Claire Burlington

This was a black comedy set in 1862. It was selected for the Jackson’s Lane 10 x 10 Festival where 10 new plays were paired up with 10 directors for a season of staged readings.

Miss Short, a wealthy spinster, decides to set up a home where she will train penitent prostitutes for domestic service thus giving them a chance to start anew. She enlists the aid of two friends, the upstanding Mr Crabtree and the louche Mr Wilkes, and welcomes her first four protegees. Against a jaunty background of religious fervour and the spectre of syphilis, everyone lusts after and/or falls in love with someone inappropriate, real identities and dark secrets are exposed, and desserts just and unjust are meted out as true love finally triumphs.

I was attempting to look at the (not just) Victorian tug-of-war between respectability and need, and how authority figures – who are usually society’s moral arbiters – quite often don’t have an upright leg to stand on once they’ve dropped their public face. There was, naturally, quite a hefty helping of slapstickery, hanky-panky and trousers round ankles in this piece.

I’m quite fond of the character list at the front of the script:

Miss Short, a wealthy spinster