15:00, Thu 4th – Sun 14th August 2011 at Edinburgh Fringe 2011 - Augustine's
15:00, Tue 16th – Mon 29th August 2011 at Edinburgh Fringe 2011 - Augustine's
Summer Vacation

To Have and To Hold - Shortlisted for Footlights Harry Porter Prize a new comedy by Joey Batey

‘Bridesmaids and guns. Champagne, goats and corpse-dancing. To Have and to Hold, a new biting comedy by Joey Batey, tells the story of Lucy as she watches her best friend’s wedding turn into the most bizarre evening of her life.’

To Have and To Hold follows Lucy, a cynical and bored twenty-something year old girl, as she watches in horror as her best friend’s wedding spirals wildly out of control.

The play begins at the wedding reception. Lucy meets Tristan, a dry, witty and charming young graphic-designer, and falls for him instantly. They find themselves hiding from a veritable catalogue of strange characters; her bumbling ‘Uncle Racist’; her well-meaning yet terribly apathetic father; her awkward, slightly suicidal gun-wielding ex-boyfriend Sam; and nine-year-old Clara (who insists there must be a paedophile lurking around the place...).

Amidst dodging A Strange Man, elderly waiters and a goat somewhere along the line, they realise that Lucy’s elderly Auntie Phillipa hasn’t said anything all evening. They roll her over to find, to their horror, that she has in fact died. They drag her across the dance-floor to the kitchens, stopping only to placate her husband by awkwardly stopping to sing her favourite song with everybody, until finally hiding her in a larder.

Lucy unearths a horrible truth about Tristan - he and Jenny, the bride, are having an affair. And Jenny is pregnant. With his baby.

The evening, and the play, draws to an end. Lucy steps up to make her bridesmaid speech.

There are only two things that can bring a dinner party to complete silence. One is the dinging of a crystal wine glass. The other is a gunshot.

‘And I can’t decide on which to use.’