We slowly learn here what may have turned her into this monster.  A disappointing marriage and probably a dislike of sex within a few weeks of her marriage.  She is now a widow.  She also had two very painful childbirths with each boy.  There are no other outlets for her energies and ability, no employment, no education, no religion, no parents to care for, other than to throw herself into raising her sons and embroidering cross stitch.  By contrast with her mother in law, Christina is that oddity in 1926 of a woman career scientist in biology with the offer of a research post at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. 

Mrs Phelps has mapped out David’s future as an architect with a plot of local land ripe for development.  She is appalled that he has been to so many places in Europe with Christina that she wished to travel to with David. 

The performances are very fine, especially Sophie Ward’s domineering, wheedling and manipulative matriarch. I liked also Jemma Carlton’s Hester who has some of the most perceptive lines in the play. 

The umbilical silver cord should have been severed decades earlier and at almost three hours the play is a long haul in the oppressive Phelps family.  I am at a loss to know how it could be played as a comedy when we would be free to laugh at the pain being lashed out to the women in her son’s lives, other than by caricaturing the Phelps harridan