J.M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton

July 22, July 29 & August 3, 2014

A Staged Reading

Directed by Jon Kretzu

  A storm. A deserted island.
An aristocratic comedy of castaways and disarray.

Director Jon Kretzu 

Play Synopsis

Sir James Matthew Barrie was a Scottish playwright best known for writing Peter Pan in 1904 and founding a cricket club with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse called Allahakbarries.  He wrote The Admirable Crichton in 1902.

The Admirable Crichton is like Peter Pan for adults.  The play deals with serious class issues that were controversial when it was written, but it does not question the status quo seriously.  The dominance of adults over children in Peter Pan is replaced in The Admirable Crichton by the dominance of the upper class over the lower class.

William Crichton is the butler to Lord Loam.  Loam considers the class divisions in British society to be artificial.  Once a month, Lord Loam invites all of his servants to join his guests for tea in his drawing-room, which causes discomfort for everyone involved, particularly Crichton, who considers the class system to be the “natural outcome of a civilized society.”

The situation is reversed when, caught in a storm on an outing on Lord Loam’s yacht, Lord Loam, his three daughters, two guests, Crichton, and a maid, Tweeney, end up stranded on a deserted island. Out of necessity, because he is the only person capable of it, Crichton takes charge, becoming “the Guv,” and everyone else becomes his servants.  The society on the island is not egalitarian, nor is the existing class system preserved.

For the next two years, everyone is happy with this arrangement. Lady Mary, Loam’s daughter, falls in love with Crichton, forgetting her engagement to Lord Brocklehurst at home.  Just as she and Crichton are about to be married, the sound of a ship’s gun is heard, and Crichton chooses to be rescued.

Upon the arrival of the party back in England, well . . . we won’t spoil the ending for you.