When We Are Married

THIS production is in safe hands – the hands of master-playwright JB Priestley and of veteran director Sonia Collyer. Sonia has been involved with the New Forest Players for more than half a century and directed the same play almost 25 years ago. Her sure touch is just one of the assets that contributes to this excellent production.

Set in darkest Yorkshire in 1908, the story is of three aggressively respectable couples married in the same chapel on the same day, who discover at their joint Silver Wedding celebration that due to a technicality, they were not legally married and have been living in sin for the last 25 years. Priestley skilfully extracts all possible mileage from the situation, and throws in a few extra complications before an unlikely deus ex machina resolves the imbroglio, which nevertheless has left three marriages changed for ever.

It is a very Northern play: one character is regarded as ‘la-di-da’ because his name is Gerald, he’s a Southerner and, worst of all, he has creases in his trousers. It has to be played in broad Yorkshire, and the cast’s accents are all believable and well-sustained – no small achievement for soft Southerners.

Of the six major roles, Lolly Seager is formidable as Clara Soppitt and puts as much contempt into the simple words ‘the club’ as Edith Evans ever imparted to ‘a handbag’. Martin Pitman gives a fine comic performance as her dominated husband, Herbert, especially his expression when he finds that he may not be married to the dreadful Clara after all.

However, the worm turns, as it does in the marriage of Albert and Annie Parker. Albert is simply insufferable, a pompous bully and hypocrite; Alan Ponting is, I am sure, a most delightful fellow, so it is a compliment to say that his playing of the character is utterly convincing. Susie Hirst as Annie looks too young and pretty to play someone who has been married to such a boor for 25 years, but she carries off well the one moment when there is real pathos in the play, as she looks forward to all the things she has missed through being married to stuffy, stingy Albert.

The characters of Joseph and Maria Helliwell, the hosts of the disastrous party, are not nearly so well developed, so it is a tougher deal for the actors playing those roles. Jane Sykes as Maria never quite makes the part her own and is the one member of the cast to present some audibility problems. Dennis Eason has the advantage for playing Joseph of a slight physical resemblance to that professional Yorkshireman, Michael Parkinson, but he is almost too genial and it is not always easy to believe in his outbursts of anger. He was also the actor who seemed least comfortable with his lines, but he was not the only offender – for a society of the distinction of the New Forest Players, there were too many prompts throughout.

Without exception, the minor parts are well played, with particularly strong cameos from Maureen Beven as rebellious cook Mrs Northrop, and Terry Langford’s bibulous photographer, Henry Ormonroyd.

The staging is a real curate’s egg. Furniture, pictures and props are all spot-on for the Edwardian period, but the wallpaper is more 1950s, and if you use cigars wrapped in anachronistic cellophane, make sure the lights don’t reflect off it. But it is a tribute to the strength of the cast and the production that such details do not detract from the feeling, as one leaves the theatre, that it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience.