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Jonathan Miller
‘Rutherford and Son’ is a moving, memorable play with deep human tensions and stories that span millennia and continents. Written in 1912 by Githa Sowerby it is being presented by the Halifax-based Northern Broadsides theatre company in a powerful production directed by Jonathan Miller and a cast led by Barrie Rutter.
In many senses ‘Rutherford and Son’ is a feminist play, so long as that term is not understood in any constricted way; it is a socialist play. Set around Gateshead it has parallels with Ena Lamont Stewart’s ‘Men Should Weep’ though that is set some decades later in Glasgow during the depression. Whilst ‘Men Should Weep’ is about the struggles of working class families in a tenement, ‘Rutherford and Son’ is about a wealthy family dominated by a man who sought to raise his family, in his eyes, up the class ladder as well as to wealth and happiness – at the cost of love.
There are also, perhaps surprisingly, parallels with ‘Mary Poppins’, also set during the depression, which deals with some similar themes of family tension, of feminism and of fathers effectively absent from their families through an obsession with work and deep, realistic fears of the alternative – poverty. All three authors drew heavily on their own life experiences, from where else?
The Australian author of the Mary Poppins’ stories was PL Travers whose father was a bank manager and was demoted to bank clerk. She knew the effects on families of bank failures and indeed bank insolvency. Githa Sowerby, author of ‘Rutherford and Son’, was herself the daughter of a man who became, in succession to his father, manager of a glass works, for a while. For George Banks, the father in the ‘Mary Poppins’ stories, there is ultimate redemption for him and his family; it is notable that Travers’s father died when she was quite young and, for all his faults, seems to have been much loved. For Rutherford there is not much redemption, certainly in relation to his own children; I guess this character is drawn more on Sowerby’s grandfather.
The production is spellbinding and the set is well designed and built for travel. Of course there are weaknesses and we each perceive them differently. I did not find the character or portrayal of Dick, the son who enters the church, convincing. He cowers too much. After four years of theology Dick might have been content with Christ’s teaching of ‘render unto Caesar what is Caeser’s’ and see his father for what he was. If there is not the spine of true conviction then there might be more recoil of disgust at his father’s views and actions; disgust after all is itself a moral high-ground and plenty of scope for that within this action.
For me much of the play is about the importance of both economic and social exchanges, money and love, and the interactions between these. I think it would be wrong to read it solely as about the devastating effects of the absence of love, though there is plenty of that. And Mrs Henderson goes on too long, though with great verve. She makes critical advances in the plot, yet so.
As it stands, this powerful production is on tour only in England (touring essentially what the English call ‘the North’, and London – well, be gentle, they call the rest of the world ‘overseas’). Barrie Rutter, the driving force as actor and manager of Northern Broadsides trained at RSAMD and I rather presume he already plans to bring it to Scotland someday if he could only find funding. The splendid new Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock, surrounded with the devastations of those and much later years, has iconic architecture to match the scale of this piece, including the big family houses that were built from the sugar, tobacco and therefore slave trades. That would be a fine and fitting setting.
Meantime there is much to be said for seeing this play in its natural habitat – I saw it in Halifax at the Viaduct Theatre, reminiscent of the Traverse (perhaps especially in its earlier days when I knew it best) and indeed the company has played at the Traverse. One of the underlying themes of the play is that ‘Yorkshire does not travel well’ yet the play has succeeded in different productions including London and New York and has been translated into several languages.
It was an instant success in 1912 though it took a few years before the identity of Sowerby as a woman was revealed. ‘Men Should Weep’ travelled fine to London and elsewhere (I saw it at the Southbank National Theatre that Jonathan Miller is now so critical of, with cause). And there lies a fine point. Jonathan Miller is but 78 and has recently been highly critical of ageism in the arts. Well done Rutter for having the insight to recruit him.
This timely production of a brilliant play deserves the spread of debate. I hope it will come to Scotland. And I hope it may come first to Greenock.
Angus Skinner is a former chief social work inspector for Scotland
