Hindle Wakes at the Octagon Theatre Bolton Review
Hindle Wakes
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
19 February to 21 March 2015
Reviewed by Cathy Porteus
Hindle Wakes is set in a Northern mill town in the early years of the 20th century. The play opens with a mill worker couple, Mr and Mrs Hawthorne, worrying about where their daughter has been for the weekend. The daughter Fanny soon returns home and the plot begins to unfold. Fanny has been away with friends celebrating the old tradition of Wakes week, a holiday for all the mill workers. However whilst her friends continued to holiday in Blackpool, Fanny has been seduced into going away to Llandudno with the boss’s son Alan. A tragedy has meant that her diversion has been discovered and now the balloon is about to go up.
Fanny’s father is immediately sent over to negotiate with Alan’s father Nathaniel Jeffcote, who despite his current lofty status is an old friend, who wants to do his best to help rescue Fanny from the horror of being an unmarried fallen woman. When he hears that Fanny’s honour has been bespoiled by a local man, he promises to make sure that they are wed as soon as possible. To his credit, he sticks to this plan when he eventually realises that it is his Alan who has done the dirty with Fanny. This is a richly funny and touching scene, as Nat and Chris’ friendship is still valid despite the current financial gulf between them. Nat’s genuine wish to help out his friend’s daughter and his moral certainties about the right way to behave, prove stronger than his desire for his son to better himself and make a beneficial marriage.
When Alan returns from his merry jaunt, he is confronted by his furious father and told of the decision that his Dad has made for him. The next day, Mrs Jeffcote is appraised of the situation and showing the sexist opinions of the day, by expressing her horror that any girl would take part in such an excursion, yet failing to condone her son’s own part in the escapade. The appearance of Alan’s fiancée Beatrice and her rich father Sir Thomas Farrar leads to more confrontation, with Alan being threatened with disinheritance if he refuses to conform to his father’s wishes and marrying Fanny. Beatrice herself settles the matter by declaring that she will not now marry Alan, as her belief is that Fanny now has a greater claim to be Alan’s bride owing to their affair.
However this may not be the end of the matter as Fanny herself throws a fly in the ointment by stating that she has no wish to marry Alan, that he was fine for a fling but not for marriage. This was a shocking storyline for audiences in the 1910s, when the play was previewed. Fanny’s attitude towards relationships was an almost unheard of aberration and led to the performance being banned in some theatres. The contrasting attitudes towards pre-marital relationships for the indulged son and the protected daughter are demonstrated with comic appeal and are believable to even the modern audience. Barbara Drennan and James Quinn delivered great performances as Mr and Mrs Jeffcote, whose tussle over the correct way to deal with the tricky situation is the central pivot of the play.
This was a funny and endearing play, made more interesting by the Northern colloquial speech, in particular the use of thee and thou by the participants, which was accurate to the time, sad that it has died out just a century later.
The Bolton Octagon is an unusual theatre with the audience being placed all around the stage. Occasionally this means that you miss the expression on an actor’s face, which happened for me when one of the main characters, Fanny, first appeared, she had delivered her first speech before I had seen her at all. However the action moves around and the staging takes cares to ensure that no segment of the audience suffers from the back treatment for any length of time.
The Octagon is easy to reach by public transport and there is also a multi-storey car park next door, which the staff in the theatre can validate for a reduced price of £2. There is a pleasant café on the ground floor with a tempting selection of cakes, plus a well-staffed bar on the first floor. All the staff were very pleasant and helpful, they were clearly working hard to ensure that customers had their needs met as efficiently as possible in the limited interval.
Rating: 5/5 
Tickets cost from £10 to £26.50
Hindle Wakes is at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton until 21 March 2015. For more information or to book tickets click here or call the box office on 01204 520661.
Octagon Theatre. Howell Croft South, Bolton, BL1 1SB | 01204 520661
