An Awfully Big Adventure

If you listen in pieces — commute, chores, late night — An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge keeps its place in this browser.

It is 1950 and the Liverpool repertory theatre company is rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan, a story of childhood innocence and loss. Stella has been taken on as assistant stage manager and quickly becomes obsessed with Meredith, the dissolute stage director. But it is only when the celebrated O’Hara arrives to take the lead that a different drama unfolds. In it, he and Stella are bound together in a past that neither dares to interpret.

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