Mary Barton (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

Elizabeth Gaskell

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Elizabeth Gaskell's panoramic novel of Victorian England, adapted for the stage by the author of Iron. Premiered at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2006. Manchester in the 1840s. By day, Mary Barton works in a dress shop making gowns for the daughters of the newly moneyed mill owners. By night, Mary aspires to join their class. As she strives to better herself, murder, intrigue and romance take over her life and the lives of those she loves. Fast-paced, epic and exciting, Mary Barton presents a panorama of Manchester life from the mill owners' new prosperity to the thousands of ordinary people living and dying in their factories. 'full of heat and passion, Munro's filleted version retains both Gaskell's beady eye for detail and her compassion for all humanity' - Guardian 'powerful... Manchester's dark history in riveting microcosm' - The Times

Leseprobe

Elizabeth Gaskell’s

MARY BARTON

adapted by Rona Munro

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Foreword

Original Production

Characters

Mary Barton

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Foreword

Adapting or translating the work of a living writer contains its own terrors, but when it works you have the wonderful security of knowing that the original parent approves of the world into which you’ve taken their baby. Adapting the work of a writer long gone, on the other hand, gives you much more freedom. You can, of course, do whatever you like to make it work: the baby is orphaned, completely in your care, you could send it anywhere you choose. But could you live with yourself if you wrenched that kid away from everything it ever knew or buried any memory of its first, real mother?

Sending Elizabeth Gaskell’s baby out into the twenty-first century has been a long, careful process. The play had a life in many forms before it found its home at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester. At each stage I wrestled with a wonderful but sprawling narrative. It was full of twists and turns and a thousand priceless character details. Each of them was precious, not least because they had the absolute authenticity of a world intimately known and observed. Elizabeth Gaskell was writing about the ordinary people she lived and worked amongst in 1840’s Manchester. Invisible in history, their humanity leaps out of the pages of her book.

To give them their voice on stage, for a modern audience, a lot has been condensed or heightened or presented in a new way altogether. But I hope, I have to believe, that Mrs Gaskell would recognise her child and be happy to see it thriving in a new world. The book and the play are a love story. Elizabeth Gaskell’s passion to write came from a need to hold up the world she saw every day in front of an audience who might choose never to see it all. At the birth of the Industrial Revolution she showed the human cost of a world in which economic forces were treated as forces of nature which could not be controlled, inevitable disasters bringing starvation and death to thousands. She wrote not a piece of polemic, but a complicated human story which has compassion for all its characters but poses the most difficult moral questions – still relevant today.

The last stage of the play’s journey – the dialogue with the Royal Exchange, Sarah Franckom and all the creative team – has been like literally bringing it home.

Some of the characters in Mary Barton would have been very much at home on the floor of the Exchange in the nineteenth century. Some would probably not have made it past the door, but they’re all centre stage now. This is their story.

Rona Munro, August 2006

Mary Barton was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester on Wednesday 6 September 2006. The cast, in order of speaking, was as follows:

MARY BARTON

Kellie Bright

ESTHER / SOPHY CARSON

Lucy Black

JOHN BARTON

Roger Morlidge

YOUNG TOM / SALLY / BEGGAR

Hannah Storey

JEM WILSON/ JACK

William Ash

GEORGE WILSON /CARSON

Will Tacey

HARRY CARSON / WILL WILSON

Toby Sawyer

JANE WILSON / MISS SIMMONDS

Christine Mackie

MARGARET / HELEN CARSON.

