Hard Times: - play adaptation

By Charles Way and Chris Honer

Brilliant adaptation of Charles Dickens biting novel Hard Times.

Dominated by Gradgrind and Bounderby, Coketown’s prosperity is built on the cotton mills where thousands of men and women slave away for long hours and little pay. Gradgrind’s obsession with material progress damages his children Louisa and Tom, leading to scandal and disaster. ‘Hard Times’ celebrates the importance of the human heart in an age obsessed with materialism. Circus, music, and dark comedy all go into the rich mix of this truly Dickensian theatrical tale.

Charles Way has written over 50 plays, specializing in writing for children, young people and family audiences. His plays are performed worldwide. He has won several major awards - A Spell of Cold Weather won the Writers Guild best children's play award in 2001 and in 2004 his play Red Red Shoes won the English Arts Council best children's play award. In Germany, his play Missing won the Children's Theatre prize and in the USA  he was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award. He was commissioned by the National Theatre to write Alice In The News, which children all over Britain have performed. He has also written many plays for radio, and a TV poem for BBC 2, No Borders, set in the Welsh borders, where he lives and has spent most of his creative life.

  "A stellar adaptation by Charles Way, moving, thoughtful and wonderfully drawn’.                        What’s on Stage *****

 

‘Way gives real depth to characters, replaces Dickens’ sentimentality with warmth and his censoriousness with moral indignation’.                           The Independent *****

‘daringly restructures Dickens’ plot, yet sticks to the motto of his lisping ringmaster Mr Sleary: “People mutht be amuthed.”’                                             The Observer

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aurora Metro Books
• Release date: Jul 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781906582562

Book preview

Observer

INTRODUCTION

Charles Dickens was already a famous novelist when he published Hard Times in 1854. He wrote it following a visit to the industrial North-West where an acrimonious strike by weavers in Preston had left 20,000 mill workers idle for almost nine months.

Hard Times is a passionate attack on utilitarianism, the philosophy which, in education, privileges facts and practical matters above the imagination and feeling, and hence elevating, say, business and banking over the arts and creativity. Dickens believed, surely rightly, that this creed led to emotionally impoverished lives.

In Hard Times this philosophy is embodied in the tragic figure of Thomas Gradgrind. This formidable businessman (later M.P.), albeit from the best of motives, imposes his beliefs not only through his own school, run by the wonderfully named M’Choakumchild, but also on his own family. As a result, his son, starved of play and common affection, becomes a conniving thief, and his daughter, knowing all kinds of facts but ignorant of love, makes a disastrous marriage to the appalling Josiah Bounderby.

Pitched against the grimness of Gradgrind’s Coketown world is the circus, led by the lisping Mr Sleary. As he says ‘the people mutht be amuthed squire, they can’t alwayth be a working – or a learning – they ain’t made for it’. Sissy Jupe, the circus girl taken in by the Gradgrinds, becomes the moral heart of the work. She dispenses care, kindness, and understanding and, as Gradgrind realises far too late to save his son, ‘it is always you, my child, always you.’

When we knew that there were going to be several years between The Library Theatre Company leaving its old home and entering its new one, we thought it would be exciting to do some work in ‘found’ spaces, places not usually used for performance. Murrays’ Mills is an old cotton mill complex in Ancoats, just north of Manchester city centre – where you can almost sense the ghosts of the mill workers haunting it, and Hard Times seemed an ideal story to tell there. We turned to Charles Way, who’d already done so much great work with us, for the adaptation, because we knew he’d create a first-rate piece of theatre.

Way’s adaptation tells the story faithfully and brilliantly. It has all the virtues of moving swiftly through the story but it also respects and charts the complex emotional journeys that so many of the characters go through. They climax in the powerful and tragic confrontation between Thomas Gradgrind and his daughter over the failure of her marriage.

The adaptation is also wonderfully alive to Dickens’ humour, whether it be the pomposity of Josiah Bounderby, the frailties of Gradgrind’s neglected wife, or the absurdities of M’Choakumchild’s core curriculum.

The play is rich in theatricality. It moves swiftly between great public scenes (a rowdy meeting which ends in a punch up, a big social wedding, a circus) and more intimate ones. It has a chorus of mill hands (ideal for a community cast), and the opportunity for some performers to show off their circus skills because it’s in the circus that, most appropriately, the story concludes.

The play was written for promenade performance, with the audience following the action around two long mill galleries, but it would work equally well in a more traditional setting.

