Theatre audiences are pretty immune to shock in the 21st century. I've seen them merely shrug at onstage defecation and display a Catherine Tate-ish lack of bother at buggery, mutilation and cannibalism. So it's a sign of the quiet involving power of DH Lawrence's writing and its terrible emotional truth that there is a scene towards the end of this almost century-old play about marriage and mining that causes the whole audience to gasp out loud. Somebody even called out "Don't!" What is this truly appalling sight? Merely the spectre of a man becoming a man.
This exquisite 1912 drama covers familiar Lawrentian territory and offers two battles. One takes place off-stage and concerns the ineffectual fight of the increasingly politicised miners against the mine owners; the other is entirely domestic and takes the form of a marital conflict as newly married Minnie struggles to turn her mother's boy husband, Luther, into a real husband. The fight is not just between resentful husband and determined wife, but also between two women - Minnie, and Luther's mother, who has coddled her sons - who are both infinitely stronger and cleverer than any of the men.
The irony of Lawrence's play is that in 20 years' time Minnie will have turned not into her own mother, but her husband's.
The pleasure here is entirely in the detail. You want to feel as if you can smell the suppers being served up and see the daily chores being done. It doesn't quite happen in Kirstie Davis's production, which is solid but doesn't have the confidence to persuade us that this is anything more than EastEnders with added grime and Nottingamshire accents.
But Charlotte Emmerson - cut loose from all those dull eyelash-batting femme fatale roles - demonstrates real metal, and the resilience of Lawrence's language is a sheer joy.
