Hindle Wakes

Stanley Houghton (1881-1913) was born in Ashton-upon-Mersey, Sale, Cheshire and went into his father's cotton business where he worked until the success of Hindle Wakes in 1912 allowed him to finally achieve his ambition to become a professional writer. He died just a year later of meningitis.

"An extraordinary piece… impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." What’s On Stage (5 stars)"A fascinating look into a rarely considered part of our national history… and a fitting way to celebrate [the play’s] 100th anniversary." The Good Review"In its day Hindle Wakes must have been astonishing, as groundbreaking as A Doll’s House and there is still something rather marvellous about its attacks upon the sexual double standard’" Telegraph"Houghton's play belongs to an extraordinary period in British drama… And who is to say that, 100 years after Hindle Wakes, we still don't live in a world that has one law for sexually adventurous men and another for women?" Guardian"Even in these permissive times, the controversy that must have surrounded the play when originally performed in 1912 is clear, and it is impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." What’s On Stage (5 stars)"Houghton's script is well observed and awake to new and untraced boundaries between classes which had emerged with the suddenness of industrial progress. His work owes a debt to Ibsen, particularly in its then-controversial sexual frankness and proto-feminism, as well as to Chekhov in its neat balancing of the comic and the dramatically truthful." Time Out (London)