A powerful new drama based on the true story of six glamorous siblings with widely disparate political beliefs in pre-war Britain comes to the region this month. The background might be an unlikely mix of high society and violent extremism, but The Party Girls is really about families and love - as its writer, Amy Rosenthal, explains to What’s On...

The fascinating, as well as disturbing, story of the Mitford Sisters - six aristocratic siblings who lived in pre-war Britain - was pretty much tailor-made for dramatic interpretation. The family courted public attention and controversy in equal measure, living eccentric lives fuelled, defined and ultimately divided by glamour, scandal and polarised political views that embraced both communism and fascism. One sister (Unity) idolised Hitler, another (Diana) married British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, another (Jessica) became a communist, two (Nancy and Jessica) became novelists, one (Deborah) managed opulent stately home Chatsworth House.

They were certainly a fascinating brood.

Their story was intriguing to playwright Amy Rosenthal, too. She’d read some of Nancy’s novels as a youngster and knew about the sisters’ notorious political affiliations, but she quickly became obsessed with their legend after being commissioned to write a play about them in 2017.

“I came to it quite naively, really,” she explains, in talking about the play, which she titled The Party Girls. “It began as an enquiry into how a family of aristocratic young women became so violently politicised and polarised, and it turned into a passion project. I love research projects so was happy to jump in and see what I found - I didn’t imagine I would discover something, or that I’d write something, that I felt so passionately about, and which felt so personal in lots of ways.”

Amy, who studied to be a playwright at the University of Birmingham and is the daughter of dramatist Jack Rosenthal and actress Maureen Lipman, has a track record for writing fact-based historical dramas - her best-known play, On The Rocks, was all about a crucial time in author DH Lawrence’s life. It’s a genre that she loves.

“It’s something about finding a story that fits with something that you feel and want to say about the world anyway. That can be really unexpected, or you discover it along the way.

“There’s something about a biographical play where you’re writing about a person or people but there’s a whole other play going on underneath which is probably much more personal in some ways.”

But as much as The Party Girls is personal to Amy, the story of the Mitford Sisters has become increasingly universal, not least because it has just been turned into a TV series titled Outrageous, currently airing on the U and U&DRAMA channels. Did she see it as unwelcome competition, or extra publicity for her stage version?

“When I heard about it, my feeling was slightly despairing because I’ve been working on it for so long. I said to our director, it’s a bit like someone announcing that they’re pregnant at your wedding. There’s a bit of upstaging, especially as it’s TV and it’s big, but on the whole I suppose it’s good news, and good to have them back in the zeitgeist.”

The one thing which many feel isn’t welcome in the zeitgeist is the increasing prevalence of Far Right political views in modern society. It’s a situation which makes the play both important and prescient, according to Deborah Shaw, chief executive of Marlowe Theatre, where the drama premieres: “Amy’s play captures the wit of Nancy Mitford’s novels and tells a cracking love story across continents, to a backdrop of the rise of extremism and dangerous populist leaders, intent on remaking the world order. The Party Girls, with its great shifts of history seen through a female lens, could not be more resonant for our times.”

Amy agrees, believing the world has shifted dramatically since she began work on the play eight years ago.

“The play has had a long journey because the initial version got derailed by Covid, and it’s a very different world now. There’s definitely been a rise of the Far Right that makes the play feel much more resonant. A lot of the areas it touches on suddenly feel more topical than they did in 2017.”

She also sees parallels between the sisters’ views and actions and the almost unwitting way large portions of society have veered to the political right, steadfast in the belief that they are right.

“We’ve been talking about all these things in rehearsals, and all sorts of parallels come up. One of the things that’s been really interesting to talk about, and is really interesting to write about, is how nobody ever feels that they’re going to be judged by history. Everybody believes themselves to be right and good and fair, and would justify their argument passionately.

“That’s why these women are so interesting to write about, because you have to put yourself in the shoes of people that I, as a playwright, profoundly disagree with. The job is to try and understand and feel your way into their skin somehow, which is very exciting as a writer, and I think as an actor as well."

Amy says it’s also crucial to remember that the sisters weren’t all fascists. Jessica Mitford (“the lynchpin of our story”) was a communist - which effectively split the family - while two of the sisters were relatively apolitical. And much of the siblings’ unconventional nature came from being self-educated (“the father wouldn’t let them go to school because he thought they’d get thick ankles from playing hockey”), so everything they learned came from the strange collection of books in the family library.

“They’re eccentric, they’re witty, and bonded like a load of animals brought up together without much sense of an outside world. It’s the constellation of all of them that’s interesting, and what it did to them as sisters.”

Amy is keen to acknowledge that the play is as much a family drama as a political one: “Richard Beacham, our director, said he described it to someone as a play about love, and it really is - a play about family love, romantic love, and in a way about self-acceptance and self-love. The context is violent extremism and the rumblings of various forms of hatred, but the actual arc of the play is about love.”

The playwright is also keen to stress that it contains plenty of humour, to balance the darkness of some of the drama.

“That’s the most important thing to say! I would absolutely never want anyone to leave a play of mine not having laughed. I passionately believe that you can hold the dark and the light simultaneously, and that audiences are intelligent enough to understand and enjoy that. It’s something that we all know from life - that comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin and deeply intertwined.

“Also, I always want my audiences to leave with a sense of hope, so the play is constructed in a way that that should be the case. I hope it will speak to people in a provocative way that makes them think - at the same time as having a good time!”

The Party Girls shows at The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from Tuesday 9 to Saturday 13 September; Malvern Theatres, from Tuesday 16 to Saturday 20 September; and The Rep, Birmingham, from Monday 6 to Saturday 11 October

By Steve Adams