Birthday Suite by Robin Hawdon Published By Samuel French/Concord Theatricals
Birthday Suite is a comedy which has toured the UK on several occasions, and has played on and off in Europe for over thirty years, including several current long-running revivals. Now more relevant than ever with the huge increase in online dating activities. “Insanely funny chaos.”
(This play appears to have temporarily vanished off the Concord.com Hawdon author page, but Concord.co.uk has it, and so does Amazon)
Take two adjoining hotel suites (The Birthday Suite and the Hookup Suite), add two couples, both on extremely nervous blind dates, contrive that they each somehow meet the wrong partner, and complicate matters with an enthusiastic Italian room waiter whose mission in life is to encourage romance wherever it might spark, and you have the recipe for an evening of chaotic entanglements and unlikely liaisons which constantly teeters on the edge of disaster.
“Be careful what you wish for when you light your birthday candles! This insanely funny composition of startling situations could credibly happen in real life when hopes and libidos lead characters into indiscretion. It would take volumes to explain the relationship convolutions that evolve here – even though there are only five actors on stage! When supposedly closed doors between rooms turn out to be unlocked, it is inevitable that vulnerable characters end up pretending to be someone they would rather be, or in some cases would very much not be. Dear audience – don’t let anyone out of your sight in either room (or both rooms at once) until the last minute of this overwhelmingly funny chaos.” Warsaw press (translated)
Warsaw production.
Cast
- TONY (An Italian room waiter)
- BOB (A civil servant)
- KATE (An attractive thirty something)
- DICK (A psychiatrist)
- LIZ (Another attractive thirty something)
Setting
Two adjoining bedrooms in a city centre hotel. Virtually identical, one a mirror image of the other, each with an ensuite bathroom off, and both separated by a token ’wall’ down the centre of the stage with an inter-connecting door in the upstage section.
Upstage in each room is a concealed double bed which is lowered by hand from its alcove in the wall (only one of which is actually practical.)
At curtain-up one room is arranged for a private dinner with the bed concealed and a table and chairs set in the centre. The other room just has an ice bucket and champagne bottle set in a prominent position.