Dorothy Baker - Cassandra at the Wedding

Hayley Atwell stars in Dorothy Baker's whip-smart family drama about a headstrong student hell-bent on sabotaging her identical twin sister's wedding day.

Published in 1962, Baker's touching, witty and sharp character study is an over-looked 20th century American literary classic, featuring a protagonist easily as headstrong, vulnerable and compelling as Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield.

Cassandra Edwards is a clever, popular and attractive 24-year-old grad student at California's Berkeley University. But she is missing one thing - her much loved identical twin sister, Judith. Cassandra's seemingly gilded life is sent into a tailspin when she finds out that Judith is marrying someone she has only just met, a nice young doctor from Connecticut.

Cassandra heads home to her family ranch to stop the wedding by any means at her disposal - namely a clutch purse full of pills, a taste for brandy and her own biting wit. She plunges herself back into the heart of a family still reeling from the death of the mother, and finds herself having to face the challenge of finding out who you really are when you think you're only one half of a complete person.

Adapted by Peter Flannery, the multi-award-winning stage and television writer who created Our Friends in the North, The Devil's Whore and who adapted the George Gently novels for BBC One.

Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore
Written by Dorothy Baker
Adapted by Peter Flannery

Director/Producer: Melanie Harris
Executive Producer: Jo Meek
A Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4.