A Most Sweet Poison

Based on the novel Sappho by Alphonse Daudet

A play about sexual obsession. Set in nineteenth-century Paris and the French countryside, it centres on a passionate love affair between a young man and an older woman. The novel on which the play is loosely based was published in 1884, hugely popular in its day and notorious for its supposed immorality. The story - or an approximation to it - has been filmed in England (1922), in America (1931) and twice in France (1934 and 1970). It also gave rise to the libretto of an opera by Massenet.