Lettice Douffet has inherited both theatricality and eccentricity from her mother. Now employed as a tourist guide in a shabby stately home, she attempts to enliven its dull history with her own imaginary fancies until she is caught in the act and promptly sacked. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with the starchy official who sacked her, but the friendship almost ends in tears after a nasty accident when the two ladies are enacting the execution of Charles I.
The play opened in London in 1987 with Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack, and has been described as “Shaffer’s lightest, wittiest and most accessible play”.