by Dodie Smith
Adapted and produced by Martyn C. Webster

'To the family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.' So Nicholas Randolph ends his toast on the evening of his parents' golden wedding day. They are all there: Charles and Dora, placid in 'that unhoped serene that men call age,' their four children, Hilda, Margery, Cynthia, and Nicholas, and their four grandchildren. Even a great-grandson shrilly announces his presence now and then from a room upstairs. They are quite ordinary people - just like you and me and the family at The Cedars across the way - and the same things happen to them as have been happening to such people from generation to generation: the old looking back on life, the young in the thick of it, and the very young knowing little about life and caring less. Quite ordinary people: the only difference is that ordinary people become drama when they are touched by a hand of extraordinary skill. (Stephen Williams)
At 9.15