When We Are Married, New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme - review and pictures
You don't have to wait for the full cast's exhuberant, knees-up delivery of 'Oh, We Do Like to be Beside the Seaside' at the finale to find echoes of an Edwardian variety show in this Northern Broadsides version of the J B Priestley classic. They're there from the beginning.
Voices boom, gestures are exaggerated, characters and plot are hammed up to the max. It's as though the members of the Lane End Chapel Choir who belted out such a reeight gran' Messiah a' t' end o' November have left Cleckleywyke for a week's turn putting on a farce at the end of Blackpool pier.
Three couples, now pillars of the community in their Yorkshire woollen town, have gathered to celebrate their joint silver wedding anniversary only to discover that the young parson who married them had omitted to sign a key document and the ceremonies were not technically legal.
Big deal, a contemporary audience might think. But to Councillor Albert Parker in 1908 "Marriage is an institution and still going strong today because it's the backbone of decent life." More to the point, along with Alderman Joseph Helliwell and Herbert Soppitt he realises that he has been "living in sin" and is horrified at the scandal which will ensue if word gets out.
Cue desperate attempts to reverse their decision to fire the chapel organist and source of the disclosure -- "A la-di-da southerner in a pink shirt and knitted tie called Gerald." They've got to silence Mrs Northrop too -- the kitchen-skivvy-with-attitude who has overheard all. And there's a photographer from the Yorkshire Argus as determined to photograph the happy anniversary as he is on emptying the port and whiskey decanters.
The fear of scandal eventually gives way to a dawning realisation that the 'misfortune' could also be seen as an opportunity. Hen-pecked Herbert fledges his wings and finds he can stand up to the woman who is no longer his wife. The 'wives' confront 'husbands' they are now free to declare dull and dreary, skinflint, or unfaithful.
This is the comic focal point of the play, as the smugness and hypocrisy of the central characters is exposed and challenged. And it remains funny after all these decades and social changes. No need for sexting emails and snapchats. But unlike Priestley's An Inspector Calls, the challenge packs no moral punch and evaporates in a patsy end-of-pier ending which leaves no lasting impact.
This Northern Broadsides production is high energy, high volume, and unmistakeably Yorkshire. The packed house in the potteries responded warmly but for me the shrieking maid, bellowing Alderman, and staggering photographer with an ever-redder nose was simply too much in a play wearing thin on substance.
Runs until Saturday.
By John Hargreaves
