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People

People

With a bath on the billiard table and a garden resembling a jungle, aristocrat (and former model) Dorothy Stacpoole faces a desperate situation. The decaying family pile is close to ruin. And with the coffers all but empty, Dorothy must now choose between auctioning off the historic contents - or handing everything over to the National Trust. Read more …

Archdeacon June, her sister, is all for the Trust. But Dorothy loathes the idea of opening her home to the public: people spoil things, don’t they, trampling over history, gawking at family memories? The thought of flogging off the art and the heirlooms is equally unbearable. And there’s a third option, too: a shady, über-rich consortium is interested in buying the house and relocating it from Yorkshire to somewhere altogether more desirable. Like Dorset.

Whilst pondering which way to jump, Dorothy unexpectedly encounters a familiar face from her modelling days. Theodore, now a producer of “adult” films, is in search of the perfect period setting - and four poster bed - for his latest porn epic. And having a film crew about the place might distract Dorothy from the impossible decision she faces .


The critical consensus

There's something quaintly Chekhovian about the first half of Bennett's play, brought jauntily to life by director Patrick Sandford.

***(*)(*)Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes, 27/06/2017

Leaves the audience more than satisfied, and thoroughly entertained.

***(*)(*)Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, 10/07/2017

The clunky gear shift between exposition and farce underlines the grinding obviousness of Bennett’s approach to theatrical form.

Mark Brown, Scottish Stage, 13/07/2017

Stanford’s production is something of a mixed bag overall, with erratic pacing and a large ensemble struggling to reconcile the play’s knockabout element with Bennett’s more thoughtful meditation on the ways in which history and heritage are increasingly treated as commodities.

***(*)(*)Allan Radcliffe, 24/07/2017

Where and when?

Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Pitlochry from Thursday June 8, 2017, until Thursday October 12, 2017. More info: www.pitlochry.org.uk

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