Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Barrie Rutter, Nicholas Shaw, Andrew Grose, Sara Poyzer, Kate Anthony, Catherine Kinsella, Richard Standing, Gilly Tompkins.

Not for nothing was Githa Sowerby compared to Henrik Ibsen, the father of theatre realism. Her play Rutherford & Son was a powerful statement in a world where the writing of a female playwright was not expected to be as bold, so groundbreaking in its fury at a world that put male pride and arrogance before the thought of the family. The absolute realism she bought to her characters, especially that of the bombastic and near tyrannical father John Rutherford, the anguish and near heart breaking life of his daughter Janet and that of the stranger to the house, the woman who makes the Faustian-like pact with her father-in-law when all else around her goes awry, the woman whose head for business sees her keep a roof over her head, the young Mary.

With Northern Broadsides, Blake Morrison, Jonathan Miller and Barrie Rutter all immersing their collective feet into the play, it is no small wonder that the work of Githa Sowerby, once forgotten after years of being an early feminist icon, is back where she belongs, being lauded for the far sighted woman she was. Northern Broadsides decamp to Liverpool’s Playhouse nearly every year and as a company they are treated very much as if they belonged to the city. The rousing reception that greets them is only bettered by the way their productions are received.

Directed by the legendary Jonathan Miller, Rutherford & Son took the audience through a range of emotions that rarely gets seen in period drama, the sharp intakes of breath at the astounding arrogance, by today’s standards, in which John Rutherford, played by a outstanding Barrie Rutter demanded complete respect in the house, his tight grip on his children and their dreams to the point of megalomania drew the attention fully of all present.

With such a strong cast to command, the star of the show was the direction. To capture the essence of cruelty and antagonism in the shape of all on stage whilst keeping all the intensity locked within the cell like feel of one drawing room took remarkable skill and Mr. Rutter and Catherine Kinsella especially took the task completely and utterly on board.

As with every play Northern Broadsides brings to the Playhouse, Rutherford & Son is majestic, a production with its heart and soul bared open for all to peer through and wonder at the world that is stained and fractured and fragmented into slivers. Brutally exceptional.

Ian D. Hall