Write about what you know—isn’t that the advice to budding writers? Merton Hodge (1903–58) did just that with The Wind and The Rain. Set in an Edinburgh boarding house in the early thirties, this is not Doctor in the House (1969/70), but a more serious if gentle study of middle class medical students, in particular one Charles Tritton, living away from home for the first time, a rite of passage.
A New Zealander, Hodge was a post-graduate medical student in Edinburgh. A doctor, a successful playwright and actor, who rubbed shoulders with Novello and Coward, his The Wind and The Rain play was extremely successful in its day, eighty years ago...
It ran in the West End “for over a thousand performances”, on Broadway “for six months”, and “was translated into nine languages”. Alan Bates played the lead Charles and Geraldine McEwan love interest Anne in a 1959 television production.
In the original 1933 cast, Celia Johnson played the shy young New Zealand girl, Anne, Tritton meets in Edinburgh, which makes me think immediately and appositely of Brief Encounter (1945). Though promised to another (Jill) and not wishing to disappoint his mother (Tritton is a mummy’s boy), a bit of soul-searching follows.
The play opens with polite eighteen-year-old medical student Tritton—didn't they look staider then—arriving at garrulous Mrs McFie’s (Jenny Lee) boarding house—she’s seen it all before... And no she doesn't mind a tipple of beer—out of a tankard, of course. The students form a ‘family’ of sorts.
The play closes with a new student, Peter Morgan, being offered the same hotpot dish Tritton was given at the beginning. So the wheel turns: Feste’s existential song at the end of Twelfth Night provides the title. The Wind and The Rain might also be describing Edinburgh’s weather.
Sharing the lodgings are goodtime boy, cocktails quaffing Gilbert (a delightful ‘old-boy’ Mark Lawrence), who doesn’t worry about passing exams; John (Harvey Cole) distracted by his sporting activities, and the mature postgraduate Dr Paul Duhamel (David Furlong), another one with a social life... and he conveniently knows Tritton’s mother, who has a shop on Sloane Street in London.
Tritton (Joe Pitts) has grown up with motherless Jill, and his mother, he thinks, has her heart set on them settling down together after he qualifies in five years time. Now, wouldn't that be plain sailing…
But the green boy, a shy diligent student, meets modest Anne (Naomi Preston-Low giving the standout understated performance of the evening), who has a sculpture studio in Edinburgh—very different to the other confident entitled young folk in the house.
And a quiet rapport grows over the years. Till brash society girl, jolly Jill (Helen Reuben) visits with Roger (Lynton Appleton also doubling as Peter Morgan, a contrast in types) in his Bentley (Hodge imitating brittle Coward a little here). They bring foie gras sandwiches and champagne… The contrast couldn't be wider between the two females either.
Tritton passes his exams after the five years, John after seven, and Gilbert will be the eternal student. Anne says she is returning to New Zealand, that their time is run, better to part. Tritton hears his mother has died suddenly, and Anne has a new decision to make. Their real lives lie ahead, student days merely an interim.
Tritton is helped along the way with advice from the older Paul—their ‘code of living’ conversations are of the essence for Tritton and the play, a way into his mind, but on the whole the students do seem callow young men—little do they know what lies ahead for them, this inter-wars generation.
Anne is the most mature of the lot. Is Hodge saying something about the English class system? Mainly it’s about love: love is all there is. Not waspish like Coward, the lines are sincere and mild-mannered. The soul-searching is English introspective and restrained. No histrionics, though they might have lifted the temperature a bit.
Carla Evans’s brown set (and costumes) is so realistic—fireplace, stag’s head, coal scuttle, side dresser, gramophone, armchair, central dining table and four chairs—I fear we are intruding. Edward Lewis’s sound design evokes the period, and Richard Williamson’s lighting gives us gloomy Edinburgh.
This revival, directed by Geoffrey Beevors at an unhurried pace, is a credit to Finborough’s Neil McPherson, excavator of neglected plays, of which there are many more to come. It has been cast to perfection.