The March family
It wasn’t that I didn’t like the kindly chaplain whose daughters Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth are at the heart of the coming-of-age story that is Little Women. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he was important to them, either. But finding a modern way to adapt (and relocate to London) a novel that is really far more than that – Little Women is only volume one in a series, and we are including much of its sequel, Good Wives – meant hard choices. Every element we included had to earn its place.
The original story begins against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Mr March is absent for almost the whole of Little Women at the front, where he brings spiritual support to soldiers fighting against the slave-holding South. While his young daughters yearn for him to come home, his absence means that they face life without male protection or male moral guidance. This is what allows the sisters and their strong-minded mother the freedom to test their strength and learn by their failures and triumphs.
Miranda Horn as Beth and Amy Gough as Jo
How does that sit with us in the 21st century? Not so well. It seemed to me that while the girls missed their father and feared for him, underneath Louisa May Alcott’s always brilliant writing was the far more profound influence of their mother. It is Ma who sets the girls’ moral compass throughout both stories: it is her advice and judgement that they take to heart, and it is her absence when their father falls ill that brings them into a state of crisis. Their father’s absence plays a greater role in their lives than his presence, and so, in our version, he is just as important to the girls, but he isn’t coming home.
Finding Mr March’s place in a new version of the story wasn’t the only challenge. The original is packed with incidents. Not only can we not include them all, but some have changed meaning. What to make of Jo cutting off her hair to raise money for her mother to go to her sick father? Back then it partly signified her desire to shake of the restrictions of femininity – half thrilling, but half mortifying too. But perhaps there are other sacrifices Jo can make in our context that show how impetuous she can be for the things that really matter to her – and how hard it still is to find one’s place in a world packed with frustrating conventions.
Victoria Jeffrey as Ma and Amy Gough as Jo
There were other challenges – writing eight characters’ storylines over two acts (my previous play had one act and two characters, and I thought that was hard): writing a (SPOILER ALERT) harrowing loss that occurs during the course of the story (and rewriting it again and again, always tearfully); trying somehow to bring in Alcott’s wise and humorous eye without having the luxury of all her words – though some do remain in key moments.
The greatest challenge, however, was trying to make these changes while staying true to the four lively women Alcott created, and the complex relationships at the heart of her novel.
Fingers crossed.
Little Women tickets available now.
Must end 15th December