The Play
The novel was adapted for the stage by Ronald Gow, and opened at the Manchester Repertory Theatre in 1934, with Wendy Hiller as Sally Hardcastle. The 'real' speech and contemporary social themes were new to British audiences. One reviewer said it had been "conceived and written in blood." It toured Britain with two separate companies, playing up to three performances a day, sometimes in cinemas in towns which had no theatre. A million people had seen it by the end of 1935. Runs in London, New York and Paris followed, making a name for Wendy Hiller, who married Gow in 1937.
But not all reviewers were impressed: writing in the New Statesman, Sean O'Casey said "there isn't a character in it worth a curse, and there isn't a thought in it worth remembering."
Love on the Dole drew the British public's attention to a social problem in the UK in a similar way that Look Back in Anger, Cathy Come Home or Boys from the Blackstuff would do for future generations (although its style is closer to Hobson's Choice). The historian Stephen Constantine attributed its impact to the way it moved the mostly middle class audiences without blaming them – Gow said he "aimed to touch the heart." In 1999 it was one of the National Theatre's 100 Plays of the Century.
Read more about this topic: Love On The Dole
Famous quotes containing the word play:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“Johnny Clay: You like money. You got a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart. So play it smart. Stay in character and you’ll have money. Plenty of it. George’ll have it and he’ll blow it on you. Probably buy himself a five-cent cigar.
Sherry Peatty: You don’t know me very well, Johnny. I wouldn’t think of letting George throw his money away on cigars.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)