Writer: J.B. Priestley
Director: Tim Sheader
Donmar Warehouse Artistic Director Tim Sheader scored a conspicuous triumph last Christmas with the musical Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, which attracted rave reviews and six Olivier nominations. Expectations are therefore high for this season’s revival of J.B. Priestley’s sharp-eyed, 1908-set comedy, When We Are Married.
This production, neatly aligned with Sheader’s recurring interest in individuals trapped and defined by social institutions, does not quite reach the standard set last year. But a stellar cast delivers a breezily funny revival, finely judged in its balance of warmth, fine cameos, and just enough sulphurous fury to keep the laughs edged with menace. Barring one anachronistic choice of song (rarely can Beyoncé have raised such a laugh), Sheader sensibly eschews the temptation to reimagine the piece from too much of a modern perspective, leaving the farce and a couple of neatly packaged fourth-wall-breaking musical-hall songs to do the heavy lifting. The production is not revelatory, but it is tremendous fun.
Three upright Yorkshire couples, smug self-satisfied pillars of the local community, assemble to mark the silver anniversary of their joint wedding day with a feast of roast pork and trifle. A visitor arrives in the form of a new Church organist and “la-di-da” southerner, Gerald Forbes (Reuban Joseph on fine fettle), whom the male halves of each couple are trying to bully into bluff, small-town Northern respectability.
Forbes, who has a yearning for one of the men’s fun-loving nieces, Nancy (Rowan Robinson, just the right side of teenage ditsy), reveals that none of them is, in fact, married at all, due to a mix-up with their celebrant’s papers. When the legal foundation disappears, the emotional truth of each couple’s relationship surfaces, and the discovery detonates some carefully constructed deceits. Cue blustering husbands, panicking wives (the cackling women occasionally remind one of Macbeth’s weird sisters) and the unexpected arrival of a former mistress.
Timid, henpecked Herbert (Jim Howick) and acidly domineering battleaxe Clara (Samantha Spiro turns up her nose as if she has a bag of rotting offal hanging underneath) live lives of mismatched compromise. Unexpected marital freedom allows Herbert the opportunity to assert his manhood, but will he take it? A mirror image appears in the form of pompous, tedious, miserly Albert (Marc Wootton), whose long-suffering wife, Annie (Sophie Thompson), literally overflowing with joy at the prospect of unexpected autonomy, may or may not find the courage to choose her own path.
Hosts for the day are Joseph (John Hodgkinson), who has a colourful past and carries his title as town Alderman as if it were a wartime medal, and his ambitious, status-conscious wife, Maria (a fantastic Siobhan Finneran, whose shock of grey hair over a black and white dress makes her look like a Bradford Cruella de Vil).
Add to the mix the sodden and gloriously indiscreet housekeeper, Mrs Northrop (Janice Connolly), whose delight in puncturing her employers’ pomposity offers some cathartic belly-laughs, and a gloriously physical cameo from Ron Cook’s intoxicated Yorkshire Argus photographer, Henry Ormonroyd. Tori Allen-Martin turns up as Joseph’s former seaside dalliance, Lottie, who scents opportunities now that her erstwhile squeeze is apparently available. Leo Wringer’s exasperated Reverend attempts to bring order to chaos.
Peter McKintosh’s set delivers a sepia-toned Arts and Crafts-style drawing room in a dazzling array of canary yellows, mustards and light browns. What is probably the biggest aspidistra in the world stretches from the stage high into the circle. Costume designer Anna Fleischle has immense fun with the men’s odd taste in checked suits.
Beneath the farce, When We Are Married mounts a pointed critique of marriage as habit, status, and mutual self-deception, and of the gulf between the relationships people perform in public and the ones they actually endure in private. Once suspects that, if he were writing now, rather than just toying with the power dynamics of his characters, he might be more determined to question the function of the institution of marriage itself. At heart, this is a profoundly conservative piece.
Still, Sheader finds plenty to say to modern audiences in a production – puncturing the pomposity of the self-regarding few remains a thing that titillates. As one of the act-opening music hall numbers insists, ‘a little bit of what you fancy does you good’, which essentially sums up this production’s appeal. When We Are Married is Priestley without too much of a sermon, oozing straightforward Christmas-time comfort.
Runs until 7 February 2025
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
80%
Stellar Priestly revival.