Onions in the Stew

The title to this comedy about escape from the ordinary comes from the line, "Where hearts were high and fortunes low and onions in the stew." Betty MacDonald has talked her two attractive teenage daughters and somewhat doubtful husband into sinking every cent they have into a home on an island in Puget Sound. Now the family stares wistfully across the bay toward the lights of the big, comfortable city. Why, even on their very first day the tide came in unexpectedly and caught half their possessions on the beach. Everything Betty does to make this venture a success backfires. The results will have your audience in stitches but they're no joke for Betty, now aghast at the difficulties of the project. Her daughters are at a painful state (they're boy crazy!), putting on lipstick to gather driftwood, switching from hair curlers to hair straighteners and coming up with mysterious ailments to avoid homework. Betty is sunk, miserable at having brought this apparent disaster on them all. Yet, in the midst of the humorous difficulties, the family finds a special value in the life they are creating—a value they wouldn't trade for anything in the world!