A Collier's Friday Night

by D.H. Lawrence

The English Stage Society

Royal Court Theatre, 8 August 1965, in a Production without Décor.

Peter Gill's unaffectedly sympathetic production contained some exquisite playing from Victor Henry and Gwendolyn Watts and demonstrated among other things, that Lawrence, at that time, had a strong sense of fun.

Sunday Times

... if such a production, so beautifully performed, could not be a commercial proposition in the West End, then we might just as well all pack up our vitriol and go home to read Beerbohm.

David Benedictus Spectator

Peter Gill's beautiful production of Lawrence's first play 'A Collier's Friday Night' exploded the idea that Lawrence, the dramatist, could be safely ignored.'

Irving Wardle The Times

Written in 1906-7 the play prefigures the novel Sons and Lovers, with its picture of a family warring within itself; the mother at loggerheads with the father, and jealous of her son's sweetheart — a picture, in fact, of Lawrence's owns family. Edward Garnett records that Lawrence pencilled on the manuscript "was written when I was twenty-one, almost before I'd done anything." Garnett goes on, "The warp and woof of the drama out of which the situations are spun are the bitterness between the parents and Ernest's relations with the woman round him. At twenty-one Lawrence had not yet evolved his philosophical doctrines about sex, nor had he developed the "Inner conflict" between his selves. But his uncanny clairvoyance about women and the sex duel generally is declared in every scene in A Collier's Friday Night

Lawrence on the Theatre

A People's Theatre. Since we can't produce it, let us deduce it, Major premiss: the seats are cheap. Minor premiss: the plays are good. Conclusion: A People's Theatre. How much will you give me for my syllogism? Not a slap in the eye, I hope. 1919.

I believe that, just as an audience was found in Russia for Chekhov, so an audience right be found in England for some of my stuff, if there were a rain to whip them in. I am sure we are sick of the rather bony, bloodless drama we get nowadays — it is time for a reaction against Shaw and Galsworthy and Barker and Irishy (except Synge) people — the rule and measure and mathematical folk.

It will seem a bit rough to me, when I am 45 and must see myself and my tradition supplanted: I shall bear it very badly.

But I don't want to write like Galsworthy nor Ibsen nor Strindberg, nor any of them, not even if I could. We have to hate our immediate predecessors to get rid of their authority. 1913.

The essence of tragedy, which is creative crisis, is that a man should go through with his fate, and not dodge it and go bumping into an accident. And the whole business of life, at the great critical periods of mankind, is that men should accept and be one with their tragedy. Therefore re should open our hearts. For one thing, we should have a People's Theatre. Perhaps it would help us in this hour of confusion better than anything. 1919

Lawrence's other plays
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd	Fight for Barbara
Touch and Go	The Daughter-in-Law
David	Married Man
Altitude	Merry-go-round