LOVE OF FOUR COLONELS, THE

by Ustinov, Peter

An adult fairy tale, where four colonels representing America, France, Russia and England are taken to a magical castle by two fairies, one wicked, the other good. At the castle they discover The Sleeping Beauty. Each of our national characters (personified by the colonels) sees her as his own particular ideal - The Frenchman as an 18th Century lass of the Boulevards, the Russian as a flaxen-haired figure out of Chekhov, the Englishman as something virginally Elizabethan, the American as a moll in an all-night dive. Each man gets a chance to waken and then to claim her, but each fails, surrendering the illusion that he had long cherished. ‘It is a rich mixture of searing satire, fairy tale, and morality play. It takes us roaring through a magic woodland of burlesque, philosophy and fantasy…it makes a stimulating excursion’. Daily Mail.