Set in a respectable English seaside town in the 1950s, this play centres on the genteel lives of 60-year-old twins Athelstan and Henry Bouverie and their younger sister Benjamina, all of them unmarried. Facing bankruptcy after their Aunt Nettie s inheritance turns out to be worthless, Benjamina decides to rent out Aunt Nettie s home which adjoins theirs. The young couple who take it, Edward, a likeable and plausible crook, and his wife Liz, who is cast in the same mould as Eliza Doolittle, set up a profitable but illicit gambling school in the house. This transforms the lives of the Bouveries, particularly Benjamina, whom they persuade to connive with them by concealing the enterprise from a nosey neighbour and the local chief constable.

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