Synopsis

Kate, her bolshie left-wing best friend Lucy, her highly successful old school friend Claire, Kate’s mother Veronica and her prospective mother-in-law Audrey, have all assembled at a luxury five-star spa hotel for Kate’s hen party.

Audrey’s down to earth Northern ways have endeared her to Kate, whose relationship with her parents – and her mother in particular - has always been tricky.  But Audrey’s charms are on lost on the snobbish and overbearing Veronica who sees her as a rival who is trying to usurp Kate’s affections. All Veronica’s efforts are focused on organising the most expensive and flamboyant wedding possible, despite Kate’s expressed wishes for a small, quiet affair.

The wedding plans and celebrations are undercut with the interchanges and developing relationships between the foreign hotel staff (all of whom are played by the same actor) and their guests.

Over the course of a difficult weekend, tempers flare, animosities and prejudices are laid bare and tensions are exacerbated when the groom’s best man suffers an accident and Kate asks Lucy to step into her shoes, unaware that Lucy has been nursing a secret love for Callum, the groom, for years.

Characters

(1m plays all 4 male parts, 5f)

• Kate - late 20s, charity worker
• Lucy - late 20s/early 30s, political researcher, Kate’s university friend
• Audrey - 50s, Northerner, currently working in a nursing home
• Veronica - 50s, Home Counties, Kate’s mother
• Claire - late 20s, commercial lawyer, Kate’s childhood friend
• Maître d’ - French with impeccable English
• Józef - waiter, Polish, some English
• Jakub - masseur, Polish, Józef’s brother, no English
• Benoît - sommelier, French, adequate English but heavily accented