The Chalk Garden

This is a totally magical vignette of a story within an Edwardian costume drama like Downton Abbey. It's also a bit gothic in its creepiness.

Essentially there is a snobbish old bat (think: Maggie Smith) with enough money to maintain a staff of an autocratic butler (never seen) who is dying in his bed and a traumatised manservant who certainly doesn't 'know his place'. She is seeking to employ a governess for her teenage granddaughter. The granddaughter's hobby is arson, her expertise is lying and her co-conspirator the crime-obsessed manservant. She gets rid of all governesses with her appalling behaviour so her grandmother is forced to take anyone who applies and can put up with the brat.

And so the job falls to a mysterious but show more obviously well-bred lady who has no references and is not in the least subservient to the old bat to whom she gives better gardening advice than the unseen butler.

The plot also involves lies about rape, a mother come back to claim her daughter now she is remarried and pregnant and the consequent tug-of-war with granny and an elderly judge who comes for lunch.

And it is the judge who resolves the story and reveals the secret the mysterious governess has been keeping close to her bosom. She is a woman apparently convicted wrongly by the judge of murder who spent a long time in prison and is now trying to re-establish herself in any way she can. Her secret revealed she must leave, but the old bat cannot bear to lose an expert gardener and so she ends up staying, but on her own terms.

It is all quite fun, comic, over-the-top even, but also very dark.

Very enjoyable. Recommended to lovers of gentle drawing-room or costume dramas. Imagine Maggie Smith playing the mad old bat and perhaps a young Jeremy Irons as the neurotic manservant, not sure who for Lauren. Maybe a 16 year old Linsdey Lohan behaving as badly on screen as she does in real life now. Imagine this play with that cast and you're halfway there. show less

Play that I had to read after seeing the 1950/60s movie. It reads well and has more atmosphere than the movie.

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