Love Me Do
Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran
Genre: Comedy
Cast size: 11
Duration: 100 mins approx
Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran | Comedy | Full-length | 5m, 4f, 2m'f doubling possible
Short synopsis
- Synopsis
- Characters
‘Love Me Do’ is a bitter-sweet love story that takes against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Why the title? Because the week of the world-threatening crisis was also the week the Beatles’ first single was released, ushering in a rave new world of pop music and fashion.
Our heroine Dorothy from Kansas – and that’s no coincidence – has never left the States before. Indeed, she has hardly left her home state. But an old college friend is getting married in an English country church, so Dorothy packs her bags and her courage and get on a plane. Her husband and children stay behind in Kansas. She’s on her own.
At the wedding she meets brash and annoyingly handsome Shack, who is something at the US Embassy. Shack flirts outrageously and Dorothy tells him where to get off. No, she doesn’t need someone to hold her hand in London, she’s paid for all her tours upfront.
But then President Kennedy appears on the world’s televisions to announce that the Soviets have installed nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, and if they don’t remove PDQ there may not be a Christmas this year. Dorothy’s first reaction is she must get back to her family. But every other ex-pat has the same idea and the airport is mobbed. She has never felt so alone. Enter Shack. What’s he doing there? He’s come to rescue her, of course. He feels kind of responsible for her plight, seeing one of his jobs is to keep an eye on the Soviets.
As the world counts down to possible Armageddon, Dorothy and Shack are thrown into each other’s embrace because forbidden love is now the only love left.
Production Note: The play was originally produced in a physical storytelling style – the theatre of movement, with half a dozen actors creating a whole world.
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