Network Theatre Company

A nouveau riche merchant with a superbly vulgar wife and daughter decides to rip off his creditors by declaring bankruptcy and offering them only 10 percent of what he owes. To pull off the scheme, he signs over everything he owns to his assistant, temporarily, he thinks. But the assistant, who has learnt the old man's trade brilliantly, marries the daughter and goes into business with the old man's money, permanently. When last seen, the merchant is on his way to Siberia. Everyone in "A Family Affair" is corrupt, including a lawyer, a matchmaker and a couple of peasant servants. Ostrovsky was angry when he wrote, but he made his characters funny and the audience should enjoy watching these terrible people do one another in.