Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are

Creation Theatre and the Orange Tree Theatre are bringing Elizabeth Inchbald's comedy Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are to the Schwarzman Centre on Saturday 24 October. It's a rehearsed reading, so the actors will be working from the script in their hands rather than a fully staged production, which gives you a bit of a look at the play as it's being worked through.

Inchbald wrote it in the revolutionary decade of the 1790s, and it puts women right at the centre of a changing society. The comedy works its way through the tension between female autonomy and the idealism, nostalgia and expectations that the men around them try to impose. It's a clash of old values and new ways of thinking, and the way it handles gender, power and choice still feels very close to the present. The two companies describe the piece as witty, subversive and strikingly modern, and as a script-in-hand performance, the focus stays on the writing and the voices.

The reading runs for an hour and fifteen minutes with no interval. After a short break, there's a post-show talk that goes on for another fifteen to twenty minutes, so if you're in the mood to stick around and hear more about the play and the process, that's your chance. It's recommended for ages 12 and up, and the production is part of the 'Utopia Now!' programme.

It starts at 19:00 at the Schwarzman Centre in Oxford. Between the reading and the talk, you're looking at a good hour and a half of theatre, with the talk as an optional extra if you've got the time. If you're into 18th-century comedy that doesn't feel like a museum piece, this is a good one to have on your radar.