"Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has been a beloved member of the Merchant Ivory family since 1960, comprising one-third of our indomitable trifecta that included director JamesIvory and the late producer Ismail Merchant, " said the company's director of development, Neil Jesuele.
Her career as a screenwriter developed after Ismail Merchant and JamesIvory asked her to develop a script based on her 1960 novel "The Householder, " published when she was living as an expatriate in Delhi.
Most of the action takes place in the cavernous kitchen of a Swedish castle, and Figgis is to be commended for not opening up the play into a series of repressed arguments in the brambles (as a JamesIvory film would do).