Mangosteen Mania
Charlotte Cory
20 Dec 2005
On board a ship from Bombay to Southampton in 1901, a rare mangosteen plant travels by Royal Appointment from Queen Victoria herself. A fictional story of one man's attempt to win a prize and how others attempted to cash in on it.
Anna ...... Romy Baskerville
Harriet ...... Emma Cunniffe
George ...... Russell Dixon
Steward ...... Stephen Hogan
Frank ...... Ifan Meredith
Director Nadia Molinari.
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The mangosteen is a rare tropical fruit. It is notoriously hard to cultivate and difficult to transport, so its
delicate taste became fabled. Queen Victoria, who liked all things Eastern, once offered a prize to any
adventurer who could bring her back a ripe mangosteen to taste. No one ever succeeded. Mangosteen Mania is set in January 1901 on the VERA, a jobbing, no-frills ship, plying the busy waters between Bombay and steward and fellow traveller Anna Vaughan, a middle-aged,weary Southampton. This ship is carrying a rare mangosteen plant by Royal appointment of HRH Queen Victoria. She is bed-ridden and
dying – but they do not know this on the VERA, where an unlikely group of four passengers and a steward are thrown together, each journeying with their own motives,secrets,hopes and failures. Frank Taylor hopes to recover his fortune by presenting the mangosteen to the Queen but George Beale, Principal of Beale & Co, sees an opportunity to get rich quick and convinces Frank to sell shares in his mangosteen business. George persuades the ship’s writer of ladies’ fiction to buy the first shares. Frank’s task, meanwhile, is to make it back to England to present Queen Victoria with the famed fruit.
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