LET'S PRETEND

by Brooks, Vanessa

The hotel Nova Paradise may have seen better days, but it’s still a home away from home for the long-stay British pensioners wintering in Majorca. For one couple, the victims of a plundered pension fund, Marj can’t help but to nose into the private lives of her fellow “Twilight Adventurers”, while talking up her husband Bill’s capabilities in order to impress them. Alfred and Grace are trying to escape their separate loneliness and while Alfred tries to maintain a light-hearted exterior, Grace’s constant battles with Marj thinly mask her own efforts to keep up appearances. Even Karen, the tour rep, isn’t above a little embellishment. But when the arrival of a young couple, booked into the pensioner’s hotel by mistake, coincides with a near-riot by the hotel’s staff, the many layers of deceit peel away with increasing speed, leaving everyone exposed to the dangers of pretence and deception. ‘A superb evening of riotous entertainment from start to end.’ The Stage.