Synopsis

In an alcove of a town house a great man lay dying. In the anteroom, awaiting his death are his wife, his mistress, his best friend, his feckless son and daughter. An elderly physician and a nurse ammend the family portrait, while newsmen eager for the latest updates and television crews clamour off stage. They who stand the deathwatch recollect past loves, rekindle old wars and await word that it is "all over". Colleen Dewhurst and Jessica Tandy led the Broadway cast. "It is a lovely, poignant and deeply felt play. In no way at all is it an easy play - this formal minuet of death, this symphony ironically celebrating death's dominion. It is not easy in its structure, a series of almost operatic arias demanding, in their precision, pin-point concentration from the audience, and it is certainly not easy in its subject matter."