The Ladykillers

A comically sinister criminal, Professor Marcus rents rooms in the gradually subsiding lopsided King's Cross house of an innocent and eccentric old lady, Mrs Louisa Wilberforce, a widow who lives alone with her parrots. The Professor has put together a gang for a sophisticated security van robbery at Kings Cross Station in London: the gentlemanly con-man Major Courtney, the Cockney spiv Harry Robinson, the slow-witted ex-boxer One-Round Lawson, and the vicious continental gangster Louis Harvey. However, the Professor convinces Mrs Wilberforce that they are an amateur string quintet using the room for rehearsal space. To maintain the deception, the gang members carry musical instruments and play a recording of Boccherini's Minuet (3rd movement) from String Quintet in E, Op. 13 No. 5 during their planning sessions.After the successful heist, which involves putting the cash in a cabin trunk and placing it in the station parcel office, with Mrs Wilberforce playing an unwitting but crucial role by escorting the loot through the police cordon, the real conflict of the play begins.