Murder Me Gently/Happiness

Murder Me Gently

When a Russian journalist is shot dead on her doorstep, a conman and an Interpol agent unite to wreak revenge on the people they believe responsible: the Russian Mafia and the CIA.

But while all’s fair in love and war, little is even civil in the world of international espionage.

Who’s fooling whom? Who’s on whose side? And what wouldn’t you give to torture an ex?

Based around the startling true stores of the murder and assassination of Russian journalists such as Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, as well as the up-to-the-minute headline of the Russian sleeper spies caught in the U.S. , the play uses comedy and drama to help illuminate the abuses of human rights and military oppression in modern day Russia.

Happiness

On the north coast of Scotland two men, trapped in a life of endless disappoints have come to terms with each other. Greg, a fisherman, and his son, Lewis, a parapalegic, have lived together this way since the death of Lewis’ mother four years before.

To alleviate the tedium, Lewis concocts stories, dreams; casting his father and himself in fanciful, violent situations. Greg has no such dreams. He has lost himself in the daily routine of life working in a cannery. He has no
aspersions, no hopes and only one real outside friendship.

Then comes Sarah, an appraiser for NHS budget cuts. She wants Lewis moved into a home. She wants to help improve his quality of life. She wants Greg to be able to move on. She cares.

What she offers is treated at first with suspicion but increasingly with hope. Greg finds love and dreams of starting a new life, Lewis’s dreams are converted into short stories and printed in a local newspaper. But as their lives improve, their bond disintegrates.