To Culebra
by Jonathan Bolt

THE STORY: Told from the standpoint of Charles de Lesseps, the loyal, steadfast son of Ferdinand de Lesseps' first marriage, the action of the play shifts back and forth between the courtroom where de Lesseps and his associates are on trial for fraud and mismanagement and scenes of the events and missteps which led to their disastrous decision to attempt construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.

An honored hero for his miraculous accomplishment in building the Suez Canal, de Lesseps has married a young wife and is happily tending his estate and siring a second family.

Already over seventy, his friends and family are wary when he is approached about undertaking another monumental project, particularly in view of early reports about rampant disease and the debilitating climate of the Central American jungle.

But, convinced that his powers are sufficient, de Lesseps takes on the task, despite his need to delegate much of the preliminary fact-finding to younger and less able men and the raising of capital to unscrupulous speculators.

Starting off in a blaze of glory, the Panama Canal project gradually and inexorably falters and fails, but not before it has accounted for the loss of more than 20,000 lives, the ruin of countless small investors, and the eventual disgrace and bankruptcy of de Lesseps and his colleagues, including his ever-faithful son, Charles.

Eloquent testimony to the truth that “pride goeth before a fall,” the play is also a powerful and moving study of what can happen when good men albeit with the best intentions, not only fail in their quest for success and glory but also drag down so many others with them into great loss and defeat.