The life of the Mitford sisters burst onto stage later this month at Oxford Playhouse in Amy Rosenthal’s compelling new play, The Party Girls. Once glamorous figures of the glittering world of debutantes and dukes, the bonds of their sisterhood are threatened as Fascism rises. Directed by Richard Beecham, an alumnus of the University of Oxford, we spoke to him ahead of the show’s run at The Playhouse. Playing from Tuesday 30 September to Saturday 4 October, tickets can be purchased here.
The Mitford sisters are such a fascinating and controversial part of British history. What excited you most about bringing their story to the stage?
There’s so much contemporary resonance between them and us, between then and now. We live again in a time when the populist far-right is resurgent and this chimes so powerfully with the rise of Hitler and British fascism with which at least two of the Mitford sisters (Unity and Diana) were so intimately connected (Diana married Oswald Moseley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, whilst both she and Unity were great friends of Hitler and Goebbels and avid supporters of the Nazis). Jessica (Decca) was a Communist and fell out terribly with her Fascist sisters – and this idea of families being torn apart by extreme political and ideological positions also speaks to now when we again live in such polarised times; I know of families whose members no longer speak to each other over love or loathing of Trump, over October 7th and the Gaza war, over conspiracy theories around Covid and so on and so forth. If this makes the play sound very serious, then the other side of what excited me about bringing the Mitford story to the stage is that, despite the ghastly politics, they were incredibly witty, engaging and fascinatingly contradictory characters – ripe for dramatic reinvention.
The play explores both glamour and division – high society fun alongside the rise of political extremism. How do you balance those very different tones in the production?
Any Rosenthal, the playwright, solves this problem through the sheer quality of her writing. She is subtle and deft as a writer and so can talk about very serious things with the lightest of touches. She relishes humour and absurdity and so she brings these tones and qualities to everything she writes, no matter how serious and dark some aspects of the material are. The actors communicate both the light and shade of her writing by observing both qualities equally and playing their characters truthfully and without judgement.
You and the cast recently visited Asthall Manor, the Mitfords’ childhood home. What did being in that space add to your understanding of the story?
Having researched so much and imagined so much about the Mitfords before we started rehearsals, it was magical to be in the rooms and gardens where the sisters actually lived and played and fought. Actors thrive on experiences, so it was wonderful for them to be surrounded by the ramshackle beauty of Asthall and to let their imaginations run riot there. We also got such a strong sense of how isolated the young sisters were from the outside world in this huge house in the middle of the countryside, and that helped us all to make sense of the intense sororal bond they formed, replete with a private language (Boudledidge, spoken between Unity and Decca) and a whole lexicon of Mitford words and phrases parroted by the whole family.
As a director, what has been the most rewarding part of working on The Party Girls so far?
Above all, I’ve loved working with the playwright, Amy Rosenthal, all the way from script development through to the workshop, casting and rehearsal processes. It’s such a luxury to have the playwright on hand – after all, they’re the expert on the play! I haven’t actually directed a new play for quite some time, so it really was a pleasure to work so closely and collaboratively with Amy, and it was so creatively exciting. And, of course, working with an ace cast and creative team is always immensely rewarding.
What do you hope audiences take away from seeing The Party Girls?
I hope audiences will have a really good night out at the theatre; enjoy a compelling true-life story, be thoughtful about some of the more serious issues and questions the play raises, have a good chuckle at quintessential Mitford eccentricities, absurdities and witticisms, and also be moved by the complicated love story between Decca and Bob Treuhaft which sits at the heart of the play. Hopefully there’s something there for everyone!