Dimensions
129 x 198 x 7mm
'We're dying of manners. We're under siege from personal embarrassment. This is not sane. This is not rational. That woman is a monster!'
Peter and Debbie are enjoying a cruise - a celebration of twenty years of marriage, and a break from their annoying teenagers. They befriend fellow passenger, Elsa Jean Krakowski, an eccentric American with a fondness for Donald Trump. There's something slightly unsettling in her overeager friendliness... but there's no point rocking the boat if you're about to get off it.
Back home, in the comfort of suburbia, Elsa suddenly turns up on Peter and Debbie's doorstep, unexpectedly. And when they look up their house guest online, unearthing some hair-raising evidence, their good nature is challenged as never before. What kind of danger have they allowed to take up residence in their guest room? And can they bring themselves to say anything about it? Sometimes, the truth is just too impolite.
Steven Moffat's play The Unfriend takes a hilarious and satirical look at middle-class England's disastrous instinct always to appear nice. It was first performed at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, in May 2022, directed by Mark Gatiss, with a cast including Amanda Abbington, Frances Barber and Reece Shearsmith.
'Steven Moffat has skilfully crafted one of the funniest plays to be seen on stage in a very long time... pure comedy gold... a comedy of manners that niftily speeds along and is full of outrageous humour... never anything except laugh-out-loud funny... a killer comedy to die for'
- WhatsOnStage
'Effortlessly entertaining... The action is line-by-line funny and an apt commentary on English middle-class manners... Moffat may be the new Ayckbourn'
- Telegraph
'A hilarious dark comedy of good manners... a tour de force of toilet farce, proper gut-busting stuff'
- The Stage
'A cringe-tastic play of exquisite embarrassment... worthy of a place in the macabre comedy series Inside No 9'
- Guardian
'Boasts a ruthlessly efficient devotion to the punchline and a relentless urgency in ratcheting up the awkward tension. Every second or third line of this farcical modern comedy of manners is a gag... The premise is brilliant in its simplicity and hugely effective in its laugh-filled execution'
- Chortle
