Bettie's Books

bookshelves: north-americas, play-dramatisation, radio-4, winter-20122013, published-1978, glbt, abandoned, next

BBC Blurb: It's 1976 - San Francisco . Mary Ann Singleton arrives from Cleveland for a vacation . She'shoping for adventure. Decising to stay she needs to find a home and a job .

Directed by Susan Roberts

Set in 1976 in San Francisco, Tales of the City is the first of a sequence of novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane; Tales is both a sparkling comedy of manners and a portrait of a free and easy era with the drug and sex counter-culture in full swing.

Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman from Cleveland, Ohio arrives in San Francisco, finding an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, the domain of the eccentric marijuana growing landlady Anna Madrigal. Mary Ann becomes friends with other tenants of the building: the hippyish bisexual Mona Ramsey; the strange Norman Neal Williams; and Michael Tolliver, a sweet and personable gay man known to friends as Mouse.

Beyond the house, lovers and friends guide Mary Ann through her San Franciscan adventures. Edgar Halcyon, Mary Ann's and Mona's boss, Edgar's socialite daughter DeDe Halcyon-Day, and her scheming husband Beauchamp Day all provide a glimpse into a more affluent Californian class. Mona's ex-lover D'orothea Wilson, returns from a modelling assignment in New York, while Michael's lover and DeDe's gynaecologist, Jon Fielding, become part of the group.



So, it's San Francisco - I know because I was told it five times in as many seconds!