I blame the books they learned to read with. Daddy at the office. Mummy looking out of the window while she's washing up. I should have burnt them.

It's Virgie's eighty-fourth birthday and she is bucking convention. But, always more committed as an artist than a mother, Virgie has not reckoned on her family and friends' determination to thwart her plans.

A moving black comedy that reimagines the meaning of family, April De Angelis' After Electra premiered at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, in April 2015 before transferring to the Tricycle Theatre, London.

April De Angelis's plays include Kerry Jackson (National Theatre), My Brilliant Friend (adapted from Elena Ferrante's novels for Rose Theatre, Kingston, and NT), House Party (BBC4 and Headlong Theatre), Gin Craze!, a musical with Lucy Rivers (Royal & Derngate), Extinct (Stratford East), Rune (New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme), The Village (Stratford East), Wild East (Royal Court), A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint/NT/tour), The Warwickshire Testimony (RSC), The Positive Hour (Out of Joint/Hampstead/Old Vic; Sphinx), Headstrong (NT Shell Connections), Playhouse Creatures (Sphinx Theatre Company), Hush (Royal Court), Soft Vengeance (Graeae Theatre Company), The Life and Times of Fanny Hill (adapted from the James Cleland novel), Ironmistress (ReSisters Theatre Company), Wuthering Heights (adapted from Emily Brontë's novel for Birmingham Rep), Jumpy (Royal Court and Duke of York's Theatres), Gastronauts (Royal Court), and After Electra (Theatre Royal, Plymouth). Her work for radio includes Visitants, The Outlander, which won the Writers' Guild Award 1992, Cash Cows for the Woman's Hour serial (all BBC), and adaptations of Jane Austen's Emma, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place and Stratis Myrivilis's Life in the Tomb. For opera: Flight with composer Jonathan Dove (Glyndebourne), and the libretto for Silent Twins (Almeida).