Read the play out in parts. Enact the play on a suitable occasion.

Discuss in groups, plays or films with a strong message of social reform that you have watched.

Contrast the two ladies: Mrs Pearson and Mrs Fitzgerald.

What picture of Mrs Pearson do you form in the opening of the play and why?

How does Mrs Fitzgerald tell Mrs Pearson’s fortune?

Why doesn’t Mrs Pearson become ‘the boss’ of her family as Mrs Fitzgerald advises her to be?

Or

What is Mrs Fitzgerald’s advice to Mrs Pearson?

What does Mrs Fitzgerald find the cause of Mrs Pearson’s misery?

How do Mrs Pearson and Mrs Fitzgerald exchange their personalities?

How does Mrs Pearson start behaving after the exchange of personalities? Name the changes that surprise her children and husband.

Describe Doris. How does she trouble her mother?

How does Mrs Pearson (with Mrs Fitzgerald’s personality) make fun of Charlie Spence?