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Don't Mess With The Curtain Cords

Pip Burley

Genre: Comedy

Cast size: 8

Duration: Two Act

Pip Burley | Comedy | Full-length | 3m, 5f

Short synopsis

A couple are desperate to sell their house but soon find the whole business much more exhausting than they expected. Enjoy a helter-skelter ride as Richard and Jane Harvey hurtle through a hilarious sequence of events leading to an unexpected conclusion…

Richard Harvey and his wife Jane live with their daughter Jennie in a nicely converted barn in Buckhurst, a village somewhere in Surrey.  But not for much longer.  They are selling up.  Not through choice but because Richard has lost all their money in a disastrous business deal. 

Richard is an architect who, not so long ago, had a rather successful practice.  Now the house is mortgaged up to the hilt and he has to find a way to pay back the money he borrowed to fund the ill-fated scheme in Spain. He needs to get some equity and the only way he can think of doing it is to sell the house and move the family into a rented flat.

Whilst not liking the prospect of moving down in the world, Jane is standing by her man whilst at the same time trying to get a job.  15-year old Jennie is not keen on her Mum working.  At the moment Jane acts as an unpaid taxi service as well as pretty much everything else and this could have a seriously adverse effect on Jen’s complex teenage life.

They have put the house with a small but go-ahead local estate agency called Eversheds through whom they had bought the place three years before.  The senior partner, Vic Evershed, is handling the matter himself, backed up by his father, Hugh.

Vic’s efforts, however, are showing little reward.  Only one genuinely interested party turns up, a certain Pandit Khan whose new wife, Soraya, is an exotic model.

Richard’s problems are not confined to selling the house.  Jane’s outspoken mother, Valerie, and the elderly next-door neighbours, Veronica and Marjorie, are not on his ‘favourite’ list and seem to be doing all they can to make matters worse. efforts, however, are showing little reward.  Only one genuinely interested party turns up, a certain Pandit Khan whose new wife, Soraya, is an exotic model.  

When Vic tells them the Khan’s are interested in buying, the die is cast for a helter-skelter of laughter and tears as the Harveys bend over backwards to extricate themselves from a hilarious sequence of events leading to a baffling conclusion.  

(3m, 5f)

  • Richard Harvey - early 40’s, ex public school, good looking, an architect
  • Jane Harvey - late 30’s, his wife, bored and depressed
  • Jennie Harvey - 15, their teenage daughter, bright, sociable, well adjusted
  • Valerie Sparrowhawk - mid 60’s, Jane’s mother, gutsy, in your face earth mother type
  • Pandit Kahn - early 30’s, an interested buyer, excessively polite and courteous, 
  • Veronica Pleasance - late 50’s, next door neighbour, elegant, intelligent, intuitive 
  • Marjorie Fawkes - late 50’s, blunt, good natured, lives with Veronica
  • Hugh Evershed - late 60’s, estate agent, ex actor
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Don't Mess With The Curtain Cords

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