Makeshifts and Realities – Finborough Theatre, London

Writers: Gertrude Robins and HM Harwood

Director: Melissa Dunne

Three for the price of one! Director Melissa Dunne’s production brings together Makeshifts and Realities, two short plays by Gertrude Robins, with Honour Thy Father by HM Harwood. All three were written and are set in the early years of the 20th Century and their common theme is the struggles by women to lead independent lives.

Makeshifts sees two sisters considering their options for the future. Sharp-tongued Dolly (Poppy Allen-Quarmby) is a teaching assistant at an infants’ school and the quieter Caroline (Philippa Quinn) is a domestic servant. Two potential suitors come into their lives: Henry (Akshay Sharan) is meek and brings the sisters sweets, while Albert (Joe Eyre) is brash, boastful and seen as a much more exciting catch. However, Albert’s visit proves teasing when he eventually announces his betrothal to a better connected woman, Rose. So, should the sisters remain independent or should one of them grasp the makeshift option of marrying Henry?

Moving forwards two years, Realities begins with Caroline and Henry married and parents to a baby son. Caroline receives a visit from Rose (Beth Lilly) who turns out to be a sneering social climber, obsessed with material possessions, She gives the first hint that her marriage to Albert may not be going well and this is confirmed later when Albert himself calls on the couple, very drunk. Maybe Henry was not second best after all.

The ironically titled Honour Thy Father is set in Bruges, the city in which a bankrupt upper class English family is effectively exiled. The patriarch, Edward (Andrew Hawkins) is a pompous hypocrite who is addicted to gambling. His long suffering wife, Jane (Suzan Sylvester) struggles as best she can to manage finances, but the family depends on support from older daughter Claire (Allen-Quarmby), who had stayed behind in London to earn her own living.

The fact that this play was banned from being performed in public for many years after it was written gives a strong clue as to the source of Claire’s earnings, a shocker indeed for post-Edwardian England. In exposing the double standards of well-to-do society, Harwood enters territory explored around a decade earlier by George Bernard Shaw in Mrs Warren’s Profession, but the play makes its own points about the sacrifices that women make in order to forge independent lives.

Dunne’s staging is carefully paced, finely detailed and beautifully acted. The production is enriched by Carla Joy Evans’ period costume designs and sets designs by Alex Marker, which make imaginative use of a space that can often be difficult. If understanding the past helps us to understand the present, these three plays, seen together, provide an absorbing and eye-opening account of our social history.

Runs until 2 September 2023