If you’ve never heard of Githa Sowerby, don’t feel bad. When she died at 93 in 1970, Sowerby was mostly forgotten, even though her 1912 play Rutherford and Son was a smash hit in London and won the writer comparisons to Henrik Ibsen. (Arthur Bingham Walkley, the drama critic for The Times of London, wrote that it was “a play not easily forgotten, and full of promise for the future.”)
Set in the period prior to World War I that historians call the Great Unrest, when strikes and demonstrations roiled industrial England, Sowerby’s play draws heavily on her own family’s history. Her grandfather ran a glassworks in northern England, like patriarch John Rutherford (played at TimeLine by Francis Guinan of Steppenwolf). The conflict in the play follows Rutherford’s ham-fisted attempts to control his three children and find a proper heir for the business he built up from the ground, even as they all find ways to oppose him. One son retreats into a religious vocation. His namesake, John, has developed a new glassmaking technique that he believes will make his fortune apart from his father. His daughter, Janet, is having a secret affair with one of his foremen.
Through 1/12: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Fri 11/29, 12/27, and 1/3/20, 4 PM; no performances 4 PM Sat 11/16, or Thu 11/28, Wed 12/25, and Wed 1/1, TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, 773-281-8463, timelinetheatre.com, $42 Wed-Fri, $49 Sat evening, $57 Sat and Sun matinees, $25 U.S. military personnel, veterans, first responders, and their spouses and family.
