In a seaside dentist's waiting room, a young woman named Dolly Clandon settles into the chair and proceeds to turn the appointment into something far more interesting than a routine filling. She's clever, forthright, and utterly unafraid to speak her mind. Her brother Philip arrives with news that their mother is about to marry a man younger than herself, triggering a cascade of revelations about their family's mysterious past. What follows is Shaw at his most delightful: a comedy of manners where everyone speaks their mind with brutal honesty, where family secrets unravel hilariously, and where the collision between old conventions and new ideas about love and independence creates genuine chaos. The play questions whether we ever truly know the people closest to us, and whether honesty is always the best policy when it comes to matters of the heart. By the time the mysteries of the Clandon family resolve, nothing is quite what it seemed, and everything is wonderfully complicated.
