The play tells the story of Four Colonels (British American French and Russia) in Germany shortly after the Second World War. They find themsleves taken to an overgrown castle by two mysterious characters. At the castle they discover it is the castle of The Sleeping Beauty. Each of our national characters (personified by the colonels) sees her as his own particular ideal - The Frenchman as an 18th Century lass of the Boulevards, the Russian as a flaxen-haired figure out of Chekhov, the Englishman as something virginally Elizabethan, the American as a moll in an all-night dive. Each man gets a chance to waken and then to claim her, but each fails, surrendering the illusion that he had long cherished. 'It is a rich mixture of searing satire, fairy tale, and morality play. It takes us roaring through a magic woodland of burlesque, philosophy and fantasy...it makes a stimulating excursion'. Daily Mail.