Independent Means - Library Theatre - 28/10/08 by Julia Taylor

Seeing Chris Honer’s revival of Stanley Houghton’s ‘Independent Means’ written after Hindle Wakes, is like watching a new play. In these times of falling shares prices, it is easy to understand the money problems faced by the people in a feminist comedy that is almost a hundred years old.

The figure, 100, is a very important reason why the play was chosen. For it marks the centenary of Annie Horniman’s ownership of the Gaiety Theatre, and the establishment of the first repertory company. The theatre became associated with the ‘Manchester School of playwrights’ of which Stanley Houghton was a prominent member.

I am amazed at how modern the humour is and can’t understand why it has been kept under wraps for so long. It’s a delightfully light, humorous piece with general appeal. The play opens in the fictitious town of Salchester where prominent business man, John Forsyth is, for the first time in his life, experiencing problems with his investments.

Well-known actor, Rupert Frazer plays a man who finds his new situation difficult to bear and, in one expertly portrayed scene, gets drunk! He adores his son, Edgar, and the first hint of trouble comes when he can’t afford to buy him a car.

Edgar’s new wife, Sidney is pivotal to the plot. Ruth Gibson illustrates well the drive of a woman who sees the crisis as a way of becoming financially independent, unheard of in the early twentieth century. She is feisty, self-willed, Socialist and a suffragette, a fact only discovered by her husband, a conservative in both senses of the word, on their rain-soaked honeymoon.

Geoff Breton’s Edgar, can only look on in bemusement as his wife attempts to use typing skills to rescue them financially. That typewriter has emotions of its own! The other wife, Edgar’s mother, gives Olwen May the chance to portray poignantly, a woman of dignity, without love, whose ultimate humiliation is the loss of her home.

Not only is this play enjoyable, it is relevant to modern people suffering the credit crunch. Now it has been removed from the attic, I hope that ‘Independent Means’ will be performed, not just by professionals but by amateur societies, the length and breadth of the country.