Restoring the Repertoire productions

He's Much to Blame

4th – 19th September 2009
a satire written by Thomas Holcroft
first performed in Covent Garden in 1798
directed by Colin Blumenau

‘There is not between ape and oyster so ridiculous or so wretched a creature as man.’ He’s Much to Blame, Act 5, Scene 1

Today Thomas Holcroft is best known as a political activist and publisher of The Rights of Man by Tom Paine. From humble beginnings as a stable boy in Newmarket, Holcroft became an author and satirist of national repute. Self-educated, he was a prolific writer and produced over a dozen plays, numerous essays, works of travel writing and five novels, including the best known works Anna St. Ives (1792) and The Adventures of Hugh Trevor (1794, 1797). Holcroft experimented with both content and form; his works contain strong political messages, his hope was that his writings could educate and expand the thinking of the public.

His political activism as part of the Society for Constitional Information saw him tried for treason and his reputation suffered greatly in the years after his acquittal. He’s Much to Blame was his last great success.

The set of the 2009 production was inspired by the infamous political cartoons of the Georgian era, with images from cartoonists Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank incorporated into the background design.

The synopsis of the production:

Outside London, a young woman named Maria is looking for her long lost love. Staying in a bizarre hotel she encounters all stations of Georgian society, romatic rivals and dangerous enemies, as her search descends into a whirlwind story of disguises, hidden secrets, ancient grudges and current fancies. We are offered a cartoon-like glimpse of the great and grotesque of Georgian England - seeing fashion-mongers, time-servers, flatterers, the obscenely wealthy, the working poor, deceivers, idealists and even quack doctors.

The characters occupying the hotel act as ciphers for the vices and virtues Holcroft saw in the society of the time, and their potential to progess over just one day to become better people in the face of love, honesty and courage.

Directer, Colin Blumenau commented at the time of going to production:

“Whilst Gillray, Rowlandson and Cruikshank were satirising society’s excesses in their cartoons, Thomas Holcroft was doing the same with his dramatic writing. People who have grown up with the sharp, acidic writing of Punch or Private Eye magazines will find Holcroft’s style both familiar and comfortingly aggressive. Georgian England and its inhabitants provided Holcroft with some great raw material - the richest country in the world was in the process of turning into a self-indulgent, materialistic and neurotic society in fear of complete disintegration. He uses this to great effect in all of his writing and is never more funny than in He’s Much to Blame.”