PLAYS & MUSICALS
As a writer and a story-teller, I work across a range of vehicles from full-length plays and musicals to short blogs and poetry. My plays are split into comedies (adult) and worship/Christian for children and adults. See some of my plays below and get in touch if you'd like the full production or to discuss opportunities to stage them.
Mrs de Souza’s Parlour
PLAY
Comedy, Romance, Mystery, Murder
The play is set in the late 1990's in a suburb of a large city in Britain.
Mrs de Souza is a formidable Anglo-Indian lady in her late sixties, worldly and yet other-worldly. Her kitchen is her Empire. From here, she dispatches her spicy largesse - home-made chutneys and pickles to friends, Indian restaurants, and the W.I. Her speciality is her spicy chutney cake.
So popular have her chutneys become that she is being wooed by a company called Chutney Mary’s that wants to manufacture them commercially, while keeping the homely brand “Mrs de Souza's Parlour.” They want to buy her out, lock, stock and Scotch Bonnets.
Marketing Cinderella
PLAY
Adult Comedy
The Phoenix Players are about to break into “pro theatre” from successful amdram – one of their founders has thrown in his job and started to draw salary, and so has their administrator, Cindy, thanks to a grant to develop community culture from their local council. The administrator, a “girl Friday” manages everything, and nothing. Box Office at The Nest, their tiny office at the old Town Hall portakabins, coffee and tea-making, grant applications, cleaning the toilets and marketing their next production – Cinderella.
Click here to read the full summary and first act.
More plays ...
PLAY
MIXED GENRE
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Pantomime alternative – Fairytales, from cottage to castle (summary pending)
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Worship/Christian – The Gate House (published) originally entitled The Alleluia Gate (summary pending)
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Worship/Christian – The Passover Lamb (summary pending)
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Worship/Christian – The Rainbox Promise (summary pending)
Who’ll Turn the Wheel
MUSICAL
Written, directed and televised in 1983, this original musical is the story of an Arab family, caught up in the tensions caused by the change of culture and expectations as Western ideas clash with traditional ways. The music was inspired by Arab and Israeli folk music and has been described as “a Fiddler on the Roof” for the Gulf.
The American family’s children want to drop out of the rat race they see in their parents’ hectic lives, but the Arab children are more ambitious.
The musical was inspired by a prize-winning ballad I wrote for Bahrain TV entitled “Desert Spaces” and by a prize-winning short story subsequently purchased by the BBC World Service, entitled “The Potter.
Click here to read the full summary and first act.
Chelsea Parade
MUSICAL
This musical takes a light-hearted look at life in London in the “swinging 60’s” – bringing together themes as an allegory of the decade. The action is set between Christmas Eve and New Year’s on a street in Chelsea, in front of a parade of shops.
The work takes and entertaining and occasionally provocative look at a range of themes, from immigration to failing church attendance and the commercialisation of Christmas.
Above all, it is a love story for the elderly – a theme close to my own heart after I watched a procession of elderly fairies in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe performance by a local amateur company, and realised there was scope for a musical play which captured the talent of experienced performers which could be linked to the energy of a younger singing and dance coast, perhaps in partnership with a local secondary school.
Click here to read the full summary and first act.