The Stage

The Charity That Began at Home

Published Tuesday 20 December 2011 at 18:12 by Nick Smurthwaite

As well as offering a keen insight into the mores of Edwardian society, Auriol Smith’s classy revival of this obscure 1909 play provides a useful lesson for anyone interested in the evolution of modern drama.

St John Hankin, though virtually forgotten now, was a leading light in an alternative playwriting movement of the time, urging the drama to be less frivolous and more about ideas.

What exercised Hankin in this, his third play of only nine completed before his death by suicide at 39, was the social posturing of the time in the name of philanthropy. Is it better to appear to be doing good than to be true to your natural - and possibly not so Christian - instincts?

At either ends of that spectrum are the flawed but charming Hugh Verreker (Oliver Gomm) and the ever-smiling, pious do-gooder Basil Hylton (Damien Matthews), whose shared affection for the genuinely altruistic Margery (Olivia Morgan) provide the play with its somewhat flimsy dramatic framework.

Margery’s hopelessly impressionable mother, Lady Denison (Paula Stockbridge), tries to do the right thing by entertaining bores and social outcasts in the certain knowledge that nobody else will. This, presumably, was an upper class social fashion of the day.

Hankin was clearly influenced by Shaw, Ibsen and Wilde - there is a sprinkling of quasi-Wildean aphorisms - yet he possessed neither the dramatic force of Ibsen nor the laser-like wit of Wilde. You can’t imagine any of them choosing such an off-putting title, for a start.

However, there is much to admire in Auriol Smith’s production, not least the final showdown between the idealistic Margery and the feckless Verreker - the most incisive bit of writing in the whole play - in which the equally impressive Gomm and Morgan excel themselves.

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