Christmas Production Auditions: The Unfriend
Steven Moffat’s The Unfriend will be the third show of our 2025-26 season, performed in December 2025. Details for our July auditions are now available below.
Steven Moffat is an award-winning writer whose internationally successful television shows include Doctor Who, Sherlock and Dracula. The latter two were co-written with actor and writer Mark Gatiss, who made his stage directorial debut with The Unfriend.
Synopsis
While on holiday, Peter and Debbie befriend Elsa: a lusty, Trump-loving widow from Denver, USA. She’s less than woke but kind of wonderful. They agree to stay in touch- because no one ever really does, do they? When Elsa invites herself to stay a few months later, they decide to look her up online. Too late, they learn the truth about Elsa Jean Krakowski. Deadly danger has just boarded a flight to London! But how do you protect all that you love from mortal peril without seeming, well, a bit impolite? Because guess who’s coming…. to murder!
The Unfriend takes a hilarious and satirical look at middleclass England’s disastrous instinct always to appear nice.
Characters
| Character | Age | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Peter | 30-50 | One half a nice, civil and very English married couple. Peter is a Guardian reader. Quick fire quips. Dithering negativity and indecisive. Exaggerating the excruciating embarrassment of a man caught out by trying too hard not to be caught out. |
| Debbie | 30-50 | The other half of a nice, civil and very English married couple. She has the serious task of keeping the whole thing grounded. Protective of her children and trying to keep her husband from making a fool of himself. Practical, philosophical but anxious. The self-styled “up-tight” member of the family. |
| Elsa | 40+ | A gift of a role. Playing it as big as it deserves. Hideously American in her over-friendliness and velour tracksuits. Grotesque as she is glamorous. Acerbic charm and equally manipulative. An enigma. Brash, larger than life and equally benevolent. American accent (Denver). |
| The neighbour | 30+ | No one ever bothers to find out his name! A lugubrious man from next door. Effortlessly suburban tedium, a neighbour obsessed with the dull practicalities of sharing a boundary. |
| PC Junkin | 20+ | Scene stealing role. Sent to enquire about an unexpected death but becomes quite besotted with Elsa. Dead pan humour with some slapstick humour with a lavatory brush. |
| Alex | 16+ | Lairy, video-game obsessed. |
| Rose | 16+ | Typically, awkward adolescent mulishness and stroppy. |
Show Information & Auditions
Readthrough: Wednesday 2 July – 7.45pm – Wokingham Theatre
Auditions: Mon 7 & Wed 9 July – 7:45pm – Wokingham Theatre
Performances: Wed 3 to Sat 13 December 2025
Fiona Rogers • Director
pinkfrogers74@gmail.com
Steve Joy • Production Manager
finance@wokinghamtheatre.org.uk
Please note, any non-members wishing to audition will need to become a member if they are cast, before they are able to take part in the show. You can find out more about membership here.