She is particularly pleased to sell an odd sketch of a finger for £100, only to discover it was a lost Michelangelo masterpiece, a study of the central image of the hand of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel worth millions.
Graham, a closeted middle-aged man with a history of mild mental health problems, finds his life upended when his ageing widowed mother, on whom he dotes, is reunited with an old flame who is his exact opposite.
A lonely, middle-aged department store clerk finds her life consumed with a burgeoning relationship with her new podiatrist, a decidedly kinky fellow whose all-consuming foot fetish prompts him to pay her to model a variety of shoes while also indulging in other activities.
Various incarnations of the original BBC television series found their way to the stage, including adaptations produced for the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1991, London's West End in 1992 and 1998, St. Martin's in Lancaster in 1994 and at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles in 2002.
[1] The original 1991-92 stage production comprised "A Woman of No Importance", "A Chip in the Sugar" and "A Lady of Letters", with Alan Bennett and Patricia Routledge reprising their TV roles.
The opening night casts included Brenda Wehle as Celia, Christine Ebersole as Irene, Kathleen Chalfant as Susan, Valerie Mahaffey as Leslie, Daniel Davis as Graham, and Lynn Redgrave as Miss Fozzard.
"[2] In their reviews for CurtainUp, Jerry Weinstein observed, "While there's nothing to prevent a contemporary staging of these plays, they have a decidedly 1950s postwar frisson," and Les Gutman called it "a very polished and satisfying evening of theater" and added, "There's more than a little irony in the snideness with which Bennett relates these stories.