We open on a rustic scene, two old men who look like they work with their hands dozing in a farmhouse. What looks like a Victorian rural setup isn't the past though but the future - or at least the future from the perspective of 1949, when
Summer Day's Dream premiered. J.B. Priestley's play takes place in the post-apocalyptic England of 1975, Britain having been worst affected by the Third World War, which ended with an atomic bomb sending the island back to pre-industrial times. A couple of decades on and the country has found a new life as an agricultural society with a mostly barter-based economy. In the old order Stephen Dawlish (Kevin Colson) was a wealthy factory-owner, but now the 80-year-old's country mansion is a farmhouse, and he and his family happily work the land, exchange goods for what they need, and entertain themselves in the evening with music, poetry and amateur dramatics.
