THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By JB Priestley
Donmar Warehouse, Earlham St, London WC2 until February 7, 2026
Premiered in 1934 but set firmly in the Edwardian Bradford of 1908 (then a boom town) this has none of the gravitas of Priestley’s more famous play An Inspector Calls, instead it’s a light hearted souffle of a piece which was a staple of repertory theatres for years.
Tim Sheader (also the Donmar’s Artistic Director) directs with typical finesse and has assembled an ensemble of some of our greatest comic actors for a play which, while creaky, can still raise some great laughs.
It’s the story of the three pompous couples, self regarding pillars of society, who married on the same day, remained friends, and on the evening of their joint 25th anniversary find out that their marriages may not be legitimate because the presiding clergyman was not qualified and made some mistakes.
Priestley’s delineation of these three pairs is ingenious. We’re gathered in the home of one of them – the smug and slippery Alderman Joe Helliwell (John Hodgkinson) and his imperious wife Maria. Siobhan Finneran, who was such a great baddie in Downton Abbey, has a stare that could freeze a lake and is just perfect. She makes the fatal mistake of haughtily dismissing the feisty char woman Mrs Northrop (Janice Connolly) who has overheard the shocking revelation and is racing off to the local pub to spread it.
Then there's the hen pecked Herbert Soppit (a wonderfully hangdog Jim Howick) and his termagant wife, Clara. Samatha Spiro, another comic genius, delights in embodying this coil of curdled disappointment, bullying her husband and railing about the servants who give her nothing but “back answers”.
Finally there’s Councillor Albert Parker (Marc Wootton) and his long-suffering wife Annie (Sophie Thompson). Parker perfectly embodies the blowhard, pompous, tight-fisted bore who never lets ‘the wife’ get a word in. Thompson, another of our great comediennes, steals the show in a wonderful scene where the timid Annie, finally realising that she might be rid of him, tells him exactly what she thinks. The audience cheers. Parker had reprimanded the chapel organist (Reuben Joseph) earlier because of his la-di-dah southerner ways and because he was seen gallivanting with a girl, not realising it is Helliwell's niece, Nancy. He has to back track though when the organist delivers the big revelation.
Priestley has great fun lampooning these self appointed guardians of decorum. The cigar puffing, port quaffing men dominate the local textile industry, the city council and their local church, and Priestley shows how their contempt for the servant class stems from them being nouveau riche, just a few decades away from it themselves. This is driven home in a wonderful tirade by Mrs Northrop, who yields only to the local vicar (Leo Wringer) who has also dropped in.
A photographer from the local paper has also been summoned to recreate their old wedding photograph to mark the occasion. The great Ron Cook delights in this small character turn, struggling with a large box-camera as he gets increasingly sozzled waiting for them to be ready. He’s backed up by a flirty barmaid Lottie (Tori Allen-Martin) who has appeared to claim her lover – Helliwell.
Peter McKintosh’s mustard yellow set, with its flocked walls and giant aspidistra, perfectly evokes Edwardian times but without all the clutter and Anna Fleischle’s overdone nouveau riche costumes are just perfectly judged.
What elevates the piece above just a historical curiosity is Priestley’s archaic language, which is a complete joy familiar to anyone who loves Victoria Wood, as well as the reflections on coupledom and how the internal dynamics of these relationships immediately crumble without the respectability endowed on them by marriage. He’s also good on how desperately these people cling to their hard won social standing, but there’s no doubting where his loyalties lie and that’s with the lower orders who have to suffer them.
