THE STORY SO FAR
London 1662. Aspiring actress Abigail Sidley lodges with innkeeper Dolly Pursglove while working as wardrobe assistant to Mrs Suggs at the Stag Theatre. Fellow actress Lucy secures Abigail an audition with actor/producer Cyprien Blanc. Concerned about Cyprien’s influence over Abigail, Dolly quizzes frustrated playwright Adam Sparks, to whom Abigail has grown close. His words make Dolly suspect that Cyprien Blanc is in fact Caradoc Whyting. Years before, he had an affair with Dolly’s friend Susan. When Susan had a baby girl by Whyting, he abandoned them both. Susan then vanished with her child, and Dolly believed Susan had died in poverty. When Dolly learns that Blanc and Whyting are one and the same, another thought strikes her. Abigail looks just like Susan. If she is Cyprien’s daughter, then Dolly feels she must protect her from him. She summons Mrs Quincey, housekeeper to Abigail’s father. Meanwhile, Abigail learns she’s to star in the theatre’s next production.
If Abigail was cherishing any ideas about how differently her working day would be now she had been given the role of Miranda in The Tempest, she was quickly to be disabused of them.
Between carrying out her tasks for Mrs Suggs, who seemed even more sour with her since her return, Abigail was expected to find time not only to learn her lines but to seek out whichever actor she had a scene with and find a space to rehearse.
‘Oh, it’s always the same,’ Lucy told her cheerfully when Abigail complained. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
By the end of the day, she was exhausted. Yet at the