Overview

Venice: part mystery, part illusion, with its floating houses and painterly skies. Three linked novellas spanning the Fourteenth Century to the present day tell stories of treacherous crimes, hidden love and survival. A place of beauty and power, foreigners have long been drawn to the city's sinking shores. Here are stories of what they seek and find; of those who will always remain and of a Venetian exiled from the Republic, whose return implies the dark energies that created and maintained it. Through the whole weaves the story of Ana Rovigo, a noblewoman. Who is she? And what does she become? 'Lords of the Night' is set in the glory days of the Republic. Sister Annunziata has become a nun to protect her family fortune; Vico Pisani is the former Lord of the Night who entrusts her with his secrets as an old man. Together their voices tell a mysterious tale of murder, intrigue and political foul play. But will Vico's story ever be truly told?   'Day Pieces'. Venice in the Eighteenth Century. Other voices resume the tales. Francisco Contaro is an impoverished noble living on a state pension and his wits; Henry Arden an English clergyman tutoring a rich mute youth on the Grand Tour; Enzo is a gondolier's son turned scaffold-boy to a great fresco painter and Ana Pavic a Balkan shipping heiress who secures an aristocratic marriage... Will the players find the answers they seek? Will the mute boy speak? 'School Trip': tourist-clogged present day Venice continues to beg its questions. Apprentice chef Bastardino is working in a tourist restaurant. Teacher Marjorie spends a life-changing evening there accompanying a sixth-form trip to study Venetian art. Voices from the 1840s join. A love story with few answers, perhaps? Is this Venice teasing us still?

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Keith Dewhurst was born in 1931. He worked in a cotton mill and as a travelling reporter with Manchester United before becoming a playwright. Three of his seventeen stage plays were premiered at the Royal Court Theatre and six, including his adaptation of Flora Thompson's 'Lark Rise', at the Royal National Theatre. Several of these plays featured the folk rock bands Steeleye Span and The Albion Band. He wrote two movies, the novel 'Captain of the Sands', eighteen TV plays, of which 'Last Bus' won the Japan Prize, and episodes for many series, including the original 'Z-Cars'. He was a Guardian columnist, a member of the Production Board of the British Film Institute, a presenter of TV arts programmes and a Granada comedy show, and has written two football books and (with Jack Shepherd) a theatrical memoir. In Australia he was involved in an environmental protest by the Palm Beach Action Group. His second wife is the theatrical agent Alexandra Cann.

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