Once upon a time—1932, to be specific—in a quiet village located "a short train ride" from London, middle-aged spinster Barbara Buncle finds her income sharply reduced by falling interest rates. To stave off penury, she proposes to write a novel, basing its characters on her neighbors (with all names changed, of course, including her own) whom she portrays as they are—or in some cases, as they could be. The book is an immediate success, but then the citizens of Silverstream begin to recognize themselves in the outrageous populace of "Copperfield"—enraging some, but leading others to question their own lifestyles. By the time a sequel is announced, its publisher's interest in the pseudonymous "John Smith" has extended beyond the book’s lucrative sales figures.
Real-life author Dorothy Emily Stevenson shares with her fictional scribbler a candor inviting her personae to "see themselves as others see them" (as Robert Burns famously remarked) but also to nudge those in need of "waking up." This may require third-party assistance: the cohabiting Ellen King and Angela Pretty may not really be trouser-wearing lesbians exploring the fleshpots of Afghanistan like their literary counterparts, but when the doctor—who, like everybody else in Silverstream, has read the titillating roman a clef—prescribes a therapeutic holiday in a warm and dry climate, the ladies are soon enjoying camel-back adventures in Egypt. These are not “Downton Abbey” nostalgia-porn neurasthenics, however, nor are they mean-spirited Wodehouse-style caricatures (though the frivolous Vivian Greensleeves declaring that she would marry "the devil himself" as long as he had lots of money comes close). Small economies engendered by post-WWI depression—margarine instead of butter, the prospect of raising chickens at home—play as great a part in the eventual outcomes as the ease of eloping to Paris should the impulse to do so strike, keeping the action always accessible to our Yankee sensibilities. Long-time Lifeline Theater subscribers require no more recommendation for this production than its inclusion of Christina Calvit, Peter Greenberg and Jenifer Tyler, though newcomers may have to be told that Calvit's page-to-stage adaptations have made her a five-time Jeff award-winner and that the duo of Greenberg and Tyler have been kindling slow-burning sparks since 2001 in literary romances ranging from Jane Austen to Dorothy Sayers. Add in a tech team savvy in small-space environments and a supporting cast of ensemble regulars in multiple roles, and the results are precisely the kind of engaging entertainment constituting this company's hallmark for more than three decades.
