Katie Mitchell directed a gripping production of Thomas Heywood’s domestic tragedy in its correct period (1603) for the RSC in 1992. She now directs it again, this time giving it a feminist slant and updating it to the early 20th century, a time when suffragettes, like the heroine, refused to eat and died. The play was notable in its day because it was about ordinary people. There are two plots. The main story concerns a middle class marriage ruined by the wife’s adultery with a man her husband had befriended. They are caught in flagrante delicto and banished. The sub-plot concerns a neurotic aristocrat who loses all his money. A wicked lord pays his debts and expects the man’s sister to pay him back in kind. The sub-plot suffers badly because it is very difficult to understand what Leo Bill’s aristocrat is saying.
Paul Clark’s spiky piano music increases the tension. There is a magnificent set by Lizzie Clachan and Vicki Mortimer which has the two contrasting households side by side, one baronial, the other bourgeois. The two separate plots overlap and the actions occasionally complement each other in a clever but often very distracting manner. So much is going on at the same time that audiences will find themselves watching the servants going about their duties when they should be watching and listening to what their masters are saying and following the plots. The hurrying servants interrupt every scene and people are constantly going up and down the stairs in both houses. One lady walks up her staircase backwards.