Subject To Contract
Nick Broadhead
Genre: Comedy
Cast size: 12
Duration: Two Act
Nick Broadhead | Comedy | Full-length | 4m, 4f, 4m/f
Short synopsis
- Synopsis
- Characters
The spark has long gone in Grace and Wilf’s 40 year marriage. Their friends, Kay and Miles, have been married for a similar length of time and Kay confides to Grace her suspicions that Miles is trying to bump her off. Miles has a weak heart and suffers another heart attack which leaves him apparently dead on the settee in Grace and Wilf’s house, so there is great surprise when Grace and Wilf return from Kay’s funeral, accompanied by Miles.
Grace and Wilf separately use some inside information on Miles, to blackmail him into disclosing that he employed a contract killer to eliminate Kay. Miles reluctantly arranges for the assassin to meet with Wilf and Grace. The assassin is a young woman, Sharon, who, coincidentally is in Grace’s ukulele class, and who explains the preparations for her two assassinations in a business-like manner, as casually as though she is selling cosmetics. She stresses that they must have good alibis at least 100 miles away at the time of termination.
Grace and Wilf both plan to make each other’s final days as happy as possible, so arrange dates on theatre trips and meals out - and in the course of which their attractiveness to each other is rekindled. They now try to end the contracts and separately ask Miles, the go-between them and the contract killer’s boss (a ruthless man named Vasily) to arrange this. Vasily, however, tells them that this is impossible. To try to safeguard Grace, Wilf persuades his loner friend, Two Times Timpson, to secretly accompany her at all times. Before he can start doing this, Sharon throttles him in mistake for Wilf.
Freshly returned from Timpson’s funeral, Grace, Wilf and Miles are visited by Detective Sgt Murray, who quizzes them about the mysterious death of a woman who they gradually realise must be Sharon. Their relief at what they consider to be the end of the contracts is short-lived as the play ends with the news that Vasily is at that very moment inspecting the garden to see how secluded it is.
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