The Great Adventure

About the show

Ilam Carve is a celebrated painter, but is of a retiring personality and greatly dislikes being in the public eye. He visits England as rarely and unobtrusively as possible. On his present trip to London his valet, Albert, is taken mortally ill. A doctor is called, and assumes the dying man is Ilam. Ilam is too tongue-tied to convey to the doctor that the patient is the valet and not the painter, and finally he goes along with events, foreseeing a permanent escape from his irksome celebrity. When Albert dies, Ilam allows the body to be interred in Westminster Abbey while himself adopting the persona of the supposedly still-living Albert. Complications soon arise. Albert had been corresponding through the lonely-hearts columns with a young widow, Janet Cannot. They had not met, and she now turns up and assumes Ilam is Albert, as he is pretending to be. They are mutually attracted and by the second act they are happily married, living modestly on the annuity Ilam left Albert in his will. Ilam cannot resist resuming painting, and sells some pictures, but when an art expert sees them he realises that they are by Carve. He acquires them and sells them to an American collector. When it emerges that the pictures are dated after the artist's supposed death, litigation looms. A further complication arises when it emerges that Albert had been married and had deserted his wife, who now turns up with her two sons – both curates – in tow, accusing Ilam of bigamy. He proves his true identity, but to spare the embarrassment of the Abbey authorities he agrees to remain officially dead and he and Janet leave for a new life abroad, as Mr and Mrs Albert Shawn.