THE STEPMOTHER Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, Surrey

Artistic director Sam Walter’s last discovery is a fine play by Githa Sowerby which had but one performance in London in 1924 and has not been seen in Britain since. In fairy tales, stepmothers are almost always wicked. Here it is the widower, who is the villain. Eustace Gaydon, in dire financial straits, presumes he will inherit a fortune from his late sister, only to find that she has left all her money to her companion, a naive 19-year-old orphan. He immediately engages her as a governess for his two daughters and then marries her, thus giving him total control of her inheritance. 10 years later, having squandered all her money on shady business deals, he is in dire straits again and dependent on what she earns as a dressmaker. Gaydon is the sort of awful bounder you would expect to find in a Victorian melodrama and boo: fortunately, Christopher Ravenscroft plays him absolutely straight and his odiousness is always completely believable.