Set amid the grinding poverty of Glasgow's tenements in the 1930s, Men Should Weep has long been a favourite with audiences.
Following the misfortunes of the Morrison family, Ena Lamont Stewart’s landmark play is a searing depiction of the hand to mouth poverty that working class people lived in at that time.
At the centre of the story is Maggie, the care-worn matriarch. Supported and hindered in equal measure by a network of neighbours and family - from whom it is impossible to keep any secrets - she does her very best in the worst of circumstances, always putting herself last.
Powerful.
What’s left is a period piece that does little more than remind us that Britain has been broken for longer than we might have thought.
Like a frightened but hardened child peeking through an ajar door, McLaren's production lays bare the domestic dramas of our past before throwing the door open and letting its fury flow from within.
Boxed inside Colin Richmond’s set on which furniture is flung around and doors slammed, the full claustrophobia of such a crowded household rings equally true.
This is a generation of men whose only crime, as John cries out, was to be born into poverty. And as such, it cries out a chilling warning to us now, in far more comfortable times.
Disappointingly unambitious in style...it does, though, feature two memorable central performances, from a sweet and spirited Lorraine McIntosh as Maggie, and from Michael Nardone as her true love John, a good man almost broken by poverty, and unable to match his idea of masculinity to the humiliation of his fate, in ways that must reflect the story of tens of thousands of Scottish families, from the 1930’s to the present day.
Graham McLaren's pacey production pulls no punches.
Packing a powerful political punch (in the realm of gender as much as in social class), McLaren’s production is the unqualified main stage success that the NTS has been lacking for some time.
The intervening weeks have seen it mature and harden into a stronger, more potent piece than it was at the outset – although it still has its structural faults as a production.
It’s nearly 65 years since Ena Lamont Stewart’s Scottish classic was written, and director Graham McLaren shows how, crucially, it draws a causal timeline from now back to the economic frailties which shattered any chance of prosperity today.
Interview: Graham McLaren, director
Photo: Manuel HarlanCitizens' Theatre, Glasgow from Friday September 16, 2011, until Saturday October 8, 2011. More info: www.citz.co.uk
Webster Theatre, Arbroath from Tuesday October 18, 2011, until Wednesday October 19, 2011. More info: http://www.webstertheatre.co.uk
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness from Tuesday October 25, 2011, until Saturday October 29, 2011. More info: www.eden-court.co.uk
His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen from Tuesday November 1, 2011, until Saturday November 5, 2011. More info: www.hmtaberdeen.com
King's Theatre, Edinburgh from Tuesday November 8, 2011, until Saturday November 12, 2011. More info: http://www.edtheatres.com/kings
Perth Theatre, Perth from Tuesday November 15, 2011, until Saturday November 26, 2011. More info: www.horsecross.co.uk
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