MAKESHIFTS AND REALITIES
A triple bill of Makeshifts and Realities by Gertrude Robins, and Honour Thy Father by H. M. Harwood.
Directed by Melissa Dunne.
Presented by Andrew Maunder for Aardvark Theatre in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.
“Men fight shy of girls like me. They think we’re too clever.”
Makeshifts and Realities, a triple bill of one-act plays unseen in London for almost one hundred years, opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 8 August 2023 (Press Nights: Thursday, 10 August 2023 and Friday, 11 August 2023 at 7.30pm).
Makeshifts by Gertrude Robins
A London suburb, 1908.
Two unmarried sisters, Caroline and Dorothy, face uncertain futures unless they can find husbands. They have suitors, but are these vulgar, manipulative, dull men really what they want? How far must they compromise in order to survive? Or are they better off throwing aside convention and striving for independent lives?
Realities by Gertrude Robins
It’s two years later in the same setting. We catch up with Caroline as she reviews the choices she has made. But, when a figure from the past reappears, she starts to doubt the decision she made…
Makeshifts and Realities are a moving and unexpectedly humorous look at the sexual double-standards and the pressures imposed on women in the early twentieth century. First performed by Annie Horniman’s Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, Makeshifts and Realities saw female playwright Gertrude Robins acclaimed as an important new talent, ranking alongside her contemporaries George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Cecily Hamilton and Stanley Houghton.
Honour Thy Father by H. M. Harwood
1912. An upper-class English family, ruined by the father’s gambling habit, have fled to Bruges where they live in exile in straitened circumstances. They anxiously await a visit from their eldest daughter, Claire, an independent woman whose career provides them with their only income. Family relations are already strained and resentful, but a chance meeting with a visitor with an inclination for blackmail plunges them into chaos and recrimination – with devastating results…
Honour Thy Father was one of the most controversial plays of the day, unflinching in its exposure of male hypocrisy and of women driven to desperate measures to survive. Refused a license for public performance until 1934, it was first performed privately by the Pioneer Players in 1912, directed by Edith Craig, the daughter of leading actor and previous resident of Finborough Road, Ellen Terry.
This production contains sexual references and sensitive subject matter.
Playwright of Makeshifts and Realities, Gertrude Robins (1880-1917) was a dramatist, actor and pioneer aviatrix. She was already well-known as a performer when Makeshifts, her very first play, premiered to great acclaim in 1908 at the ground-breaking Gaiety Theatre, Manchester. Artistic Director Annie Horniman called it “one of the best one-act plays…performed at my theatre.”Makeshifts went on to receive thousands of performances all over the world. Its sequel Realities premiered in Manchester in 1911. Her subsequent plays included After the Case, (1909), Loving as We Do (1914) and the Ibsen-influenced The Plaything (1914). Despite her considerable success, Gertrude Robins is now little-known. Her playwriting career was cut short by tuberculosis, and she died aged just 37 in 1917.
Playwright of Honour Thy Father, H.M. Harwood (1874-1959) was a fixture of the West End from 1910 to 1940. His string of successes included Please Help Emily (1916), Theodore & Co, written with Ivor Novello (1916), A Social Convenience (1921), Eileen (1922), Excelsior (1923), The Golden Calf (1927), A Girl’s Best Friend (1929). The Man in Possession (1930), Lady Jane (1934), The Old Folks at Home (1934), These Mortals (1935), Promise (1936), So Far and No Father (1937) and The Innocent Party (1937). Some of Harwood’s most successful work was written with his wife, the celebrated novelist F. Tennyson Jesse (1888-1958). Their plays together included the horror drama The Mask (1915), Billeted (1917), The Hotel Mouse (1921), The Pelican (1924), How to be Healthy Though Married (1930), and A Pin to See the Peepshow (1948), a controversial adaptation of Tennyson Jesse’s 1934 novel about the infamous Edith Thompson-Frederick Bywaters murder case of 1922. Harwood was also a journalist and a screenwriter. His films included Queen Christina for Greta Garbo.
Director Melissa Dunne returns to the Finborough Theatre where she directed Cicely Hamilton’s Just to Get Married, named in The Observer’s ‘Best Theatre Of 2017’ list, and Masterpieces by Sarah Daniels. Melissa is a director, writer and dramaturg for theatre. Direction includes Lola, and Dangerous Lenses (Vault Festival), staged readings of Phantom of Normality and The Drive (The Yard), and I’m Not Jesus Christ (Theatre N16). Writing includes Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands (Vault Festival). She is Artistic Director of Papercut Theatre. She is a Lecturer at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where she teaches on the MA Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media. She has read scripts for the National Theatre, Bush theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Graeae Theatre and Verity Bargate Award and the Soho Theatre among others. Her work explores social inequality and intersectional feminism.
Producer Andrew Maunder’s productions at the Finborough Theatre include the world premiere of Robert Graves’ But it Still Goes On, the first London production since 1944 of St John Ervine’s Jane Clegg, and, most recently, the first London production since 1926 of Kate O’Brien’s Distinguished Villa. He also teaches at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the author of British Theatre and the Great War 1914-1919 (2016), R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, A Guide (2017) and Enid Blyton’s A Literary Life (2021).
Finborough Theatre
118 Finborough Rd, London SW10 9ED, United Kingdom