However, not even the skills of Anne-Marie Duff as Mrs Holroyd can conceal the fact that The Daughter-In-Law is in a different league from the other two plays. And The Daughter-In-Law finds domestic servant Minnie Gascoigne attempting to forge a relationship with her husband which supersedes his own with his domineering mother.Ībstract concepts take second place to everyday reality, where injury or strike pay means real hardship and it sometimes seems that the most fulfilling relationship that can be hoped for is one of negligent disregard on one side and resignation on the other. Lydia Lambert faces mutual hostility with her miner husband, as well as her too-intense, frustrated hopes for her student son, in A Collier’s Friday Night. In The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, Lizzie Holroyd survives an abusive collier husband and the unconsummated love of a neighbouring pit electrician.
In the three plays/strands, the tortuous paths women take past and around husbands, children or in-laws all wind through the same world, indeed the same street.
What becomes clear is the commonality of Lawrence’s preoccupations, which in all cases are with the female side of relationships - the title of this version is not so much ironic as sarcastic. And they succeed in navigating their way through, although not quite with flying colours.
Director Marianne Elliott and adapter Ben Power set themselves a task, then.
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