Since Dad died, Mum has carried on the family business and profits have increased two-fold. But there is unrest in the ranks. Tom brings his pregnant fiancée Shirley home for the annual wedding anniversary ritual orchestrated by his widowed, scalpel-tongued, deviously possessive mother. Of Tom's brothers and co-workers in the (shoddy) family building business, Terry is a weakling, trying to get up the nerve to announce his imminent emigration to Canada just to get away from Mum, and Henry is considerate but also happens to be a compulsive transvestite. Tom hasn't mentioned Shirley to Mum yet either. Mum's arsenal of bitchy comments and Machiavellian stratagems is a creation of darkly glittering and consistently funny beauty. This is a case of jealous mothering as a black art.