David Bacon

Poppy is a celebration of Victorian values and exposes the hypocrisy, racism, drug dealing, money worship and sexual repression of the time through its favourite entertainment form, pantomime. Dick Whittington, his man Jack, Sally the Principal Girl, the Dame, two pantomime horses, a flying ballet, a transformation scene and even the traditional song-sheet are all brought on to tell the serious and finally devasting story of the single most profitable crop of the British East India Company.

Two Catalonian women are travelling through Cornwall in 1611, in the company of an Englishman and find themselves forced by bad weather to take shelter in a small farmhouse. The evening promises to be a difficult one due to the lack of any common language, culture or background. However, when they discover a rare spice from their homeland being used by the Cornish woman in the preparation of buns, the conversation begins to warm up.

When the wind extinguishes the flame of a lighthouse and a ship heads blindly towards the rocks it falls to a fishermen's choir and a group of lady campanologists to avert disaster.