Overview
On the Winkleigh estate, in Devon, overlooking Dartmoor, early in the twentieth century, Bronwyn, the young and beautiful orphaned heiress of Winkleigh, and her companion Imogen, the orphaned ward of Bronwyn's late parents, are entertaining their house guests, two very different friends of Bronwyn's dead brother Edward, by taking photographs and flirting, while Willy, the gardener's bastard son, looks on, lusting after the women and dreaming of murdering the men. Bronwyn's father was somewhat demented, her mother hung herself in the windmill and had terrible dreams about Zepplins, and the seat of their primitive automobile is rather hard on Cedric's wonkies. Repressed desires, brutal violence, and a labyrinth of increasingly disturbing family secrets make this extremely funny and sardonic mystery rather like an Edward Gorey drawing come to life. Cedric likes to kill things. Charles likes to look at things. Bronwyn likes to drive men insane. Imogen is lost. Willy is filled with lust. And the Zeppelins are about to attack the gazebo. Inspired by an old Edwardian photograph sent to the playwright by a girl in a boxcar, a dark comedy that turns out to be about the end of Western civilization.