The story follows Barbara Forth, a doctor's wife in a quiet village in the south of England. She's been constantly ill since the wedding although all experts say there's nothing wrong with her. One day a stranger pops in for a visit (this was my character) wanting to speak to his ex fiance who he believes is married to Dr Forth. Except his ex fiance was called Grace Walker and no one in the house has heard of her. He assumes he found the wrong Dr Forth and leaves, very embarassed. The good doctor also claims never to have heard of Grace and is angry at the insinuation.
So why does Barbara then find a book on their shelves with an inscription that reads "To my darling Richard, lots of love Grace"?
That's the starting point for an entertaining enough story in which Barbara becomes more and more convinced that her husband is a bluebeard type character, leaving strings of dead women in his wake and collecting the insurances or just emptying their bank accounts. Is she his next victim?
The story is interesting and has some difficult to spot twists and turns. It is rather too wordy in several places though which makes it rather more difficult to learn than many plays I've been involved with.
Some examples of over-wordiness - when Dr Forth is telling his potential lover/stalker/(red herring?) about Barbara's illnesses and all the tests she's been through, instead of saying, "I've had every expert I know check her out, from Hospital A, Hospital B and even hospital C", the doctor lists six different doctors along with the hospital that they each work at - making for a long speech with a ton of totally irrelevant information in it.
In my first scene, I had to repeat the same information twice in a sequence of fairly long and quite similar speeches but just different enough that getting them mixed in my head was an issue.
When Eric returns the day after his embaressment, he tells of a misadventure the previous night where a car nearly hit him and drove off. In response to this, instead of saying "Oh well, at least you weren't hurt. I'll just go make the tea", Barbara gives a whole Daiily Mail editorial about the way the state treats criminals too lightly before going to the kitchen.
In fact pretty much every character in the show has at least one Daily mail editorial that they spout randomly at some point. I think the author's own politics may well be on show in this play and not subtly.
In the final scene, the village gossip comes in and gives information to the housekeeper. After she leaves, the same information is repeated to Barbara by the housekeeper. It felt like padding and the scene would have been so much tighter if both characters were told by the gossip at the same time. The housekeeper also goes from being suspicious of the doctor while the gossip is talking to her, to defending the doctor's name when Barbara repeats the same suspicions a few minutes later. It felt like clumsy writing and out of character for the housekeeper. Fortunately, the actresses in the roles were convincing enough I don't think the audience will have shared those concerns and I'm probably just overanalysing the scene.
Overall it's not the strongest piece of writing, but a talented cast can (and did) make it work.
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