Penny Layden

JOB / POLICEMAN

David Sterne

SLATER / POLICEMAN

Patrick Bridgman

Clarinettist  Dan Bayley

Cellist  Jeanette Mountain

Director  Sarah Frankcom

Designer  Liz Ascroft

Lighting Designer  Richard G. Jones

Sound Designer  Peter Rice

Music  Olly Fox

Characters

JOHN BARTON, a mill worker

MARY BARTON, his daughter, an apprentice dressmaker

ESTHER, a mill worker, later a prostitute

JEM WILSON, an engineer

GEORGE WILSON, his father, a mill worker

JANE WILSON, his wife, Jem’s mother, former mill worker

WILL WILSON, Jem’s cousin, a sailor

JOB, a handloom weaver and scholar

MARGARET, his granddaughter, a seamstress

HARRY CARSON, a gentleman

JACK, a dandy, friend of Harry’s

CARSON, Harry’s father, a mill owner

SLATER, a mill worker

TOM, the ghost of a little boy, John’s son and Mary’s brother

SALLY, an apprentice dressmaker

MISS SIMMONDS, a dress shop owner

HELEN CARSON, Carson’s eldest daughter, a lady

SOPHY CARSON, Carson’s younger daughter, a lady

POLICEMAN

CLERK OF COURT

PROSECUTOR

DEFENCE

Also CHARTISTS, UNION MEN, MASTERS, DOCK WORKERS, POLICEMEN

All characters are doubled, apart from Mary

Setting

A graveyard is a constant feature on the stage floor. The Bartons’ house chiefly remains after it is assembled through Act One. A doorway suggests a number of other locations, depending on the scene: it is variously the dress shop, the Carsons’ home, the pub, etc. These locations are suggested by props brought on by cast members. The most elaborate of these is the courtroom/ship in Act Two. Action frequently takes place simultaneously.

The action of the play takes place in Manchester in the 1840s.

ACT ONE

The graveyard. A poor funeral. A small coffin is carried in and lowered into the ground. Following it are YOUNG MARY, aged thirteen, ESTHER and JOHN.

They watch the coffin vanish into the ground. The grave is filled in. After a moment YOUNG MARY tugs at her father’s arm.

YOUNG MARY. Father? Father, can I go to Mother?

JOHN nods without speaking. YOUNG MARY runs to a fresh grave nearby. She kneels beside it.

Mother? Tom’s come to be with you and the baby. He’s right beside you.

ESTHER walks over to stand beside MARY.

I’m looking after Father. I’m making the soup like you showed me and I’m sweeping the floor every day . . .

ESTHER. Mary?

YOUNG MARY. In a minute.

ESTHER. What is it, darling?

YOUNG MARY. Father is angry with me.

ESTHER. No he’s not, of course he’s not.

YOUNG MARY. He is.

ESTHER. Why would he be angry with you?

YOUNG MARY (quietly). It’s my fault.

ESTHER. What’s that, love?

YOUNG MARY. It’s my fault Tom’s dead.

ESTHER. No it’s not. How could it be your fault?

YOUNG MARY. He was so hungry.

ESTHER. But that wasn’t your fault, Mary.

YOUNG MARY. He wanted my bread. He asked me for it. But I was so hungry, Aunt Esther. I wouldn’t give him my bread.

ESTHER kneels by YOUNG MARY.

ESTHER. Mary, listen to me. Tom was sick. He had a fever. One piece of bread couldn’t have saved him.

YOUNG MARY. It might have done. I heard the doctor say so. He said he couldn’t save Mother or the baby but Tom was young and strong and if he could eat enough . . .

ESTHER (interrupts). No, Mary. We were all hungry. Tom was sick. It wasn’t you.

YOUNG MARY. It was want of bread that killed him. The doctor said so.

ESTHER. Not want of your little crust. Look at you, darling. You’re just skin and bone.

YOUNG MARY. Will I die?

ESTHER. No.

YOUNG MARY. Why won’t Father look at me?

ESTHER. His heart is broken.

YOUNG MARY. But he doesn’t cry.

ESTHER. The softest part of him died with my sister. He can’t cry now.

YOUNG MARY. He loved Tom more than anything.

ESTHER. He loves you too, Mary. And he has work again. There’ll be better times soon.

Look, Mary . . .

From under her mourning clothes ESTHER pulls out a shawl, a length of glittering material. YOUNG MARY gasps as ESTHER floats it up in the air, reaching out to touch it.

YOUNG MARY. What is it?

ESTHER. It was a present. I’m to have trunks full of dresses and shawls like this one and jewellery. I’m going to be a lady, Mary.

JOHN has turned from the grave, hearing the end of this conversation.

YOUNG MARY. How can you become a lady?

ESTHER. Because I’m loved. I’ve met a man, a good man with money to keep me safe, and he loves me.

YOUNG MARY. Because you’re so pretty.

