Hindle Wakes

Hindle Wakes

by Stanley Houghton

Narrated by LibriVox Community

 — 2 hours, 12 minutes

Hindle Wakes

Hindle Wakes

by Stanley Houghton

Narrated by LibriVox Community

 — 2 hours, 12 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

Free


Listen on the free Barnes & Noble NOOK app


Related collections and offers


Overview

Alan Jeffcote, son of Nat Hawthorn, Hindle's richest factory owner, meets Fanny Hawthorn, daughter of Nat's 'slasher' and oldest friend, in Blackpool and the two go off for what they believe to be secret fling in Llandudno. But after the death of Fanny's friend, Mary, in a pleasure boat accident at Blackpool the secret is revealed and the the two families are thrown into disarray.

The leading light of the so-called Manchester School of realist dramatists, Stanley Houghton wrote Hindle Wakes in 1911 and it was a hit both in Mrs. Horniman's Gaiety Theatre in Manchester and the Aldwych Theatre, London in the following year. Houghton's best known play, Hindle Wakes has been filmed five times, most recently in 1976 as a TV film starring Donald Pleasance. The play's title refers to the wakes week holiday in the fictional town of Hindle and is also a pun on the name of a traditional Lancashire chicken dish. (Summary by Phil Benson)


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"An extraordinary piece… impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." – What’s On Stage (5 stars)

"A fascinating look into a rarely considered part of our national history… and a fitting way to celebrate [the play’s] 100th anniversary." – The Good Review

"In its day Hindle Wakes must have been astonishing, as groundbreaking as A Doll’s House – and there is still something rather marvellous about its attacks upon the sexual “double standard’" – Telegraph

"Houghton's play belongs to an extraordinary period in British drama… And who is to say that, 100 years after Hindle Wakes, we still don't live in a world that has one law for sexually adventurous men and another for women?" – Guardian

"Even in these permissive times, the controversy that must have surrounded the play when originally performed in 1912 is clear, and it is impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." – What’s On Stage (5 stars)

"Houghton's script is well observed and awake to new and untraced boundaries between classes which had emerged with the suddenness of industrial progress. His work owes a debt to Ibsen, particularly in its then-controversial sexual frankness and proto-feminism, as well as to Chekhov in its neat balancing of the comic and the dramatically truthful." – Time Out (London)

Product Details

BN ID: 2940170192229
Publisher: LibriVox
Publication date: 08/25/2014
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews