Written in the revolutionary decade of the 1790s, Elizabeth Inchbald’s comedy places women at the centre of a changing society. Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are exposes the tension between female autonomy and the idealism, nostalgia, and expectations imposed by the men determined to shape their futures.

As old values clash with new ways of thinking, Inchbald’s characters navigate love, marriage, and independence in a world that insists on defining them before they can define themselves. What unfolds is a play that is witty, subversive, and strikingly modern.

Revived for today by Creation Theatre and the Orange Tree Theatre, this script-in-hand performance of Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are reminds us that debates around gender, power, and choice are anything but historical. Bold, playful and incisive, this is a comedy with teeth…and a past that speaks directly to the present.