Forgotten Page to Stage: rediscovering lost legacies of Great War theatre
University of Hertfordshire researcher Dr Andrew Maunder is rediscovering and professionally reviving lost plays from the early 20th century, revealing how theatre from this period tackled post-war life in ways that still resonate powerfully today.
Amid the bright lights and bold styles of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, darker stories were playing out on stage – though many have long been forgotten.
Now, Dr Andrew Maunder, Head of Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, is bringing these neglected theatrical works back to life, lifting the curtain on how post-First World War playwrights grappled with subjects that still strike a chord a century later: women’s rights, mental health, pressures to conform, and the lasting effects of war.
Through his ongoing research project, British Theatre and the Legacy of the First World War, Dr Maunder is doing more than writing about early 20th-century drama – he is reviving it. Over the last decade he has been unearthing and producing long-lost plays from this era, collaborating with London's acclaimed Finborough Theatre to give them professional stagings and connect them with modern audiences.
In doing so, he asks us to reconsider this period of history, exposing day-to-day realities that mirror our own, and challenging long-held notions that this post-war period ushered in far-reaching freedoms, especially for women.
These plays, many of which haven’t been on stage for a hundred years, still speak so vividly to audiences today. To take something off the page from the 1920s and see it living, breathing, spoken aloud, changes how we collectively think about the past.
Dr Andrew Maunder,
Head of Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire
As he researches British Library collections, Dr Maunder is not searching for period curiosities, but well-crafted, long-unperformed works about everyday lives and challenges that provoked intense emotional reactions when first seen – and will do so again among 21st-Century audiences.
Among his recent revivals are five plays that had not seen the stage for nearly a century. Dr Maunder chose Distinguished Villa, a visceral 1926 debut by Irish writer Kate O’Brien, for its provocative depiction of suffocating suburban ‘respectability’, unwanted pregnancy, and mental illness. A triple bill of one-act plays explored women’s constrained choices in 1920s society: Makeshifts and Realities by renowned aviatrix Gertrude Robins, which depicted the lack of options faced by career-less, middle-class women, and Honour Thy Father, once banned for portraying a family living happily off their daughter’s earnings from prostitution.
In September last year, Dr Maunder produced The Silver Cord, an acerbic, Freudian drama about a possessive mother trying to break up her children’s relationships, written in 1926 by Sidney Howard, later famed for his screenplay for Gone with the Wind.
There’s a real challenge in taking period-based subject matter and making it resonate with contemporary audiences. But Andrew’s productions manage that. They’ve brought us new audiences – people intrigued by the social parallels with today.
Neil McPherson,
Artistic Director at the Finborough
The plays have attracted critical acclaim. Distinguished Villa was praised by well-known critic Michael Billington as “as good a play as you’ll currently find in London”, while another described it as “from a bygone era with so much to tell us about our lives today”.
The Observer wrote of Makeshifts and Realities: “The sense of forgotten life captured on the wing is fascinating”, while other reviews spoke of “a compelling relevance”, “how far we’ve come in the quest for women’s equality” and “a picture of attitudes towards women that are today much more shocking”. Makeshifts won a Best Ensemble Acting award and a Best Revival nomination from London Pub Theatres.
The collaboration with the Finborough, which specialises in unique rediscoveries, has been made possible through the University’s Arts and Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Account. “We’re very selective about the projects we take on, the fact that Andrew’s work has done well at the box office and with the critics shows that these are powerful, relevant plays with something different to say.” Neil McPherson
The project shows no sign of slowing. “We’re planning to stage A.A. Milne’s play about celebrity, The Truth About Blayds, in September 2025, the first time it has been seen in London since 1921, and we are in talks to take one of our revivals across the Atlantic to a theatre in New York,” says Dr Maunder.
Image Credit: Actors, Philippa Quinn and Joe Eyre, and photo by Carla Evans
Doctor Maunder
BA, MA, PhD MSc, Reader in Victorian Literature
Andrew Maunder is a member of the English Literature group and is also Head of the Department of Humanities.
His research interests centre on literature of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly crime and sensation fiction, theatre (1910-1940) and biography. He has written studies of Victorian writers such as Wilkie Collins, Bram Stoker and Ellen [Mrs Henry] Wood.