Love On The Dole - The Play

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.