When We Are Married

It’s your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, your ‘silver’ wedding. You have gathered with two other couples, dear friends over the years by virtue of the fact that you were all married on the same day, during the same ceremony, twenty-five years ago. Spirits are high, life is good, you have all done well for yourselves and hold respectable positions in the tight knit rural community. Suddenly you find out that the clergyman who joined you on your wedding day was not qualified to do so. You are not married in the sight of the State or God. You’ve been living in sin lo these many years and if this information gets out, you’ll be the laughing stock of the town and forever disgraced.

This is the central situation in J.B. Priestly’s comedy, When We Are Married. Today’s audiences may forget the shame that came with cohabitation only fifty years ago. They may not feel the panic that fuels the chaos of Priestly’s play. Indeed, some may wish some fluke would let them gracefully out of their own marriage. This is probably the greatest challenge faced in remounting When We Are Married.

I tend to think that this will be a momentary hitch for the audience as it watches these self-satisfied, pompous, loveable goofballs squirm under the realization that their reputations might be tarnished. They gobble up a goodly dose of humble pie and then, in the fashion of comedies throughout time, catastrophe is avoided with the realization that a registrar was on hand to record the marriage and his presence made it all legal even if the Parson’s didn’t. The couples come back together, altered for the better because of the trauma, and all is well in Clecklewyck, a fictitious town somewhere in the West Riding, England.