© Alan Richardson 2023

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The Spy Who Came in for the Phone
One Act Comedy

• First performed at Eastview Secondary School, Barrie, Ontario, Canada, 2004
• 37 productions in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, India, Malta, Cyprus, Spain, France, South Africa and Indonesia. A popular choice for supper theatre and drama festivals
• Festival awards for best comedy, best director, best actor and best actress
• Published by Stagescripts Ltd

Characters  (2m 4f or 3m 3f)

Ron:  A Telephone Engineer, any age
Mrs Davies:  Your friendly neighbour, forties or older
Chris Taylor:  New occupant of the flat, late teens, twenties or thirties
Sally Taylor:  His wife, aged to match Chris
Ludmila: An unexpected female visitor, either glamorously young or seductively mature
P.C. Nash:  Male or Female, any age

The Setting: An unoccupied flat in Kensington, London.  Period - 1960’s

Running Time: 40 minutes

Synopsis

It's London in the swinging 1960’s. Newly-weds Chris and Sally Taylor are moving into their new flat in Kensington. Ron, a GPO telephone engineer with a passion for paperwork is busy installing a new phone. This is groovy… except that the Taylors haven’t got around to ordering their new phone. But if the engineer’s already here, why not settle for the phone they’ve got – even if it is bright red? Otherwise, Ron will have them signing forms all day.

But no sooner than their new phone is connected and Ron is sent packing, the Taylors get weird calls. First, there’s the man who sounds like Count Dracula who informs them that the yellow zebra is leaving Vienna on the midnight train. Then another caller who sounds like John Wayne offering to pay a fortune for their blueprint. And how to you reply to a call from somebody who wants a visa for their cousin Vladimir in Vladivostok?

Chris and Sally are certain they’ve got the wrong phone. It’s time to get Ron back. But before they can, Ludmila, a glamorous woman with a Russian accent arrives claiming that the phone belongs to her embassy. She demands the phone at gunpoint – which is odd for someone who says she works for the Bureau of Culture, Tourism and Sanitation. Ludmila is convinced that she has uncovered a western spy ring.

As the phone calls get even weirder and Ron tries to cover his mistake by producing one form after another, an ordinary day becomes crazier by the minute and it takes the timely intervention of a London Police Constable to end the chaos. A play for everybody who hates filling out forms.