Overview
It's risky work, handlin' men, my lass. For when a woman builds her life
on men, either husbands or sons, she builds on summat as sooner or
later brings the house down crash on her head - yi, she does. In
Husbands and Sons, Ben Power has interwoven three of D. H. Lawrence's
greatest dramas, The Daughter-in-Law, A Collier's Friday Night and The
Widowing of Mrs Holroyd. Together, they describe the community Lawrence
came from with fierce tenderness, evoking a now-vanished world of manual
labour and working-class pride. On the cracked border of Derbyshire and
Nottinghamshire stands the village of Eastwood. The women of the
village, wives and mothers, struggle to hold their families and their
own souls together in the shadow of the great Brinsley pit. Husband and
Sons by D. H. Lawrence, adapted by Ben Power, premiered at the National
Theatre, London, in October 2015 in a co-production with Royal Exchange
Theatre.