This script has been edited for Zoom purposes – These are the roles that remain in the show.

Character                                                      Description

 Vere Queckett                 (Poor “Gentleman” with Expensive Taste) – 40s/50s

Caroline Dyott                  (Principal of Volumnia College, Vere’s Wife) – 40s/50s

Archibald Rankling           (Rear-Admiral of H.M. Flag Ship Pandora) – 40s/50s

Emma Rankling                 (Archibald’s Wife) – 40s/50s

Dinah Paulover                  (Daughter of the Rankling’s & Student at Volumnia) – teens – 20s

Reginald Paulover              (Dinah’s Husband) – 20s

Peggy Hesslerigge              (Student at Volumnia) – teens – 20s/30s

John Mallory                        (Lieutenant of H.M. Flag Ship Pandora) – 30s

Ermyntrude Johnson          (Student at Volumnia) – teens – 20s

Otto Bernstein                     (A Popular Composer, German) – 40s/50s

Tyler                                       (A Servant, Cockney) – teens – 20s

Jane Chipman                       (A Servant, Cockney) – 40s/50s

ROBERT– This role has already been cast. was a famous mathematician who has just died of a heart attack in his fifties. He is already dead when the play begins, but he appears in the first scene in Catherine’s imagination and returns in two later scenes, which flash back to earlier years. Robert was a mathematical genius.  While he was still in his twenties, Robert was afflicted by a serious mental illness, which dogged the remainder of his life. He became so incapacitated that his daughter Catherine had to stay at home to care for him.

CATHERINE – is Robert’s twenty-five-year-old daughter. A college dropout, she has spent several years at home caring for her mentally ill father. Their relationship, although sometimes antagonistic on the surface, was sustained by strong mutual affection. Although she is a highly intelligent woman, she has no direction in life. Catherine is worried that she may inherit her father’s illness, and the signs of mental instability are already there.

CLAIRE is Catherine’s twenty-nine-year-old efficient, practical, and successful sister. Unlike Catherine, she has inherited none of her father’s erratic genius. Instead, she has made a career in New York as a currency analyst. Claire and Catherine have never gotten along well. Claire feels responsible for Catherine’s welfare and wants her to move to New York, but Catherine resents what she sees as Claire’s interference in her life.

HAL is a twenty-eight-year-old mathematician who teaches at the University of Chicago. He also plays drums in a rock band made up of mathematicians. Hal is a former student of Robert’s, whom he admires immensely, not only for the brilliance of his achievements in mathematics but because Robert helped him through a bad patch in his doctoral studies. Hal first met Catherine briefly four years earlier, and when he meets her again, he tries to make friends with her, and quickly becomes romantically involved with her.