It was performed in New York in 1931 and then at the Cambridge Festival Theatre on 12 February 1934 (seven months after Terence Gray departed) in a programme of "experiments conducted by Joseph Gordon Macleod" which also included Deirdre by W.B.Yeats and An Animation of a Lay of Horatius Cocles by Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay.
The "actors" were Flavia du Pre, David Raven, Noel Iliff, Sanchia Robertson, Peter Hoar, Robert MacDermot, Don Gemmell, Else Bley, John Hamilton, David Marsh, John Izon, Clephan Bell, Garrett Jones, Diana Morgan, Cicely Nicks and Macleod as the "Chorus".
The Lintzgarth side marries into the Nattrass side; but at the wedding the Nattrass mother, in revenge for the death of her elder son, incites her younger son to shoot the Lintzgarth bridegroom; and the peace and mutual toleration that had been promised are ruined by personal animosity."
Lintzgarth and Nattrass[1] are real places which Auden found in his exploration of the North Pennines and Alston Moor.
[2] Paid on Both Sides is a brief dramatic work that combines elements of Icelandic sagas, modern psychoanalysis, and English public-school culture.