A dark domestic comedy by one of English literature’s most distinctive and idiosyncratic authors

Life in the Ponsonby household is an emotional battleground, where tyrannical grandmother Sabine and her equally despotic daughter Hetta struggle to control the fate of the family. Caught in the crossfire are Sabine’s son John, a self-absorbed novelist; his five children, Clare, France, Chilton, Victor and Muriel; and Muriel’s beleagured governesses.

When John’s daughter, France, completes her first novel, she is persuaded by her father to publish it under a pseudonym to spare him the embarrassment of being overshadowed by his own flesh and blood. This act of selflessness sparks a series of deceptions, misunderstandings and manipulations: culminating in a family crisis which plays out across the dining-room table over the course of one hair-raising and hilarious dinner party...

First published in 1937, Ivy Compton-Burnett’s deft dissection of a dysfunctional Victorian family was acclaimed by contemporary critics and admired by Virginia Woolf for its ‘bitter truth and intense originality’. This sublime adaptation, featuring an ensemble cast including Patricia Lawrence and Ann Mitchell, breathes new life into her brilliant, blackly comic tale.

Production credits

Written by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Adapted by John Spurling

Directed by Liane Aukin

Piano: Martin Goldstein

Cast

Sabine Ponsonby – Patricia Lawrence

Hetta – Ann Mitchell

John – John Rowe

Clare – Tessa Worsley

France – Kathryn Hunter

Victor – Simon Hewitt

Chilton – Graham Blockey

Muriel: – Pamela Moiseiwitsch

Miss Bunyan – Merelina Kendall

Gertrude – Narissa Knights

Charity Marcon – Anne Jameson

Stephen – Bernard Brown

Alfred – Christopher Good

Sir Rowland Seymour – Arnold Diamond

Jane – Ellen McIntosh

Evelyn – Daniel Webb

Edith Hallam – Vivian Pickles

Dr Chaucer – Robert Lang

Miss Blake – Fidelis Morgan

Mr Russell – John Forbes-Robertson

First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 10 May-9 June 1985

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