Love on the Dole

Impressive - Laura Chandler as Sally Hardcastle

Review from The Fiction Stroker - TV, Books and Live Event Reviews

Love on the Dole – LIVE!

Posted on January 28, 2014

Regular readers of this blog may remember that the last time I encountered Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole I was less than enamored with it. I found Greenwood’s tale of the poverty stricken Hanky Park slums near Salford to be a bit wearing and in some cases downright irritating. It’s been a while since my original delve into Greenwood’s world though – possibly time enough for me to have mellowed?

It is Love on the Dole’s resonant themes that have made the story something of a modern classic. Greenwood’s story was a response to the crippling unemployment affecting the area and follows the Hardcastle family as they are pulled apart – sound familiar at all? Swap out Hanky Park for elsewhere in Manchester and the industrial way of life for call centres and you’re not a million miles away from where we stand today.

This version by the Altrincham Garrick is rather special. Not only is it part of their Centenary season, but is written by Ronald Gow, a founder member of the Garrick. Gow’s adaptation was also notably turned into a film with both screen and stage versions taking the country by storm. With relatively few ‘classic’ Northern plays to choose from, Love on the Dole has endured and stands as a fitting tribute to Gow’s impact on the theatre landscape.

Despite Gow’s adaptation being written in 1934, it’s lost surprisingly little of its punch eighty years on. Of note are Laura Chandler’s Sally and Ashley Ball’s Harry. Young and tempestuous, their anger is barely contained at Hanky Park’s continued poverty. Both long for material possessions to subvert their working class position, much to the ire of proud father Henry (Graham Simmonds) wounding his pride – already an outdated notion in 1934 and positively archaic now. Simmonds performance is masterful, with a deep-seated vein of shame at accepting help buried among his irascible anger.

The company provide much of the community feel – much of them passing each other in the street on Margaret Norris’s superbly designed stage is straight out of classic Coronation Street. Modern audiences may well assume that the unholy triad of Mrs. Jike, Dorbell and Bull (Val Watkinson, Pat Williamson and Mags Johnson) are based on Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst with their gossiping and general hi-jinx. Older audiences however will no doubt nod with how utterly authentic the ladies performances are.

It’s a smaller scale type of poverty than in Greenwood’s book. Only one character really comes out the other side as a winner, for the rest there is no winning in Hanky Park – just surviving. This stage version sanitises this a little bit with more slapstick humour breaking up the grim outlook. In part it works, but Love on the Dole has an important tale to tell, no matter how grim the consequences. Maureen Casket’s direction is at it’s best when aping kitchen sink drama - confrontational scenes towards the end of the second Act are pitched nicely with some sharp intakes of breath from the audience.

Time will tell for Love on the Dole whether or not we look back at it as a charmingly quaint reminder of a bygone age. For now though, it acts as a timely and still relevant discourse of life on the bread line. Looking past my feelings towards Greenwood’s story, you have a solid, rudely stylish and confident production awaiting you at the Altrincham Garrick this week – a production that ironically enough is perhaps the most relevant of their Centenary season.

The Fiction Stroker gives Love on the Dole four strokes out of five

 

 

NODA Review

Author: Kevin Proctor


Even though this adapted novel was voted one of the 100 Best Plays of the Twentieth Century, ‘Love on the Dole’ is one of those works that we might have heard of or known from the 1941 film starring Deborah Kerr but are unlikely to have actually seen.  It presents a timely reminder that however bad the current recession might be, double dip or not, it is a cakewalk compared to the Depression of the early 1930s, where the dole could be withdrawn leaving families to enter the workhouse or starve.

The majority of the play is set in the cramped living space of the Hardcastle family home, we gradually see their possessions disappear throughout the play as they’re (suggestively) pawned for the little they’re worth. The Hardcastle’s are from Salford's dire "’Anky Park", who are working class and proud of it.

The central figure is the strapping Sally Hardcastle, well played by Laura Chandler - in a role I wouldn’t normally expect to see her portray which is always refreshing. Sally becomes the bedrock on which the household rely, her soul kept together by love for Rhys Nuttall's political agitator Larry Meath. I did find their relationship slightly difficult to believe as their connection didn’t have the spark needed to drive the play, the two often stood holding and swinging their hands as they spoke to one another which conveyed more of a childlike/twee relationship than adoring love, however, both performances as individuals had vitality!

Mirroring their courtship is that between Sally’s younger brother Harry and his girlfriend Helen (Ashley Ball and Jessica Brooks). I very much enjoyed Ashley’s performance and am pleased to see another new face in a Garrick drama, a competent young actor who certainly holds his own.

Through the play, there is much to try this family. Indeed, they sometimes appeared to be wending their way through an early pilot for Coronation Street, not helped by some melodramatic plotting.
Direction by Maureen Casket was sometimes hard to pin point, I was unsure whether she’d instructed some of the players pacing and fidgeting hands as it often didn’t marry with what was going on.

Sarah (the Mother), played by Janet Slade, is burdened by a trio of self-proclaimed friends who do a good imitation of a cackling coven of witches. The others suffer unemployment, pregnancy, delayed marriages, hunger, death and in the final reckoning, a fate much worse even than that, at the hands of the local backstreet bookmaker, Nick Sample as Sam Grundy.

The set was an impressive, traditional design - though I, personally, think a more contemporary and up to date model would have rocketed this piece out of the dated category making the production furnished for an audience of today.

At its best, Love on the Dole is a heart-rending family story that reminds us how lucky we are to be living in our own time.

This slightly over fussy revival might have ensured that the play's impact had all of the power that must have been present for those who saw it when life really was like this (and it wowed around a million people in the year or so after it was first performed). Even so, much of the sheer desperation of these blighted Northerners still shone through. The final and most poignant moment in the play as Sarah and Henry are left alone was my highlight, how they shared a moment of hope and painted a positive picture of their future!

 

Audience Figures: Attendance 2028 - Approx 84%