Michael Portantiere takes a look at Hindle Wakes:
The year 1912 was a bad one for certain trans-Atlantic ship passengers—and, based on what happens in the first scene of Stanley Houghton's 1912 play Hindle Wakes, currently on view in a rare revival by the Mint Theater Company, we may guess that neither is it going to be a good year for young Fanny Hawthorn (played by Rebecca Noelle Brinkley). She has just returned from a holiday to her family home in the Lancashire town of Hindle, only to have her suspicious mother (Sandra Shipley) and concerned father (Ken Marks) obtain Fanny's admission that her sojourn included a sexual liaison with Alan Jeffcote (Jeremy Beck), son of the wealthy mill owner for whom both Fanny and her dad work. Fraught as this situation is by the standards of early-20th century British views of pre-marital sex—not to mention the class difference between the Hawthorns and the Jeffcotes, and on top of that, the employer/employee relationship—another major complication is that Alan's engagement to one Beatrice Farrar (Emma Geer) would seem to prevent him from "making an honest woman" out of Fanny. . . . |
