(Matt Wolf’s article appeared in The New York Times, 11/5; via Pam Green.)
Don’t be fooled by the title, “Husbands & Sons,” of the ravishing distillation of three D.H. Lawrence plays into one that has just opened at the National Theater’s Dorfman auditorium. Across the three compulsive hours of Marianne Elliott’s production, your eye is drawn again and again to the women, and not just because the promotional campaign for the play features the begrimed image of its terrific female lead, Anne-Marie Duff.
Yes, the men in the 19-strong company grab many a chance to make their mark in Ben Power’s artful filleting of three Lawrence plays (“A Collier’s Friday Night,” “The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd” and “The Daughter-in-Law”) into one neatly streamlined take on life in the English mining village of Eastwood, Lawrence’s hometown, in 1911.
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