Equally Divided

Synopsis

Edith likes to think she is a good person. She was a dutiful daughter to her demanding mother, while selfish younger sister Renata got all the attention (and all the husbands). Now their mother has died, and the handsome, widowed family solicitor is on his way with news of the will, perhaps she can be happy at last... But something tells her that Renata - glamorous, impossible, Renata - will always come out on top. Surrounded by their mother's temptingly portable collection of antiques, will Edith find that honesty, like beauty, is only skin deep?

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 12 February 2013

Money may make the world turn around more smoothly on its axis but it can create an avalanche of jagged emotions within a family. Take the two sisters in Ronald Harwood's 1998 comedy – though tragicomedy might be a fairer description. Their parents were refugees from Hitler's Europe but are now dead, their mother only recently. They appear to be joint inheritrices, though their life patterns have diverged extraordinarily.

The sister we meet first is frumpy Edith, the stay-at-home daughter – home being a south-coast house made out of old railway carriages. She has been her mother's companion and, latterly, her carer. Renata flew the nest early on, has made wealthy marriages (and even more lucrative divorce settlements); she simply came for the funeral and the reading of the will. That vital document is in the care of the family solicitor Charles, a widower with an attention-span strongly resembling cotton-wool.

La...

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