NURSE JANE GOES TO HAWAII
Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii, by Canadian playwright Allan Stratton, is such a play. Nurse Jane is actually the heroine of a series of romance novels authored by Vivien Bliss, herself a rather romantic and virginal maiden who intends to remedy at least a part of that condition during a weekend spent in the apartment of Edgar Chisholm. He is the bored spouse of Doris, a successful syndicated advice columnist. Difficulties begin when Doris decides to cancel her out-of-town trip and stay home with her husband, a plan that is discovered by the two would-be paramours only after Vivien is down to her baby-dolls. The confusion grows with the introduction of Bill Scant, a henpecked husband seeking an emergency consultation with Doris. Then there’s Peggy Scant, who believes Bill to be her older brother, but who is actually his and Doris’s daughter, and who is an investigative journalist bent on exposing any dirt she can find on Doris. And there’s Betty Scant, Bill’s wife and Edgar’s ex-wife. And Vivien’s editor, impatient for an overdue Nurse Jane manuscript. And Peter Pryor, the long-lost son of Edgar and Betty’s short-lived marriage, who has fled his adoptive family to search for his real parents. Just to make all this a little more confusing, Vivien has decided that her weekend adventure would make wonderful material for a novel and proceeds to spin a purple-prose fantasy as events unfold around her.
