Two one-act plays with local connections come to Halifax Playhouse

They have been written by Michael Crowley and will be presented by the Brutish Multitude.

The first one-act play Waiting for Wesley is set in the Calder Valley in the summer of 1842 when a wave of strikes engulfs Lancashire and Yorkshire.

As well as demanding a reversal of wage cuts, many workers demand the government give way on the People's Charter and introduce universal male suffrage.

Thousands of troops confront strikers, killing five and wounding many more. In one family, tensions mount as a husband and wife are torn between allegiance to the church and organising the rebellion.

“Halifax was the epicentre of a general strike across the north in 1842. It was a very violent dispute with workers calling for the vote as they faced a 25 percent cut in wages,” said Michael.

“The play tells the story through the struggles of a local family, the husband a dedicated chartist and the wife a devout Methodist. The family is at the heart of the story and the industrial strife the backdrop.”

The second one-act play The House That Ethel Built is based on the life and work of Ethel Carnie-Holdsworth (1886 – 1962), a former mill worker, who became the first working class woman in Britain to publish a novel.

Ethel was also a political activist producing possibly the world’s first anti-fascist newspaper, The Clear Light.

The play dramatises the clash of her ideals with the political climate of the First World War and the constraints imposed by her marriage and her relationship with her publisher.

“These are two Yorkshire stories, which are not well known,” Michael said. “Ethel was a mill worker, who wrote 12 novels and outsold HG Wells. One of her novels, Helen of Fourgates, was made into a film. She made enough money to stop working in the mill and buy herself a cottage. Ethel refused to accept the life of a northern mill girl.”

Michael is an author and dramatist, who lives in Heptonstall. His work has been produced by BBC Radio.

A number of the cast perform in both plays. Tristan Langlois, plays both Nathaniel Greenwood and Herbert Jenkins; Karen Stuart, plays both Sarah Greenwood and Ethel Carnie-Holdsworth; Grant Lowe, plays both Ben Ruston and Alfred Holdsworth and Mike Griffiths plays both Mill owner Lee and Soldier and Doctor. Also starring are Robin Hargreave as Jacob Holt and Jennifer Reid as Helen McFarlane.

Actor and directort Barrie Rutter, founder of Halifax-based Northern Broadsides, said of Warp and Weft: “Hopes and dreams from a local story; written and performed with an eye on the past and lessons for today.”

The show runs at the Halifax Playhouse from Thursday March 21 to Saturday March 23, daily at 7.30pm plus a Saturday matinee at 2.30pm.

To book visit www.ticketsource.co.uk/HalifaxPlayhouse, ring the box office on 01422 365998 or email: [email protected]