Dublin. The night before Christmas and Mrs and Mrs Walls are preparing for the arrival of their son Joseph and his new bride, Mary, from London. "George Bernard Shaw wrote: 'I have not yet found real homes except in very stupid families to whom a house is a world.' The tragedy was when, as in his own family - or Stella's in The Walls - intelligent people attempt to make a house their world. Shaw turned his own childhood tragedy into comedy but the comedy retained - as does Colin Teevan's - sharp pathos of emotions and ambitions thwarted and lonely lives unfulfilled" (Clare Boylan)