Season 32 Play 8 – Hindle Wakes by Stanley Houghton
Directed by
Cast
Christopher Hawthorn – Gordon Sugden
Fanny Hawthorn – Anne Crossley
Mrs. Jeffcote – Connie Teale
Nathaniel Jeffcote – Frank Breen
Alan Jeffcote – David Scottow
Sir Timothy Farrar – John Goldsborough
Beatrice Farrar – Bridget Speight
Ada – Anita Town-Jones
Synopsis
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Directors Notes
Some time ago I read an article extolling the virtues of the modern dramatists and their plays. Then it ended with what I thought was a most pungent line – ‘But do not let us forget the good that has gone before!’
We can include ‘Hindle Wakes’ in that category for Stanley Houghton’s play first produced in Miss Horniman’s Theatre, Manchester in 1912 is one cf the celebrated ‘old uns.’ Its lovable North Country setting, rich Yorkshire dialect (Yes, Yorkshire. And why shouldn’t we play it Yorkshire! Our dialect is as good as theirs and comes ‘trippingly on the tongue.’) with a situation that today is considered old fashioned.
It is simply based on a lad’s week-end at Llandudno with a lass who works in his father’s mill.
In 1912 such goings on were wholeheartedly condemned and nothing short of marriage by the pair concerned would put things right.
Mr. Houghton has endeared his play to all theatregoers with his varied yet true characterizations and simple story.
We get the dourness and honesty of Nat Jeffcote contrasting with the stolidity and slowness of Chris Hawthorn, the good-heartedness yet snobbery of Mrs. Jeffcote against the brittleness of Mrs. Hawthorn, and with the youngsters the religious approaching the puritanical of Beatrice, against the courage and forthrightness of Fanny. Tossed about between them is Alan with his vacillating loyalties and weaknesses. Lastly, Sir Timothy Farrar – blunt, aggressive and hypocritical.
This old and lovely play is real vintage theatre. There is no message, no violence, no lurid love-making – just a plain simple tale of Yorkshire folk living their lives in the manner of those days, speaking their honest thoughts in a dialect that is rich in expressiveness and one we seldom hear nowadays. It is supposed to be a Lancashire play but as l’ve said, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be Yorkshire – our dialect we are sure of – pure Lancashire would not come as easy.
Anyway enjoy the play and you older people cast your mind back to days that were more leisurely, days that were tough but rewarding, then, when the curtain comes down, you come upstairs to our theatre-bar and say, ‘By gum, lasses and lads, it were a right treat!’
An afterthought. Wouldn’t it be a right treat for us if we could have seen the then young Sybil Thorndike playing, as she did, the part of Beatrice in the original production in 1912!
