Gritty Glasgow pride of the West (End)

MILLIONS of people flock to the bright lights of London's West End each year for the chance to escape mundane reality and enter a world of glitz, glamour and high-kicking chorus lines.

The grim Glasgow of Men Should Weep, with Robert Cavanah, Sharon Small and Anne Downie, below, vies with the glamour of the latest Lloyd Webber, Love Never Dies, above. Photographs: Geraint Lewis/Manuel Harlan

But now the big draw in Theatreland is not a new Andrew Lloyd Webber production but a grim, three-hour drama set in a Glasgow tenement during the Great Depression.

Men Should Weep, written more than 60 years ago, has become this year's surprise hit. It is thought the setting and sentiments echo our current economically-fragile cost-cutting times. The play, which has been revived only a handful of times since it was first performed in Glasgow's now defunct Athenaeum Theatre in 1947, is being staged by the National Theatre.

Since opening last week at London's Lyttelton Theatre, it has been performing to packed audiences, which are expected to continue until the run ends on 9 January next year.

Critics have also raved about the production, which was described by one as "one of the dramatic highlights of the year", while another paid tribute to a "remarkable play". Another reviewer noted that the National Theatre had been "both shrewd and fortunate in its timing", launching the revival "in the wake of a comprehensive spending review that clobbers the poorest among us".

• Men Should Weep: What the papers said

Men Should Weep was written by Ena Lamont Stewart, the middle-class daughter of a Scots minister, who was disturbed by the poverty she saw while growing up in Glasgow's Gorbals. Later she became a receptionist in a children's hospital, where she witnessed up close the devastating impact of deprivation on health.

"It is very timely," said Josie Rourke, director of the current production. "It looks in a poignant and funny way at the effect of poverty on family and especially women, who end up taking care of the elderly, and kids. It is a great play for now, and it is also just a great play."

She hopes that the play will now be recognised among the pantheon of British classics. "I am certain that was the intention of Nicholas Hytner (the National Theatre director] of programming it," she said.

The drama focuses on Maggie Morrison - played by Mistresses star Sharon Small - and her struggle to bring up seven children in an overcrowded tenement flat, while her husband is out of work. A way out is offered when one of her daughters leaves to live "in sin" with a wealthy, older man, but the family is plunged into a moral dilemma over whether to accept his help.

Despite being voted one of the best 100 plays of the 20th century in a millennium poll, Men Should Weep has seldom been performed. After its premiere, it was plunged into obscurity until 7:84, the radical Scottish theatre group, staged a new version at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1982.By the time it was revived again in 2005, Lamont Stewart was in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer's. She died the following year.

Sebastian Bourne, head of literature at the National Theatre, said he was delighted that the play was a hit. "I saw the production that Giles Havergal did with 7:84 and thought it was one of the most inspiring, moving, life-enhancing things I had ever seen. It has stayed with me ever since," he said.

Bourne admitted the National Theatre's decision to revive the play was in part based on its relevance to the downturn.

"When I joined the National Theatre in 2007, it had already become one of the top 100 plays of the 20th century, but some of my colleagues had not yet read it. I got them a copy, and they thought it was marvellous," he said.

"There was also a feeling that in the current climate it spoke about what we were about to go through."

Mark Fisher, the theatre critic and author, said he was surprised that London audiences had taken to the play, which is performed in broad Glaswegian.

"One of its strengths is that it does not create a stereotyped image of poverty," Fisher said. "At a time when we are facing our own austerity it is probably going to strike a chord."

For others, the attraction of the play is its humanity. "It is absurd to draw a comparison between the Glasgow of then, when it had the highest rate of infant mortality in the world, and now," said Kenneth Roy, editor of the Scottish Review, and a former friend of Lamont Stewart. "Great theatre and great plays are relevant at any time, and this is a play with emotional punch."

Roy, who wrote an essay for the programme which accompanies the National Theatre production, said it was a scandal that the playwright's work had been overlooked for most of her lifetime.

"It is outrageous that all of her plays were neglected for decades until John McGrath rediscovered her at 7:84," he said. "I think she was probably a victim of being a woman."

Roy believes his dear friend would be "astonished" at the admiration now being heaped on Men Should Weep. "It is sad for me as a friend that this is only happening now she is dead," he said.