When we are Married by J.B. Priestley

Review in the Farnham Herald

From its first performance in 1938, JB Priestley’s When We Are Married has remained a firm favourite and is rarely absent from the stage for long. Many of the social attitudes that the play depicts are of their time, but the comedy is immortal. The latest production by the Tilbourne Players, performed at the Tilford Institute last week, does full justice to it.

No need to recap the plot here, many readers will be familiar with it and those who aren’t can Google it, I’ll just remind you that it revolves around the discovery by three respectable, middle-class Yorkshire couples, celebrating jointly their 25th wedding anniversaries (all married on the same date in the same chapel), that due to a lack of authorization on the part of the officiating minister, they are not married after all. The repercussions of this discovery on their relationships provide endless amusement at the hands of Priestley, a master dramatist who sets out, in the first few minutes of the play, all the information we need to appreciate what’s going to happen, with subplots involving several other characters skillfully woven into the main story.

As the curtain goes up we have a few moments to take in the gloriously well-furnished setting; then straight into the action, as the housemaid Ruby explains to the young visitor Gerald Forbes that there is a celebration going on in the adjoining room, and she launches into a litany of the delicacies being consumed. It’s hard to imagine a mere list of foodstuffs being in itself funny, but Caroline Thompson’s delivery had the audience in stitches from the very start.

At the heart of the story are of course the three couples whose anniversary it is, the host Alderman Joseph Helliwell and his wife Maria (played by David Greenwood and Jane Quicke), Councillor Albert Parker and his wife Annie, (Ellis Nicholls and June Hegarty) and Herbert Soppitt and his wife Clara (David Gow and Sarah Wilson-Soppitt). The characters of the three couples were sharply distinguished, tensions within their outwardly respectable relationships gradually revealed, and long concealed grievances surfaced.

The three men in particular are confident and proud of their status, fully aware of their superiority over anyone not of their class or from their part of the country - Gerald Forbes, being from the South, is the object of particular disdain. The deflation of all three of them, particularly of the aggressively pompous councillor Parker, was a joy to behold. And one could not but admire the calmness with which the young Gerald (Matt Fowler), under fire from that self-righteous trio, took control of the situation and had them virtually grovelling before him.

The women came into their own particularly in the second act, it was delicious to see the tables turned as two of them found themselves able to dictate to their now ex-husbands, as they had been dictated to during their quarter century of marriage. And balancing the reversal of roles, the domineering Clara Soppit as the one member of the trio of wives who had been the dominant partner in her marriage, found herself meekly submitting to her previously submissive husband.

The supporting roles were just as perfectly cast. Bethan Phillips played Nancy Holmes, both charming and mischievous as she responded eagerly to the wooing by Gerald; Maureen Collins was Mrs Northrop the bibulous cook, not averse to a bit of eavesdropping, taking malicious and hilarious delight in telling the three respectable ladies of their changed matrimonial status; Noel Thompson and Ian Wilson-Soppitt were Fred Dyson and Henry Ormonroyd, respectively a sober reporter and inebriated photographer sent by the Yorkshire Argus to record the silver wedding celebration, and finding it less of a celebration than they expected; Susie Gow as the exuberant barmaid Lottie Grady, arriving to spread more embarrassment as she greets the three men as old friends, reminding one of them of a dalliance they had enjoyed together in Blackpool; James Woodley as the Reverend Clement Mercer, cloyingly sanctimonious one moment, and furiously indignant the next.

But although it’s a comedy, and an uproariously funny one at that, the play contains a number of serious moments, as the parties reflect on what might have been; particularly poignant was June Hegarty as Councillor Parker’s wife Annie, responding to her self-satisfied husband’s assurances that he will do his duty and see her all right, with the quietly repeated “Yes Albert”, and ending with the gentle but devastating “You see Albert, after twenty-five years of it, I think I’ve had enough.”

It would be hard to imagine a better team, that we must not forget all the unseen enablers without whom it would not happen above all Hilary Lee-Corbin the director, who has brought about another triumph for the Tilbourne Players.

Bernard Whelan