| A sideways look
at the non-native female inhabitants of the Spanish
Costa’s, ’Ladies On The Costa’
comprises two volumes of six monologues each,
written for a single female voice.
A compelling series telling the amusing, acerbic
and utterly absorbing stories of the lives of
twelve female ex-pats living in Spain, each with
a diffferent reason for emigrating there. Their
stories take about 10 minutes to tell, and are
ideal to perform singly or grouped together either
with the same actress or with a number of players.
The twelve ladies tell their engaging and entertaining
tales of feminine fantasies, follies and foibles
with humour, pathos and precision.
| Volume 1 |
‘Christmas
On The Costa’ |
| |
Cynthia wears something vaguely jolly and
is trying to look as though she welcomes the
Festive Season, but would be much more at
ease in the Home Counties at her local Hunt
Ball. She was certainly brought up, educated
and 'finished' for better things. Her husband
is called Ralph, which she pronounces 'Rafe',
and she still calls her parents 'Mummy and
Daddy'. |
| ‘Dagenham
Days’ |
| |
Nora favours Crimplene as a fashion statement
and is mildly shocked by much of what she
sees around her, although she would not want
anyone to think she was narrow-minded. She
is sure that her ideas are unquestionably
sensible and dismisses the rest of the world,
including her husband, Stanley, as less perceptive
than she is. |
| ‘Down
From The Valleys’ |
| |
Gwen is fairly nondescript and has the air
of a woman much put upon by life. She loves,
but despairs of, her husband Gareth, and longs
for the old days when the pits were alive
‘up in the valleys’ and ‘the
electric’ was still a novelty and her
man went underground with all her neighbours’
husbands and sons. |
| ‘Going
Native’ |
| |
Pauline comes from South Lancashire. She
is not young and looks stressed. She wears
glasses, has leather loafers, a flower twined
hairband and frilled feria dress, plastic
beads and a red silk shawl. Not entirely comfortable
at a local dance, she feels both foolish and
conspicuous. She is looking for her husband,
but without much hope of finding him in the
crowd. |
| ‘Good
To His Mother’ |
| |
Shireen is a divorcee who is in a long-term
relationship with Eddie, a married man with
business interests ranging from the dubious
to the dangerous – details that she
prefers not to think about. She has come to
the Costa to find that Eddie’s dodgy
property deals have been upset by the fall
of the Marbella Town Council. She is at a
loss to know what to do next, but he isn’t. |
| ‘Made
In America’ |
| |
Maxine is unsubtle in approach,
but what she wears is classy, if unsuited
to the climate and situation. She has yet
to accept that the good old ‘US of
A’ has anything to learn from Europe
and regards Spain as a third world country.
She is constantly amazed that people actually
live in a different way from ‘back
home’. Her family have always voted
Republican. |
| Volume 2 |
| ‘On The
Promenade’ |
| |
Mrs Martin is of no particular age, unremarkable
in every way, except that her eyes miss nothing
and her mind is sharper than her eyes. She
comes from Cornwall and she speaks with the
voice of her farming background, slow but
sure, making no concessions to city ways,
let alone Spanish ways. She is sitting on
a balcony, looking at the Mediterranean without
too much enthusiasm. |
| Other People’s
Pets’ |
| |
Olive is a brisk, no nonsense woman of indeterminate
age, dressed in dull, practical clothes, with
a blue canvas fishing hat. She has the voice
of a Home Counties horse owner and treats
human beings with disdain. |
| Stranger Than
Fiction’ |
| |
Pauline is a Lancashire lass and has the
air of being quite sensible, but her lack
of experience makes her more vulnerable than
she at first appears to be. While her husband
is involved in his Spanish dancing classes,
she is often at a loose end. |
| 'The Auld Country’ |
| |
Widowed at a young age and childless, Martha
lived all her life in Cork and, due to her
house there having to be demolished she finds
herself living now on the Costa with her nephew’s
family. She has long and fond memories of
the Auld Country, which keep up her spirits
in a strange land. |
| 'The Green
Man’ |
| |
Mavis is not young, but that doesn’t
stop her from ‘glamming up’. She
has had to fight the world for so long that
she only knows how to be assertive. She comes
from South London and whatever schooling she
may have had has been lost in the life of
the streets, but she is shrewd and a shrewd
judge of people, for good and ill. |
| ‘Unmarried
Bliss’ |
| |
Very little appears to ruffle Grace.
She has been brought up to appreciate the
better things of Edinburgh suburban life.
Until arriving on the Costa, her world had
been genteel and restricted to ‘refined’
circles. She never married, but cared for
her two brothers after her parents died.
Left alone, she decided on an adventure
of her own. Her new world poses problems
and she is slightly fearful of so profound
a change, but determined to make it work,
whatever the difficulties. |
|
