The Silver Cord by Sidney Howard
The Silver Cord, commissioned by Finborough Theatre will be at the venue from 3rd September until the 28th.
Set in Boston, Massachusetts in 1925, it involves wealthy widow Mrs Phelps who is determined to see her two grown-up sons, David and Robert, never leaving her alone. Overbearing, suffocating and clingy, she hopes to control every important decisions in their lives. But when both sons announce their plans get married, Mrs Phelps is determined to prevent it from happening.
As the two young couples reach the family home, they find themselves face-to-face with a mother that, over just 24 hours, will do everything she can to make sure that she will continue to be the most important person in the lives of both of her sons.
Both a classic comedy of manners and a powerful Freudian insight into motherhood, family dysfunction and power, this production of the Silver Cord is a major rediscovery of playwright Sidney Howard, one of America’s most renowned dramatists of the first half of the twentieth century, best known today for his Oscar™ winning screenplay for Gone with the Wind (1939). His career was cut short by his tragically early death, his writing was often likened to his friend and contemporary Eugene O’Neill.
One of the most successful plays of the 1926-27 Broadway season, The Silver Cord was also a huge hit in the West End in 1927 starring Lilian Braithwaite – where it was compared to Noël Coward’s modern classic The Vortex – and was filmed in 1933, starring Irene Dunne and Joel McCrea.
Image: Kim Traynor
