More than a Dream

Adam Hughes' life seems to be at a dead end when to his astonishment he meets an attractive and brilliant woman – who lived over 200 years ago: the charismatic Mary Wollstonecraft, who tells him, and us, the story of her eventful and passionate life. Mary is driven by her belief in a juster world and by her lifelong search for love. Her fire and energy sweep us into 18th century England and Ireland, and to Paris at the height of the Revolution, where she meets the love of her life, the handsome American Gilbert Imlay. She finds sexual fulfilment and happiness with Gilbert, but he deserts her and their baby daughter, plunging Mary into suicidal despair. She still needs to understand how this happened. Gilbert too gives his version, gradually disclosing the troubled depths below his confident surface, the fear, aggression and guilt that make him terrified of love. As well as bringing us into close contact with its historical setting and characters MORE THAN A DREAM invites us to look hard at questions that are as urgent and compelling today as ever: the nature of sexuality and love, and of the destructive inner drives that pull male and female apart.