The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Minerva Theatre, Chichester

11:09am Monday 26th July 2010

By Ian Murray

IT would be unfair and inaccurate to claim Robert Tressell’s 100-year-old classic story of class struggle between a down-trodden, poorly paid underclass and their rich, greedy masters carries too many echoes of today’s financial woes.

But when a character states that society is like a snake “some are near the head, some near the tail, and we all slither along” it’s hard not to recognise at least some parallels with Britain as it struggles to leave the present recession behind.

Not the stuff of great moments of laughter you might think. A two-hour journey through the nightmares of a society where families starved on the streets for the want of a day’s work is hardly going to be a bundle of fun.

Yet Howard Brenton’s latest adaptation of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is brought forcefully to the stage at Chichester by director Christopher Morahan using a powerful cast to retell the story of one small group of labourers’ lives with sympathy, drama and, yes, not a little humour.

The story is set around the refurbishment of a large Victorian mansion, The Cave, which is being made ready for its new owner, the Mayor of Hastings. The Mayor and his fellow councillors, who include the building firm’s owner, are portrayed as a class of grasping, scheming, thieving or simply inept masters, intolerant or indifferent to the lives and cares of those they employ or supposedly serve.

But although Tressell’s fellow labourers – he was in life a house painter –are without doubt the heroes of the drama, they too are portrayed as being in their own way responsible for their lot: cheating, drunken, foolish, blind to their rights.

The simple message of early socialism running as a response to this futile class war may seem naïve to some today with the hindsight of the horrors of Stalin and communist atrocities that were yet to come when The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was created. But the message of justice, equality and fellowship is both sympathetic and powerful in this production.

The climax brings both tragedy and some hope, but there is a sense that not enough has changed to fulfil the dreams of the author at least. Tressell in fact died before his work was ever published and was buried in a pauper’s grave.