The Sugar Wife theatre review: relevant echoes on how to do good in a messy world

Abbey Theatre, Dublin until July 20

Siobhán Cullen in The Sugar Wife. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Katy Hayes

Elizabeth Kuti’s play, premiered by Rough Magic in 2005, won the Susan Smith Blackburn prize, and it’s easy to see why. It was clever and topical two decades ago, and its central debate seems even more hot-button now. The play poses the question: how pure must you be to sponsor charitable works? There are relevant echoes just last week of the row over Baillie Gifford’s forced withdrawal of book festival sponsorship, arising from accusations over its investment portfolio.

It is 1850. Dublin Quaker couple Hannah and Samuel Tewkley live in ostentatiously frugal style. They are unhappily childless. Samuel devotes himself to his business, a tea and coffee emporium. Hannah spends her time visiting the poor in the Liberties, foisting her alphabet books on the likes of impoverished prostitute Martha Ryan, whose only desire is the passage-money to join her sister in America.