ANN VERONICA A musical based on the novel by H.G. Wells. Book by Frank Wells and Ronald Gow. Lyrics by David Croft. Music by Cyril Ornandel First presented at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Opened Cambridge Theatre, London April 17th, 1969. (44 perfs) SYNOPSIS Act I It was an unusual thing for a young woman to be a college student in 1909 but Ann Veronica Stanley was the sort of girl who is determined to be unusual. As she sits in the train going home in the evening she looks at the busy world hurrying past the carriage window and feels she doesn't belong to it at all. She sings that she is going to do real things in life and be a whole person. There is a big row with father about going to a fancy dress ball. Ann Veronica is sent to her room. Peter Stanley is an old-fashioned kind of parent and he complains bitterly to Aunt Molly. Hetty and Connie Widgett are fellow students and neighbours of Ann Veronica. They are ardent suffragettes under the leadership of Miss Miniver, who is not only a militant suffragette and a staunch vegetarian, but a believer in the superiority of women in the war of the sexes. She tells the girls that their great enemy is maternity. At the Church Picnic the young men and girls sing happily in the warm Edwardian sunshine. Their thoughts are turning to love and the opportunity for practising it. Aunt Molly's thoughts too are turning that way — she would like Ann Veronica to give encouragement to a suitably rich and well-connected young man called Hubert Manning. But Ann prefers to talk to Mr. Ramage, a flirtatious businessman who offers to help her — rather too eagerly. At the first opportunity Hubert Manning proposes and Ann wonders why none of her admirers ever mentions love. Her thoughts are turning that way too and confesses to some strange romantic desires. Teddy Widgett, another admirer of Ann Veronica advises her to make a stand, which she does. Father now says she must give up her biology course. In the words of the Ann Veronica song she must 'face the world and face it now' and she runs away to London. She tries to keep up her work at College but it is difficult to pay the fees. Hubert Manning begs her to go back home and declares his loyalty. She is attending the lectures of a certain Mr. Capes, and suddenly, over a microscope in the laboratory she knows she has fallen in love with him — a process which he explains as chemical attraction. Short of money, she goes to see the businessman Ramage for advice and employment. He insists on lending her forty pounds. His dishonourable intentions are revealed, however. Ann wishes that a woman could go to a man and tell him of her love. But Mr. Capes is a lecturer and she is a student and there is a barrier between them. Then, hearing with dismay that Mr. Capes is a married man and separated from his wife, she joins Hetty and Connie at a Suffragette Rally. The formidable Miss Miniver leads the singing of their great marching song —They Can't Keep Us Down — and the first half of the story ends in a great anti-male crusade, with waving of banners and showers of leaflets. Act II Ramage takes Ann Veronica to a private room at the Rococo Restaurant, but she escapes from his unwelcome intentions. More disgusted with men than ever she tells Miss Miniver that she wants to strike a blow for women and go to prison, a wish that is soon granted after a demonstration in Downing Street. Prison is a grim place where the wardresses order the prisoners to stand in line and don prison clothes. Mr. Capes offers to arrange Ann's release if she will abandon her political activities and return to College. She refuses and wonders if she has lost him for ever. But at last she arrives home, weak and unhappy. Her father and Aunt Molly urge the claims of Mr. Manning as a suitable husband. Ann accepts his ring. There seems to
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