This play is based on the real-life story of Alma Rattenbury, on trial for murdering her husband in concert with her lover, who (shock horror!) was 20 years younger than she was. The play shifts between the circumstances leading up to the murder, the trial, and the family dynamics of the jury forewoman, Edith Davenport.

I found the play a bit messy when shifting between these timelines, and I’m not sure how much the staging would have helped, especially if the sitting-room setting is supposed to be both the Davenports’ living room and the Rattenburys’. This play is almost better conceptually as a TV adaptation, where the shifts in time and place can be much more clearly defined. (The existence of the TV adaptation, featuring a young David Morrissey as the lover, Stoner in real life but Wood in the play, is the reason I read this play in the first place.)

This was Rattigan’s last play, and it kind of shows, with the messy chronology and the somewhat samey-sounding characters. I ended up looking up the original case and found the circumstances more interesting than the play. The murder victim, Francis Rattenbury, practised architecture in Canada and designed the British Columbia provincial legislature, as well as the Empress Hotel in Victoria and the former provincial courthouse, which is now home to the Vancouver Art Gallery. And it was his affair with Alma, who later became the wife who murdered him, that caused a scandal in the Canadian society he lived in, stopping the flow of work and precipitating his return to England.

If you are at all interested in this play, hunt down the TV adaptation. Don’t bother reading it. ( )