performed at Emsworth Road Studio in 1996

Background Note

This year marks the 40th. anniversary of the play’s first. London performance which starred Edith Evans and a young Peggy Ashcroft. The chalk garden which totally defeats Mrs.5t.Maugham’s attempts to cultivate it is symbolic of her failure with her daughter and her grand-daughter. Plants, like human beings, need a sympathetic understanding she does not know how to give. Thus her garden is bare of the coveted flowers, her daughter Olivia is divorced and her grand-daughter Laurel, adopted after Olivia’s re-marriage, riots in the bizarre atmosphere unchecked by a series of despairing companions. Then Miss Madrigal takes charge .....

Of the play Kenneth Tynan wrote:-

‘We eavesdrop on a group of thorough-bred minds, expressing themselves in speech of an exquisite candour, building ornamental bridges of metaphor, tip-toeing across frail causeways of simile, vaulting over gorges impassable to the rational soul.’

The Observer

Cast in order of appearance

For the Maskers