World Premiere: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Written by Robert Tressell
Adapted by Howard Brenton
Minerva Theatre, Chichester, until 26 August
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist: L-R, Finbar Lynch, Thomas Morrison and Larry Dann. Photo: Helen Warner
The world premiere of a play about the short, unhappy lives of Edwardian working men and women has opened at the Minerva Theatre.
Based on Robert Tressell’s grim, political novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists shows how the capitalist system of the time exploited its workers.
Too close to home for comfort for this member of a modern union, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist comes from the same subversive genre as Oklahoma and Grapes of Wrath. Both of these played during high summer at Chichester last year and, in different ways, depicted the harsh realities of life and death for the working classes of America.
I’m less enthused about The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists than I was over last summer’s partnership. This year, Howard Brenton’s adaptation of the Tressell novel sits alongside Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s witty masterpiece about turning a flower girl into someone who can be passed off as a duchess.
The title is the most ‘catchy’ thing about The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. A member of the audience, overheard in the interval, harrumphed: “A left wing harangue about things we know already.” A peal of laughter burst out; much needed laughter because this play lacks the moments of release that Oklahoma provides in such abundance. Even the Grapes of Wrath provides moments of levity.
As any guest speaker knows, when you’re presenting a serious lecture, give your audience a chance to build up steam, and then to let their breath out. In general, the characters lack development; and where subtlety would work better, the acting and direction tends towards hamming things up.
Yes, it is true that the Edwardian period brought harsh times for many. And perhaps they are a metaphor for our own economical times. All the same, I sincerely hope that humanity has learned something from history.
The play opens with a veritable caricature of a typically modern, upwardly mobile couple looking over an old Edwardian building, and buying it for a song from an elderly woman who needs the money in retirement. We are then spun back in time to an earlier refurbishment of the building, and see the plight of the painters and decorators who are employed to fudge, budge and smudge as best they can.
L-R: Will Beer, Tim Frances and Dean Ashton in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Photo: Helen Warner.
The author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was himself a painter and decorator, born Robert Noonan, and he wrote just one book before he died a pauper at the age of 41.
His piece de resistance focused on those ‘foolish’ philanthropists who give over their lives, their hopes, and their ethics to pander to their canny employers. In Tressell’s eyes, they have little choice. Locked into circumstances that abort or pervert natural creative urges, they take what they can get, and toady up to their ‘betters’ to stay alive.
A genuinely amusing interlude in the play uses a loaf of bread to depict how the capitalist system takes bread from its workers’ fingers and makes them pay for it time and time again.
The costuming and design throughout the play is cleverly done, with the house metamorphosing into a mini ‘Brighton Pavilion’, despite the ‘bodging’ and ‘splodging’ process to cut costs.
The cast includes a finely drawn Finbar Lynch as the quietly watchful, socialist decorator, Frank Owen; his life in the play mirrored by the author’s life. Of particular note, however, is Larry Dann (Oh What a Lovely War), who brings the character of veteran worker, Joe Philpott, to life, although his demise within the play is over- contrived, along with a couple of other rather too graphic deaths.
A co-production with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists plays at the Minerva Theatre until 26th August.
Book for The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists here.
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