Mr. Flannery's Ocean
by Lewis John Carlino

THE STORY: Jim Flannery, seventy-nine, retired seaman, belligerent, cantankerous and very human, has laid claim to an ocean.

On the terrace of an old weather-beaten resort hotel on the southern coast of England he sits in his deck chair, ever watchful, ever ready to defend his right to ownership, an ownership which grew simply out of a need to belong to and protect something.

Flannery is absolutely convinced he owns this body of water and, surprisingly enough, is successful in intimidating everyone else around him into treating him correspondingly, everyone that is, except Maug, the cockney maid who can never seem to bring Flannery's tea hot enough.

These two spend their days in perpetual combat.

To the hotel comes an American, Mrs. Pringle, widowed and childless, to spend her wheelchair days in the hope of getting some health from the sea breezes.

Mrs. Pringle is a woman with a wistful sadness in her eyes; a look of surrender and reconciliation to long hours of sickness and the despair of being completely alone.

How and why Jim Flannery gives this woman his ocean, his only and most prized possession, is the story of the play.

It is the magical tale of the giving and the receiving of a gift which no one believed could be possessed.