Table Manners

In this play, Annie has arranged to spend an illicit weekend with her sister Ruth's husband Norman, and for this reason, suitably disguised, has asked her elder brother Reg and his wife Sarah to look after their widowed mother and the house. As it happens the seduction, thought or planned, by each of the six characters never takes place either.

This is the first play from the trilogy "The Norman Conquests".   The plays are not consecutive, but all occur during a single weekend, and each takes place in the same house, with the same cast of characters, set individually in two of the rooms and the garden. Thus we are watching, at times, but not all the time, events which are taking place simultaneously with those we have seen (or about to see) in another set. Each play is complete in itself and can be played as a separate entity. However each benefits if all can be produced as one threefold whole. A common factor is Norman's inadequate attempts to involve himself in turn with his sister in law, his brother in law's wife and his own wife.