A new play by Craig Baxter, Lady Anna: All At Sea considers how power and prejudice act as a crucible of corruption and explores how an intolerant society can too easily become a very dangerous thing.

Anthony Trollope writes two thousand words of his latest novel Lady Anna daily before breakfast on board the SS Great Britain bound for Australia. His fellow passengers are profoundly shocked by its content. Is Trollope himself a surprising radical pitted against the status quo? Or is it his characters that his companions find so disturbing?

In the novel, scandal is in the air. A very British scandal involving a disputed title, fraud, bigamy, a legal case, madness and attempted murder. An extraordinary set of circumstances finds Lady Anna, a woman of aristocratic birth, in love with a radical tailor’s son. The weight of the Victorian establishment closes its ranks against the match. So Anna must choose between her family, her class and everything she has ever known or settle for love, destitution and disgrace.