REVIEW: THE WIND AND THE RAIN by Merton Hodge at Finborough Theatre until 5 August 2023

‘a welcome foray into a forgotten hit of yesteryear’ ★★★

To early 1930s Edinburgh at the Finborough and a new crop of medical students settling into lodgings under the sternly kind eye of Mrs McFie, the kind of landlady who has seen her young gentlemen come and go across the years. The Wind and the Rain is one of the theatre’s welcome forays into fairly forgotten hits of yesteryear and the kind of solid ‘well-made’ play about middle-class chaps that dominated British theatre before Look Back in Anger brought the ironing board on stage. And it has all the virtues of those plays: three acts featuring rounded characters with a beginning, middle and end very much in that order. And, as often happens in such shows, there’s a circular ending that reminds us Mrs McFie, having said goodbye to one set of students, will be saying hello to a more-or-less identical set of new ones for the next four-year cycle.

It has some of their flaws, too, though. There are elements that might have shocked some of the 1930s theatre-going public – the casual beer drinking indulged in by Mrs McFie won’t have been every Edinburgh landlady’s daily experience and the presence of ‘ladies’ in the gentlemen’s chambers earns a raised eyebrow and ‘humph’ from Mrs McFie (Jenny Lee, pitch-perfect). But there’s a certain predictability, by curtain - the ‘good’ student (Joe Pitts, excellent) will pass his exams and win the girl (Naomi Preston-Low, also excellent), the dilettante will still be failing his exams in favour of another cocktail party – which the stately pace of this production does little to disguise.

Mrs McFie’s lodgings are temporary home to medical students Gilbert (Mark Lawrence) and John (Harvey Cole), when young Charles Tritton (Pitts) arrives for his first year at the University. Will they pass their exams, will they meet marriageable girls, will they get another round of golf in before the evening’s ball begins? It’s the same territory Richard Gordon so thoroughly mined in the 1950s with the Doctor in the House books that spawned half a dozen films and multiple television series through to the late 1970s (and with much the same characters for Donald Sinden, Kenneth More and Dirk Bogarde respectively).

It’s always good to see a thoroughly popular piece from the past revived (this one ran for more than 1,000 performances in the West End before a six-month Broadway run, with a long afterlife in repertory, too). It’s beautifully staged – the sideboard filled with beer bottles and discarded bones pretty much stood in my own 1930s Edinburgh granny’s house – and beautifully costumed (Carla Evans, set and costume designer one of the stars of this one). And it’s a thoroughly enjoyable two hours, even if the humour in the script could be more thoroughly discovered by a slightly snappier pace. 

Photography: Mark Senior

THE WIND AND THE RAIN by Merton Hodge at Finborough Theatre

Director: Geoffrey Beevers

11 July - 5 August 2023

Box Office: https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/the-wind-and-the-rain/

Reviewer

David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.