MARK FISHER detects characteristic themes in a new production of a rarely-seen play by J M Barrie.

J M BARRIE is best known as the creator of Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up. Here in the Kirriemuir playwright's 1908 play, What Every Woman Knows, we find another boy who wouldn't grow up, except on the surface the circumstances are very different.

John Shand – played by a suitably unreflexive Christopher Daley – is a self-made man who has worked his way up from railway porter to MP through a combination of natural intelligence, unstoppable self-belief and dogged application. His achievement is great, but it is at the expense of self-knowledge. When it comes to emotional intelligence, he is a child – perhaps even less than a child, for not only is he incapable of expressing love, he has no sense of humour and cannot laugh.

Maggie Wylie – played with great sensitivity by Irene Allan – is emotionally damaged in another way. She has grown up under the misapprehension that she is charmless and unlovable and that she counts for nothing in a man's world. Her inferiority complex nearly cripples her.

The two make an unlikely couple – indeed, it is a relationship forged only from a financial deal with the woman's family – and, inevitably, their marriage implodes. John feels the rush of sexual attraction (for another woman) for the first time, just as Maggie is getting to grips with being the real power behind his throne. It’s a crisis that forces them to realign their relationship and the play ends with some hope of equality in the battle of the sexes.

In this, the play comes across as lightweight Ibsen or less verbose Shaw, a proto-feminist parable infused with Barrie's observations about the class divide, the grip of the establishment and the behind-the-scenes nature of political power. In psychological terms, it is about two lost children reaching a sense of wholeness and maturity through each other, although the play's fear of sexuality probably speaks more of Barrie's own hang-ups.

John Durnin's production has something of the stiffness of John Shand himself, but it shows off a little seen play to good effect and rattles along entertainingly, almost enough to overlook Elizabeth Graham's terrible French accent.

What Every Woman Knows is in repertory at Pitlochry until October.

© Mark Fisher, 2009

Links

• Pitlochry Festival Theatre 

• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog