Home Fires

Dukes Theatre, Lancaster
Thursday 1 - Saturday 24 February 2007

Reviewed by Jane Sunderland

Home Fires is an extraordinarily rich play. Written by Lesley Anne Rose, directed by Ian Hastings and designed by Paul Kondras, on one level it is ‘about’ four generations of women in one family (though it also looks still further back to an earlier generation, and forward to a likely next one). The influences of previous on later generations are symbolised by the crystal ball and tea leaves of the 1940s and the contemporary horoscope of the ‘noughties’.

On another level it is about women’s lives, and in particular women’s problems with men, but also their enjoyment of an independence without men. And on a third it is about love and death, connection, continuity, fear, holding back, discovery, support and moving on emotionally.

And it is also about film and the power of representation: while Sally (Eithne Brown) is an usherette who sees herself and the men she likes as particular film stars, Lucy (Alison Holroyd) is a Film Studies lecturer. A rather different power of representation is evident in the film footage from the North West Film Archive of WW2 (complete with the characteristic ‘received pronunciation’ of public broadcasters of the time). During World War II there were no less than seven cinemas in Lancaster, and in Home Fires film signals both escapism and visions of a new life.

Set in Lancaster in 1943 and 2003, daughter (Lucy) and her activist mother (Sally) are clearing out the house belonging to grandmother (Lily - Pip Chapman) who has recently died. The conversations shift from one side of the stage to the other, Lucy and Sally on the left, in the kitchen, and Lily and greatgrandmother Nella (Roberta Kerr) on the right, in the living room.

The two time-bounded spaces are symbolically linked by a large 1940s pram (containing sleeping baby Sally), but the physical space between also allows the actual WW2 film footage.

Lucy and Sally discover Lily’s wartime diary, and find echoes of their own lives. Like Sally, Lily has had an affair, with married soldier Sam (Mark Plonsky) from Nova Scotia; like Lucy, she has an unplanned pregnancy, and both Lily and Lucy are counselled by their mothers here. While finding a diary is a familiar literary device, the twist here is Sally’s initial resistance to reading it, reminding us of our profound ambivalence about our parents.

Sally and Lucy are witnessing the build-up to the invasion of Iraq; Nella and Lily lived through WW2. Home Fires joins other productions such as The Accrington Pals (performed at the Dukes in 2005), to paint a picture of the lives of women during the war: not just as loyal, waiting wives and mothers (the ironic reading of the play’s title), or even as competent manual workers or managers, but as women who enjoyed the excitement of the war (Lily makes a point of watching the bombs fall on Barrow from Lancaster Priory) as well as the opportunities for sexual liberation and marital infidelity (the metaphorical reading of the title) created in part by a sense of uncertainty about the future.

The dialogue is very smooth and the acting thoroughly convincing (hard to single out any one character here), and the perfomance as a whole is extremely polished. Despite its lack of obvious action (it’s not that sort of play), Home Fires is also a mesmerising production. The local references (for example, to the various charity shops in Penny Street) were much appreciated by the audience.

The space is well used: the Dukes theatre has become the Odeon cinema of the 1940s (later to become the Regal), including a specially-built stage surround, in the style of an art-deco 1930s cinema. As an usherette, Sally and her colleague Ella (Catherine Kinsella) stand by the door with torch and tickets. The attention to detail of the set includes fade marks on the wallpaper where Lily’s pictures have been taken down.

My only reservation is the somewhat stereotypical representation of Sally. While many feminists in the early 1980s did visit Greenham Common, or even spend time there, as Sally describes, hating men was not ubiquitous, and bra-burning very much a media invention. But that’s praise by very faint damns for Home Fires.

© Jane Sunderland 03/02/2007

Home Fires runs 01/02/2007 - 24/02/2007
Monday - Closed
Tuesday 19:15 - 22:00
Wednesday 19:15 - 22:00
Thursday 19:15 - 22:00
Friday 19:15 - 22:00
Saturday 19:15 - 22:00
Sunday - Closed
Bank Holiday - Closed
Adult Ticket from £13.50 to £15.50 per ticket
Concession from £9.50 to £11.50 per ticket
(Prices are a guide only and may change on a daily basis.)

Interview with Lesley Anne Rose
(from ‘Where I Live – Lancashire)

Report on the play from the Lancashire Evening Post
(with footage from the The North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University)

Public screenings of NW Film Archives