Dickens may have written this story over one hundred and fifty years ago but I think it came home to all of us working on Charles Way’s play, how much resonance it still has. Unfortunately, we still seem to live in a world where the Gradgrinds and the Bounderbys have a lot of power and the nurturing of the imagination is still under threat.

Chris Honer, Artistic Director, Library Theatre Co.

~

CHARLES DICKENS’

HARD TIMES

adapted for the stage by

CHARLES WAY

The play was commissioned by the Library Theatre, Manchester and opened on 8th June, 2011 at Murrays’ Mills, Ancoats Manchester.

Directed by Chris Honer

Design by Judith Croft

Lighting by Nick Richings

Music by Colin Sell

Sound by Peter Rice

Circus skills by Mish Weaver

of Stumble Dance Circus

HARD TIMES

CHARACTERS

CAST

Mr Gradgrind

David Fleeshman

Mrs Gradgrind

Roberta Kerr

Mr Bounderby

Richard Heap

Louisa

Alice O’Connell

Sissy (Cecilia Jupe)

Verity-May Henry

Tom

Gareth Cassidy

Mr Harthouse

Richard Hand

Mrs Sparsit

Lynda Rooke

Bitzer

Arthur Wilson

Stephen Blackpool

David Crellin

Rachel

Mina Anwar

Mr Sleary

David Crellin

Mr Slackbridge

Gareth Cassidy

Mr Kidderminster

Arthur Wilson

President

Richard Hand

Mrs Pegler

Roberta Kerr

Blackpool’s wife

Lynda Rooke

The Hands

Various

All other roles are played by members of the company.

Special thanks to all the members of the community who played The Hands in the above production.

ACT ONE

Coketown

The noise of the factory. The factory bell rings – the noise abates and the Hands emerge from the factories. On the street a circus booth is being set up. A child’s coffin is carried by. A union man sells leaflets. A drunk woman asks for money. Sissy runs through Coketown. She is looking for her father.

HANDS

Song

O fair, O fair Jerusalem,

When shall I come to thee?

When shall my sorrows have an end,

Thy joy that I may see?

O pray teach your children, man

The while that you are here;

It will be better for your souls,

to treat each fellow fair.

To-day you may be alive, dear man

Worth many a thousand pound;

To-morrow may be dead, dear man,

And your body be laid under ground.

With one turf at your head, O man,

And another at your feet;

Thy good deeds and thy bad, O man,

Will all together meet.

Sissy asks those she meets, from the richest (Bounderby) to the poorest (Stephen Blackpool) to the lowest (Blackpool’s wife) if they have seen her father.

SISSY

My father and his dog – a little dog called Merrylegs. Yes, Merrylegs – he is needed you see – at the circus – both of them are needed. No? A short man – with a limp – and a red neckerchief. I have no money.

She is ignored by two children, Louisa and Tom who are trying to peek, by lying down, into Mr Sleary’s horseback circus. Tom is the leader in this escapade.

SISSY

Excuse me – I’m looking for my father – from the horseback circus – Mr Sleary’s horseback circus – and a dog called Merrylegs–

The Work Bell sounds again and the Hands obey its call. Against their flow Mr Gradgrind strolls easily until he sees his children lying in the dirt.

MR G

Thomas? Louisa? What do you do here?

LOUISA

Wanted to see what it was like.

MR G

What it was like?

LOUISA

Yes, Father.

SISSY (To one of the Hands)

My Father – and a little dog – called Merrylegs?

Mr Gradgrind marches his children toward his home, Stone Lodge.

1. Stone Lodge

MRS G

The circus? Did you say – ‘The circus’?

MR G

In the name of wonder what were you doing there?

MRS G

Dear me, how could you, Louisa – and Thomas too?

LOUISA

I took him, Father.

MR G

I’m sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed. It makes Thomas no better and it makes you worse. To find you – both – in that degraded position.

MRS G

Degraded?

MR G

Lying – face down in the dirt.

MR B

Hmph!

MR G

Well?

LOUISA

I – I was tired, Father.

MR G

Tired, of what?

LOUISA

I don’t know – of everything, I think.

MR G

Say not another word. You are childish. I will hear no more.

MRS G

As if with my head in its throbbing state you couldn’t look at something your father has provided for you. Shells – minerals – anything ‘ological’. With my head in its present state I couldn’t remember the mere names of half the facts you have to attend to – without being confused into oblivion by the – ‘Circus’. What does Mister Bounderby say?

MR B

What had I Josiah Bounderby to do with circus at their age? I hadn’t a shoe to my foot, Mrs Gradgrind. As to a stocking I didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch and the night in a pigsty, that’s the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch.