1913: eighteen year old Daryll Fairley, an ebullient young suffragette, dances the Argentine Tango around the family hallway and announces her determination to be financially independent. Just over a decade later she has it all: the power to vote, a flourishing creative business, a faithful boyfriend, deferential siblings, and the fame to be able to demand a last-minute table at all the best restaurants. But does it make her happy?

The Orange Tree’s production marks the first major revival of The Man Who Pays The Piper, a play about economic power and gender, as relevant today as when it was written.

GB Stern was one of the most prolific women writers of the 20s and 30s. She published her first novel in 1920 and published a novel every year until 1964. She also wrote a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, co-wrote dialogues on Jane Austen, and was a contributing writer to the 1933 film of Little Women starring Katharine Hepburn.