ESTHER. Well, you’re pretty, Mary. You’ll be prettier even than me when you’re grown. And I’ll send for you and you can live with us and you’ll be a lady too. You’ll never be hungry again, Mary.

JOHN steps forward, furious.

JOHN. Don’t put your nonsense in her head. I see what you’ll end at, Esther.

ESTHER. John . . . He’s a good man. He’ll help us all.

JOHN. I’m a working man. I have work now. I can keep my own family.

ESTHER. That’s your pride talking.

JOHN. Aye. I still have that.

ESTHER. He’ll marry me, John.

JOHN. Did he tell you so?

ESTHER. Think what you like. You’ll see.

JOHN. I see what you’ve become, Esther. There’s street walkers with more pride than you have left.

ESTHER and JOHN stare at each other in rage.

ESTHER. I’ll not stay to be spoken to like that, John Barton. Not even for my sister’s sake.

Pause.

JOHN. All right . . . maybe I spoke too hasty. But I don’t want young Mary to see your carrying on, you’ll turn her head and leave her as lost as you are.

ESTHER. Then I best get lost and be done with it.

Pause.

We’ll be better friends if we don’t share a roof, John.

JOHN. You can’t leave.

ESTHER says nothing.

You can’t leave us. You can’t leave little Mary to run the house herself, she’s only a child.

ESTHER. Well, better I leave her than I turn her head.

JOHN. I didn’t mean . . . You’ve a decent life here, Esther, with your family, with your neighbours.

ESTHER. A decent life may kill us all, John.

She takes a little scarf from her neck and ties it around YOUNG MARY’s.

Goodbye, Mary. Take this darling, to remember me.

YOUNG MARY, crying, reaches out her arms to her aunt as she vanishes into the shadows. ESTHER turns once to look back.

I’ll send for you.

JOHN gathers YOUNG MARY to him protectively. ESTHER vanishes.

YOUNG MARY controls her tears.

YOUNG MARY. I’ll run the house for you, Father. I can do it.

For the first time JOHN cracks, nearly breaking down.

JOHN. Oh God, Mary. There’s only the two of us. We’ll have to be everything to each other now.

YOUNG MARY. I can do it. You’ll see.

They hold onto each other.

A little ghost boy, TOM, is playing in the graveyard with a wooden horse.

JOHN. We’ll get by, lass. We’ll get by.

JOHN starts to lead YOUNG MARY off. He sees the little ghost boy. He stops, watching him for a long moment.

Lights down on JOHN and YOUNG MARY. The ghost boy exits.

ESTHER appears out of the shadows, singing a haunting love ballad quietly.

MARY, aged seventeen, walks towards her mother’s grave, her arms full of green leaves and flowers. She kneels beside the grave and lays the leaves on it. She still wears the scarf ESTHER gave her.

ESTHER fades back into the shadows again.

MARY. It’s a beautiful day, Mother. The best spring day I’ve seen since you left us.

We’ve been out of town, to Green Heys Fields, you remember? See the flowers I brought you and Tom . . . lavender and rosemary and pinks, wallflowers and jessamine.

MARY lays out the flowers on her mother’s and Tom’s graves.

It was a holiday. Such a heat in the sun, you wouldn’t have believed it. We sat in the shade under the trees by that old stile. I put my feet in the water to cool them . . . just where we used to go . . . where Tom would paddle in the stream. We remember you, Mother. We remember you.

JEM enters with an armful of flowers and greenery of his own. He watches MARY for a while. She speaks to him without turning her head.

I can’t remember what she looked like.

JEM. She looked like you.

MARY. I can’t remember Mother but I remember Aunt Esther clear as anything. Six years since I saw either of them . . . when I think of Mother it’s just darkness but when I think of Aunt Esther I see her, in a white dress, dancing under a thousand candles, a lady, free of all of us . . . How did you know I’d be here?

JEM. I remembered the last day we went out to the fields. Years ago, when your mother and Tom were alive.

MARY. You thought of that too?

JEM. I thought you might need a bit of company today.

MARY. Thank you, Jem.

JEM kisses her on the cheek.

(Shocked.) Jem! What was that for?

JEM. For old acquaintance sake.