Reviews

Click here for a review from David Porter (also published in the EDP, here shown on his personal website).

Thank you to Rob Fradley-Wilde for his generous appreciation on the Maddermarket's Facebook page, as below:

May I submit here a few words to express my appreciation for Monday night's entertainment at the Maddermarket, watching When We Are Married.

This was one of the most enjoyable evenings I've spent for a long time. On a clean and intelligently-designed double-set, played credible characters from the Yorkshire of a century ago, bringing us a picture of struggling but eventually [on the whole] succeeding humanity, that we could all relate to with sympathy as well as laughter.

Being half-Yorkshire myself I can say that although the accents very occasionally just missed the mark, the manners and attitudes added to the text were totally authentic – credit both to the acting and to the thoughtful direction by Genevieve that guided the changing energies of the situations clearly and smoothly – the play seemed well-poised, always, at every stage. The full auditorium was a good place to be: we were absorbed from the outset, identifying at once with practically every new character, and laughing and feeling with them.
Good casting was there in plain view; but the actors built their parts very well indeed – the smaller roles mostly gave the impression of being large ones. One or two spontaneous acclamations of individual tours de force could not be repressed by this enthusiastic audience, and several others very nearly made it to the surface.

I don't want to say too much about personal performances for fear of implying lesser excellence in others, which would be misleading, for the peripheral characters were mostly very strong and engaging – which we knew to expect from the 'old hands', of course, but also received gladly from the young element; but one just has to praise especially those at the core, the three couples, who while displaying accurately the male and female contemporary cultural typification, yet gave us fascinating contrasts between the individual characters: each was a foil to any of the others, as and when appropriate.

Thank you, to everyone involved, costume and tech and all; a famous and always well-loved Priestley play done more than justice. If you haven't done so already, go and see this production!