The women trapped by brutal husbands working in the colliery stand on the brink of ruination from mining accidents, impending strikes, the cruel work hours that destroyed men’s bodies, and always the shadow of poverty.

Like early Eugene O’Neill, the stage-minded Lawrence of 1911 to 1913, when these plays were written, aimed at naked social realism. Before they were rediscovered and staged, Lawrence’s dramas were an obscure part of his output, and now they risk being too dated to be vital.

The misery of being a woman in Nottinghamshire back when coal was king forms the preoccupation of Husbands and Sons, a composite of three one-act plays by D. In short: an almost claustrophobic look at the tensions within a tight mining community.Julia Ford & Lloyd Hutchinson. All the domestic activities of eating, washing, dressing served to underpin the enclosed atmosphere within each house and separate them from the mine outside, as each family played out their own power struggle. I enjoyed the use of mime to show the ritual of donning hats and coats, which seems to punctuate each family's area. Lizzie Holroyd is torn between her errant husband and an attentive suitor.Īlthough three hours in length, the play moved smoothly on and the three families gave the evening a sense of momentum as the focus moved amongst them. Lydia Lambert is awaiting the arrival of her student son, who she idolises at the expense of her husband. Unfortunately for her, the presence of her mother-in -law looms large over her son. Minnie Gascoigne, newly married to Lucas, has filled her house with more genteel touches. In each household are waiting the women of the house. As the miners walk through the mist across the stage, it is possible to imagine them coming up into the daylight from the dusty depths below. The mine itself is ever present with a huge metal frame which is lowered and raised to signify the mine.

The staging allows us to see the community as a whole with different areas of the stage given over to each family. We are presented with the stories of three different mining families: The Lamberts, Gascoignes and the Holroyds. Husbands and Sons takes us to the mining villages where D H Lawrence was brought up and has been created by merging three separate plays : A Collier’s Friday Night, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Daughter-in-Law.They were not originally written to be seen together and DH Lawrence did not in fact ever see them staged.The result is a look into a whole mining community, in 1911. A co-production with the National Theatre.

Husbands and Sons by D.H. Lawrence