This is a hefty three hour play, inviting the audience to consider the state of the nation and its divisions. We are in the garden of a grand ancestral home of a formidable lady from London and her rather compliant husband and lesbian (not that she's 'out') daughter. A visit by a successful writer friend soon develops into an affair with the daughter - who was also the object of attention of the lad from next door. Also with us from the outset is the girlfriend of the dead son of the owner. He makes the occasional apparition appearance on stage. To the girlfriend's annoyance the mother has recently scattered his ashes on the garden. The mother gets exasperated that the girlfriend is failing to 'move on' but is given a jolt by the news that the girlfriend is pregnant by the frozen sperm of the son.
The house and garden are tended to by an elderly couple but their placer is usurped by the far more efficient Polish Kristina. The owner restores the garden and has grand designs to get everything back in shape but the project falls through and she eventually sells to the highest bidder who will turn the house into flats, with a piece of garden allocated to each flat. The bereaved daughter in law plans to buy the flat with the garden that has the ashes scattered on it.
So there is plenty here to get your teeth into. The mother seems quite ruthless with a healthy dose of entitlement. She is the caricature of the formidable English upper middle class. The gardener and his wife are the perfect representation of those for whom the world essentially stops at the village boundary. The lesbian daughter and her 'old enough to be your mother' friend go off to live in London, despite the mother's entreaties to her friend to give up the affair. They and the Polish cleaner speak for other sides of Britain.
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