The National's new epic is called
Husbands & Sons but it's the wives and
mothers - underappreciated and overbearing, respectively - who hold centre stage.
Ben Power adapts three DH Lawrence stories of a coal-mining town between Derbyshire
and Nottinghamshire in 1911, having them play out in parallel in a single
neighbourhood. Three houses are marked out on Bunny Christie's in-the-round set: At
the Holroyds', Lizzie (Anne-Marie Duff) is always saying she's finally had enough of
her husband Charles (Martin Marquez,) an angry drunk who's not above stumbling home
in the middle of the night with other women in tow. But she always takes him back,
despite the efforts of the plant's electrician Blackmore (Philip McGinley,) even when he reveals he's in love with her, and his plan to help her escape with him to Spain.
