Edward Damson, famous English playwright, has died violently at his remote Aegean home. His son, whom he has never acknowledged, American academic Philip Damson, has had a lifelong obsession with the father he never knew and he begs permission from his stepmother, Helen, to write Edward's biography. She agrees reluctantly on the proviso that he tells the whole story - a story, she warns, he will find painful.5 women, 4 men.