A Time to Keep

by David Edgar, Stephanie Dale

A large-scale play co-written by Britain’s leading political playwright, this is a historical romp crossing Jane Austen with Charles Dickens. David Edgar is back with this energetic and wide-ranging story of a whole community in early-nineteenth-century Dorset, with over fifty characters from Mad King George III to laborers and jailbirds.

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

David Edgar is an English playwright. He was born in Birmingham into a family with longstanding links to the theatre. His father and mother both acted at the Birmingham Rep before moving into broadcasting, and by the age of five Edgar had written his first play and performed it in a 12 seat theatre his father built for him in his back garden.

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ed...

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great example of the Monsterist genre of theatre--a trend in British theatre especially from the late 1990s to early 2010s, which features large casts, bit themes and ideas, a public focus, and frequently historical/mythical settings. This play has something like 115 characters, and it takes place in the very public space of a theatrical performance in Dorset in 1804. There are two major plot lines in this play: one is the play-within-a-play about the history of Dorset (especially the hanging of Mary Channing, who murdered her boring husband), and the other is a love affair between Mary Strickland and Isaac Gulliver. The love affair, in a way, mirrors the plot of the play-within-a-play, because Mary S. is supposed to be marrying her distant cousin William, whom she has no interest in, and instead chooses the dashing free trader (a.k.a. smuggler) Isaac. However, unlike Mary Channing, Mary Strickland and Isaac end up effectively breaking up, because he gets caught and condemned for smuggling--though he gets a temporary reprieve to be in the play at the insistence of King George III--and she uses the final lines of the play to effectively say good by to him.

Also, George III and his entourage just periodically wander into events. It's amazing.
https://youtu.be/WI3ySXB2aK8