Culture? In Swindon?!

On Saturday I went to see the Old Town Theatre Company's (OTTC) production of ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ at the Swindon Arts Centre. The play, written by Stephen Lowe and based upon the novel by Robert Tressell, charts the progress of a group of painters and decorators, and that of their employers, over a brief period of time in Edwardian England. This may not sound the most promising of themes, but within a few minutes I was gripped. It begins with the workers chatting as they get on with their job, and it soon becomes clear that there is a socialist in their midst, the opinionated and highly skilled Frank Owen (there is a particularly inspired scene in which Owen explains how capitalism works using no other props than knives and slices of bread). Pitted against him we have the foremen and the owners, who are bleeding their workers dry and in the process becoming filthy rich, having convinced themselves that they are worthy of such excessive remuneration because they ‘work with their minds’ whereas the workers ‘work with their hands'. The struggle for survival in which the workers are embroiled is wonderfully evoked, and we empathise fully with their dilemma: do they fight to try and change the system, and risk losing their livelihoods, or do they shut up and bear it, reminding themselves that they are fortunate to have a job at all?

The acting was uniformly excellent; the only quibble I could think of being that the accents were wont to lapse from thick Yorkshire back into Swindonian. This was an amateur production, but if I hadn't known this I wouldn't have guessed it. And being amateur, it was incredibly cheap at just £7.50 for a full price ticket - a bargain by any estimation. The set and props were basic, but this was what was needed, the play after all being about a group living in abject poverty. In short, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and I would strongly urge anyone in the Swindon area to go along to the OTTC’s next production.

The OTTC website
Swindon Arts Centre