Based on Henry James’s The Sense of the Past, Balderston’s play follows modern-day American Peter Standish who exchanges place with his American Revolution ancestor. Leslie Howard starred in the 1929 Broadway run. Some sources list Jack C. Squire as a coauthor.

Leslie Howard reprises his dual role of two Peter Standishes from the 1929 Broadway stage performance of Balderston’s Berkeley Square, which in turn was loosely based on Henry James’s unfinished novel The Sense of the Past. The timeslips result in 18th-century Peter exchanging places with his 20th-century version, and they occur via thunderstorms and an overpowering belief by present-day Peter that the house and a diary he found there are somehow calling him to the past.

John Balderston’s play Berkeley Square is updated to the 1950s where Peter Standish, now an atomic scientist, is once again transported back to the 18th century (unfortunately, not via a nuclear accident) to woo beautiful Kate Petigrew.