Three of D.H. Lawrence’s greatest dramas will be performed together in one play.
Husbands and Sons, adapted by Ben Power, is coming to The Company of Players’ Little Theatre in Hertford from this Friday.
This terrific play has interwoven Lawrence’s A Collier’s Friday Night, The Daughter in Law, and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (now there’s a spoiler alert).
Together, they describe the community Lawrence came from with fierce tenderness, evoking a now-vanished world of manual labour and working-class pride.
Originally staged as a trilogy at the Royal Court in the 60s, Power has chosen to set the stories against each other in the same play.
Husbands and Sons is set in three households of a mining town that resembles the Eastwood of Lawrence’s childhood.
Each is galvanised by a struggle for vitality. Sons are smothered by mothers, wives fight with their mothers-in-law for their men, husbands and wives pitch into each other, but, above all and in spite of its title, it is a play about the women and how they survive.
The pit provides a living at the same time that it threatens extinction.
Director Jan Palmer Sayer explained: “I think it’s a terrific piece of work. I saw it at the Dorfman in 2015 and I was gripped.
"Here at our little theatre, we have had to stage it rather more simply and use only one set, and not three, which all three families share.
"One miner’s cottage would have been very like another so I hope our audience will accept that they are watching three families superimposed on each other’s sets."
It has certainly proved an ambitious endeavour – 19 actors portraying 20 characters. Bringing them all together for rehearsals has been challenging and sadly ill health has led to one late cast change that has also meant a change to the usual pattern of Saturday last nights.
To compensate and ensure that there is still a choice of eight performances for audiences, Sunday, November 13 has been added to the usual run.
“We have had great fun in the making of this piece,” Jan continued.
“During the last two or three years, meeting and rehearsing in groups of 25 or so has been unheard of, and in offering this production to CoPs, I was passionate about doing something that involved a large (for a change) group of people, united in this important endeavour.
"I was delighted that so many of our existing members have embraced the opportunity to become involved, and equally delighted that the production has attracted new members to the club – some of them under 25 years old! Hurrah!”
Husbands & Sons, directed by Jan Palmer Sayer, runs at The Little Theatre in Hertford on every night from Friday, November 11 to Friday, November 18, starting at 5pm on Sunday, November 13, and 7.45pm on all other nights.
Tickets, which include a welcome drink, programme and coffee and biscuit in the interval, cost £14 for members or £17 for non-members and are available from www.ticketsource.co.uk/cops
Also see the Company of Players’ website www.cops.org.uk for further details, directions and membership information.
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