This was the last play I read in a collection of suspense plays I have, because it was the least well known, and at first found it not much chop – a bunch of middle class Britishers sitting around after a dinner party going jolly good and talking about a play. But then someone recognises a cigarette box that has a connection with a friend and relative of theirs who committed suicide and the revelations begin: X was in love with Y who was in love with Z, A blamed B for stealing because of C. There’s even drug taking and one of the male characters reveals he lusted the dead male – in a 1932 play!! And the dead dude was a bisexual drug addict who left a trail of destruction. Revelation upon revelation keeps it very gripping. It’s in three acts but you’d be better off staging it continuously. There’s a terrific epilogue where we leap back in time to the action at the beginning of the play and show what would have happened (or, more accurately, been avoided) had the revelations not started. And Priestley only wrote it in a week!
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