After his wife dies, fifty-five-year-old businessman Philip Emmenthal (Sir John Standing), at the prompting of his playboy son Storey (Matthew Delamere), populates his Geneva villa with eight and a half concubines. Three are from Kyoto, Japan, where Storey manages Pachinco palaces. Each has a distinctive personality: a nun, a child bearer, a gambler, a student of Kabuki, a horsewoman with a pet pig, and a maid. Philip throws off his strait-laced and repressed attitudes, immersing himself in pleasure. After about a year, the women begin to assert their own power. Side adventures pre-figure the household's break-up, and the women depart in one way or another, one at a time. Philip's fate is in the hands of Palmira (Polly Walker), his favorite.
Play | Title | Artist |
---|---|---|
8 ½ Women
|
||
On a Slow Boat to China
|
||
Excerpt from 'Otello'
|
||