Arthur Wing Pinero

‘That is what marriage gives – the right to destroy years and years of life.’Venice, Easter 1895. In the cafes around St Mark’s Square, all the gossip among the English ex-pat community is about two mysterious arrivals in the city. Agnes Ebbsmith is a young widow with a scandalous past. Travelling with her is Lucas Cleeve, an up-and-coming Tory MP who has abandoned his wife in London. Defying convention, Agnes and Lucas are refusing to marry, and living in a ‘compact’ together. But before long their peace is shattered by the arrival of Lucas’s aristocratic family from London. The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith is a dramatic, entertaining,and utterly enthralling play by one of the greatest Victorian dramatists. This playtext, slightly adapted from the original,was prepared for its first ever revival, presented by Primavera at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2014. The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith was last performed by Mrs Patrick Campbell in the West End in 1895. With an introduction to the play and its historical context by Dr Sos Eltis.

With his louche air and a developed taste for smoking, gambling, port and women, it’s hard to believe Cis Farringdon is only fourteen. And that’s because he isn’t. Agatha his mother lopped five years from her true age and his when she married the amiable Posket. The imminent arrival of Cis’ godfather sends Agatha incognito to the Hôtel des Princes to warn him of her deception. But it’s also where her son has cajoled his otherwise staid stepfather into joining him for a binge. High-spirited carousing leads to a police raid and a night of outrageous mishap as the trapped guests make desperate attempts to conceal themselves from the law and from each other. Indignities escalate at court the next day where Posket, the police magistrate, must preside.

When Aubrey Tanqueray marries for the second time, he knows that his new wife, Paula, is a ‘woman with a past’. But he has no idea how that past will catch up with himin the end. More probing than Oscar Wilde, more accessible than Ibsen, Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893) is one of the masterpieces of the Victorian theatre: sexy, dramatic, funny and very moving.

Written in Brighton in 1887, Dandy Dick is tells the hilarious story of the Very Reverend Augustin Jedd, a pillar of Victorian respectability, who preaches regularly against the evils of horse racing and gambling. However, a visit from his tearaway sister, Georgiana, leads him to risk all at the races, much against his better judgement. Mayhem ensues, with romantic intrigue, mistaken identity and a runaway horse. A glorious British comedy, Dandy Dick is a rarely seen treasure that so richly deserves to be revived again, for the first time in almost fifteen years.