powell playing George and Betsy and whatever other parts are needed. The story is told by songs as well as dialogue and action: traditional songs, new songs, songs of loss and love, all of them, according to Neil, “folk songs”. Acting as musical director is the great John Kirkpatrick, accordion virtuoso and legend of the folk scene, who has arranged songs for accordion, mandolin, flute and violin, and brought a wealth of knowledge of traditional song and dance.

We Will be Free! connects with the folk traditions that would still have been strong in the 1830s. The hook for the play is the Mummers’ Play, with the characters having their mumming counterparts. George Loveless, of course, is St. George and Betsy the King’s daughter – and there’s no shortage of villains for St. George to slay, such as Sir Slasher, aka the landlord who opposed the movement.

All of this makes We Will be Free! sound like a jolly good entertainment – and, judging from its Edinburgh reviews and the appeal of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, it should certainly be that. But don’t mistake the serious purpose. Neil describes George’s story as “heart-rending” and gives me enough details to prove his point: the six-month journey to Australia, separation from his comrades as the only one to go to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), the attempts to keep him there by reuniting him with Betsy, the landowner who concealed his pardon from him. After he eventually sees the news in an old newspaper, the play, at least, ends on the happy, if low-key, note of his return to England.

And, as he takes the character of George Loveless from the Florence Nightingale Memorial Hall to Brookes University to Dorchester Corn Exchange, Neil Gore will be writing. Townsend Productions have another tour scheduled for Autumn and this time the subject will be much more contemporary: the case of the Shrewsbury 24, pickets (most famously, Ricky Tomlinson) arrested and, in some cases, imprisoned during the 1972 building trades dispute. The campaign for justice for the 24 still goes on. That of the Tolpuddle Martyrs ended in justice of a sort 170-odd years ago, but lacks nothing in relevance today.

We Will be Free! tours to the following Yorkshire venues:

31 January – Civic, Barnsley

6-8 February – Harrogate Theatre

6 March – Hull Truck Theatre

18 March – Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

3 April – The Carriageworks, Leeds

4 May – Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond