Three Weeks, a celebration of trashy romance at Arts + Literature Laboratory

Move over, Lady Chatterly's Lover. Make room, The Rainbow. Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks may be largely forgotten today, but this 1907 book has everything, right down to lovemaking on a tiger-skin rug.

Falconbridge Players presents a dramatic reading of this great-great-great grandmother to the lurid supermarket paperback romance, excerpted to focus on the juiciest bits. For added excitement, our readers will be selected for their roles randomly, drawn from a basket of glittery easter eggs. It's a rich spectacle befitting such a groundbreaking work by the author credited with creating the genre of the "it girl."

The plot of Three Weeks:

An older (in her thirties!!), exotic, regal woman known only as The Lady seduces Paul Verdayne, a young English gentleman. Paul's so proper and so sheltered that he's only ever kissed the parson's daughter, who calls him a "real pal." For this shocking indiscretion, Paul's parents banish him to Switzerland to get his head straight.

There he meets the irresistible Lady, who teaches him the ways of love.

They travel through Europe, whispering and giggling and discussing poetry, she leaves him after three weeks to return to her country and her husband, and he goes catatonic. Later Paul learns through her letters that they conceived a child--but alas, he reaches her too late to prevent a tragic fate.

Free and open to the public.

Rating: Although scandalous for 1907, the material found in Three Weeks is strictly TV-14/PG-13 fare by modern standards.