Peeps at People - Being Certain Papers from the Writings of Anne Warrington Witherup (Dramatic Reading)

Meet Anne Warrington Witherup, a magnificently pompous Edwardian gentlewoman who has taken it upon herself to visit the great and famous of her era and report back on their home lives. Armed with impeccable credentials and an unshakeable sense of her own importance, she journeys from London to seek out the luminaries of art, science, letters, and history, offering up her wry, superior observations on everyone from explorers to authors. The joke, of course, is on Anne: her dignified certainties crumble in the face of reality, and her steadfast conviction that the famous ought to live up to her expectations makes her the most hilarious character in the book. John Kendrick Bangs deploys gentle satire with a light touch, skewering the era's appetite for celebrity profiles while simultaneously celebrating the absurdity of the whole enterprise. It's a time capsule wrapped in wit, capturing an age that worshipped its heroes even as it mocked the worshippers.