Sweet-natured Lotty Wilton is suffering depression from another rainy, gray, London winter, and from an oppressive relationship with her pompous solicitor husband, who believes himself to be “the image of premature wisdom.”
When she sees an advertisement in the paper to rent a castle in Italy for the month of April, an idyllic spot “for those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine,” she jumps at the chance to escape her downtrodden existence.
Sensing an instant kinship with fellow housewife Rose Arnott, a severely angelic woman with sorrows and sad marriage of her own, Lotty persuades her to share in the great adventure.
Seeking to reduce the costs, the two ladies enlist Caroline Bramble, a beautiful and exhausted socialite “modern”, and Mrs. Graves, an overbearing aristocratic widow, to round out the party.
As the month passes, the verdant sun-drenched castle of San Salvatore works its magic on each sad and hardened heart, healing grief and bringing hope.
With the arrival of two chastened husbands and one attractive young artist, romance blooms again. Matthew Barber’s Enchanted April, based on Elizabeth Von Arnim’s beloved novel of the 1920s, is a gentle and romantic comedy of manners. Against the backdrop of a country still reeling from World War I Enchanted April offers to its characters, and viewers, a necessary balm of sunshine and renewal.
● Lotty
○ in the beginning, is a mousey, dowdy, though, becoming woman who is a "seer of things." She is candid, sincere and guileless, so much so that it both intrigues, charms and annoys. It's her yearning for a respite from her dreary life that propels her toward the enchanted April where she blossoms into the confident, strong, desirable woman hidden beneath.
● Mellersh
○ is Lotty's husband, is a handsome, distinguished and overbearing solicitor. A boor. Used to commanding his wife in all things, he has long since discounted her as a lost cause and has found an acceptable state of tolerance. Meticulous in his appearance and ambitious in nature, success and partnership is what he wants.
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● Rose
○ is a rigid, reserved and melancholy woman constrained by restrictions ,and duties. She and her husband, whom she is unable to approach, have grown apart since a devastating personal tragedy at the end of the war. She longs for redemption, to reunite with her husband, who she loves deeply, and to find some solace in the life that is before her.
● Frederick
○ is Rose's husband, Frederick, is an amiable man hovering on the precipice of middle-age. A writer of lurid romance novels, (much to Roses’s despair), he is confused and frustrated by his current relationship with his wife. A successful author of lurid novels (under the pen name of Florian Ayers), Frederick has wandered from the relationship but longs for his wife...the wife he remembers from before the war and wonders if she will ever return to him.
● Mrs. Graves
○ is forthright and solid aristocratic woman ensconced in a world of dark dusty old things and who is on the verge of being a "dusty old thing" herself. She does not "suffer fools gladly" and is intolerant of impertinence, idiocy and youth, and pines for a place she can sit and remember...or perhaps, forget.
● Wilding
○ is a respectable-looking, bespectacled, solitary man. He is the owner of San Salvatore, renting it to the two ladies in London. He is also a classical painter, “two eyes, one mouth and so on.” Gracious, and unassuming, he is smitten with Rose upon their first meeting, comparing her to a painting of a Madonna in the castle. He arrives at the castle in the second act, quietly assuming that Rose is a war widow.
● Lady Caroline
○ is a ravishing, yet melancholy beauty who has chosen to deaden her despondency and confusion with liquor and men, and only the liquor works. In WWI, she was a nurse and saw the horrors of that war. She is now unsatisfied with her station, her life, her parents, her...everything, and aches for a place she can ponder the existential questions facing her.