Hindle Wakes
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:11th Sep '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A controversial 1912 classic: one of the first plays in modern British history to feature a female working-class protagonist.
It's holiday week in the Lancashire town of Hindle, just before the First World War. Fanny Hawthorne, a spirited, determined mill girl, has just returned from a weekend in Blackpool with her friend Mary Hollins. At least that's what she tells her parents. In fact, she's been spending the weekend with Alan Jeffcote, a wealthy mill owner's son who is engaged to someone else. When Fanny's parents discover the truth, they set out to ensure that Alan will do the decentthing and marry her – only to discover that Fanny has her own ideas on the matter... One of the first plays to have a working class female protagonist, Hindle Wakes was hugely controversial at the time of its writing.
"An extraordinary piece
impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." What’s On Stage (5 stars)
"A fascinating look into a rarely considered part of our national history
and a fitting way to celebrate [the play’s] 100th anniversary." The Good Review
"In its day Hindle Wakes must have been astonishing, as groundbreaking as A Doll’s House and there is still something rather marvellous about its attacks upon the sexual double standard’" Telegraph
"Houghton's play belongs to an extraordinary period in British drama
And who is to say that, 100 years after Hindle Wakes, we still don't live in a world that has one law for sexually adventurous men and another for women?" Guardian
"Even in these permissive times, the controversy that must have surrounded the play when originally performed in 1912 is clear, and it is impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." What’s On Stage (5 stars)
"Houghton's script is well observed and awake to new and untraced boundaries between classes which had emerged with the suddenness of industrial progress. His work owes a debt to Ibsen, particularly in its then-controversial sexual frankness and proto-feminism, as well as to Chekhov in its neat balancing of the comic and the dramatically truthful." Time Out (London)
"An extraordinary piece
impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." Whats On Stage (5 stars)
"A fascinating look into a rarely considered part of our national history
and a fitting way to celebrate [the plays] 100th anniversary." The Good Review
"In its day Hindle Wakes must have been astonishing, as groundbreaking as A Dolls House and there is still something rather marvellous about its attacks upon the sexual double standard" Telegraph
"Houghton's play belongs to an extraordinary period in British drama
And who is to say that, 100 years after Hindle Wakes, we still don't live in a world that has one law for sexually adventurous men and another for women?" Guardian
"Even in these permissive times, the controversy that must have surrounded the play when originally performed in 1912 is clear, and it is impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." Whats On Stage (5 stars)
"Houghton's script is well observed and awake to new and untraced boundaries between classes which had emerged with the suddenness of industrial progress. His work owes a debt to Ibsen, particularly in its then-controversial sexual frankness and proto-feminism, as well as to Chekhov in its neat balancing of the comic and the dramatically truthful." Time Out (London)
ISBN: 9781849434218
Dimensions: 210mm x 130mm x 5mm
Weight: 118g
112 pages