The Madras house: A comedy in four acts

by Harley Granville-Barker

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160 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1977

About the author

Harley Granville-Barker was an English actor, director, producer, critic and playwright.

For more information, see Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Madras House was written by Harley Granville-Barker a century ago. A synopsis is difficult, because this is as sprawling a play as you can imagine. Its primary focus is on Philip Madras, son of the founder of a prosperous London ladies' clothing house (the firm gives the play its title). At the moment, Philip is dealing with three significant life issues: first, he's contemplating a political career, making a run for city council; second, he's about to sell the family business to an American investor; and third (and probably most cataclysmic), his father, Constantine, has returned to England after many years away. Madras père is ostensibly here to ratify the sale of the store, but there's even more pressing business to resolve with his estranged wife, Amelia, whom he has not seen in some 30 years.

Philip must also deal with a personnel matter at his company. A young woman named Marion Yates, who "lives in" (i.e., she resides in a dormitory provided by the firm), has become pregnant, and a bit of a scandal has erupted after her forewoman, a stern puritanical type named Miss Chancellor, saw her kissing a married co-worker.

And I've really only just scratched the surface: The Madras House rambles through four acts, dipping into these story lines plus several lesser ones, all the while providing a forum, very much in the manner of a play by Shaw, for a variety of strongly articulated opinions about politics, economics, society, and other subjects to be spouted by this or that character. Granville-Barker seems much more interested in giving his characters that forum than in making them behave like credible people, in fact; the two acts that are set in places of business in particular present situations that are hard to swallow, as Philip and his colleagues pontificate around meeting tables rather than conduct actual meetings.

Two of the play's characters troubled me greatly. One is a minor player--a swishy couturier decked out for all the world like Oscar Wilde and portrayed as irredeemably and stereotypically effeminate. The other is Constantine Madras himself, who is a thoroughly reprehensible creature; his history, we learn, is one of constant philandering, until he moved to Arabia, where he has now become a "Mohammedan," apparently (and, as far as I could discern, only) so that he might maintain a harem. This came across as wildly inappropriate: as damningly anti-Islam as Merchant of Venice is anti-Jew. I'm not sure that I'm convinced that there is enough of merit elsewhere in the play to compensate for these disturbingly jarring components, even granting that the thing is a century old.