Everything Else by Derek Strahan

EVERYTHING ELSE A play by Derek Strahan - SYNOPSIS Tony, Kurt, Dave and Dennis meet most evenings after work at the nearby Runaway Bar to exchange views and commiserate about problems with their respective wives who are all banning their favourite pastimes. Tony works for Alumox and wants to alleviate guilt feelings about their products by using empty aluminium cans to construct art works such as a model of the Taj Mahal. Kurt works for Idea, a self-assembly furniture company whose products he despises. He wants to build and design high-end quality furniture. Dave Rockford works for APM (All Planet Media) a company that is suffering from the effects of the digitisation of intellectual product. He wants to sell up, and go surfing. Dennis, a realtor, is frustrated because Louise, his wife, is retreating from him sexually. Hugh McGregor, a thrice-divorced old Scot, explains to the guys why their wives are banning what they most want from life: they are manifesting the “Everything Else Syndrome”: when a wife bans what her husband really wants and allows him everything else. Tony and Kurt agree to outwit their wives by each taking on the other one’s chosen hobby in the guise of play activities for children at arts centres that they persuade their respective firms to set up, as good company PR. Tony accidentally meets up with Louise at a Surf Shop and resume a previous affair dating from when they were both surfing hippies. Dennis finds out about the affair. Carol and Ingrid rumble the lies and evasions of their husbands, Tony and Kurt. These crises threaten the opening of the Picasso Children’s Arts & Crafts Center where Dennis and Dave get into a fist fight. Dave, coming off worst, crashes into the Taj Mahal and destroys it. Hugh mediates, and suggests rebuilding the cans as the Loch Ness Monster. With nothing resolved all combine to prepare for the opening. Hugh hopes there’ll be a rich widow in attendance.