Tess and the Pest is a three-act comedic play based on the true story of Esther Simpson’s friendship with Nobel prize-winning physicist Leo Szilard. Tess - as her friends call her - arrives in London in the mid-1930s to join the Academic Assistance Council, which is in dire need of a competent hand. As the Nazis are purging Germany for dissenters and Jews, Tess also has to deal with the resistance of pre-war Britain to welcome the refugees - personified in the play by the proprietor of The Daily Mail Viscount Rothermere through his personal private secretary William Outhwaite.