revew: Ben Power – Husbands & Sons
Husbands & Sons/
by DH Lawrence/
adapted by Ben Power/
dir Marianne Elliott/
design Bunny Christie/
prod National Theatre & Royal Exchange Theatre/
The Royal Exchange/
19 Feb – 19 Mar 2016//
4 Essays I Won’t Write About Husbands & Sons
That Monstrous Mother: earth and homestead in Husbands & Sons
‘when you invade the bowels of the earth, it sticks to you’
/the great swallow of the earth/ in the opening/ the filth that comes from mining/ invades everywhere/ opposes the homes the women keep/ some symmetry/ their trad roles as women/ as carers/ washers and cleaners/ the earth (the mine) gives them something to care for (the men)/ gives them something to clean (the soot)/ parallels to ideas of the monstrous female body/ which leaks and swells and produces/ there is a symbiosis/ between the women of this community/ and the mine, the earth, the filth/ all female, containing shapes and spaces/ hollows/ men invading and keeping empty the lives of the women/ keeping them in their roles//
The Ghosts Who Walk: the legacy and echo of masculinity in Husbands & Sons
‘dark spectres, who drift occasionally in and across the space’
/what is it that we call a man/ and to what extent are the men of Husbands & Sons a universal/ or a specific/ type of ‘man’/ they are recognised as men/ they abide then still by the laws we hold for manhood today/ but we put them onstage and present them as a relic/ and we do it all over telly too/ theres a legacy/ that makes this work intelligible/ its spectral/ cue Derrida/ the men are presented to us as both familiar and alien/ as present and absent/ they haunt us/ but they can only haunt us because we understand in some way what they are//
No Heaven For Us: damnation and purgatory in the working class of Husbands & Sons
‘swallowed by the earth, but not taken’
/the community of Eastwood are bound/ serf-like/ to the land/ as much as anything/ because we don’t actually see or hear from anyone above them/ theyre alluded to/ but their presence is an abstract ideological effect on the physical world of work and strike/ they descend into the earth and labour/ delving further and further deeper/ at greater and greater risk/ or remain on the surface/ keeping all as exactly so as they can/ there is one character, Ernest, who exceeds that/ but he does not escape/ is bound just as much to his mother, his family, his background/ I can imagine a sequel in which Ernest perishes/ Eastwood exhibits Inferno and Purgatorio/ but no Paradiso//
An Exploding Woman: powderkegs of female restraint in Husbands & Sons
‘the women of the play occupy their empty houses silently, or look on at their men, as if marvelling at how these clumsy, hardened things took over their lives’
/the extent to which the wives of Husbands & Sons are exempt/ they participate in next to nothing that happens beyond their homes/ no dances/ no pub/ they scrub/ they exist/ they tidy up after the men/ and care for the kids/ but there are moments/ brief and unlasting ones/ where Lizzie Holroyd lusts after Blackmore/ and plans to run away/ where Minnie Gascoigne disappears to Manchester/ spending every last penny of her money/ but these acts bring the women back around to femininity/ Gascoigne has no money/ her plan to force her husband to support her/ Holroyds husband dies/ she is wracked with guilt and sends Blackmore away/ an explosion/ a transgression/ causes a cave-in/ and a continuation of the trap//