Qwerty: The Musical - Synopsis (page 2/4)

Susan, a shy, prim, middle-class woman who prefers to wear contact lenses, is married to a drama lecturer Alec, a leading light in the local SDP. She gave up a career as a librarian to become a mother but suffered a series of miscarriages and remains childless. Now she spends her spare time in a series of increasingly desperate hobbies – poetry, watercolours, upholstery – and craves a life that will give her status.

With her feminist platitudes and admonitions against smoking, she immediately arouses the antipathy of Frankie, a foul-mouthed, sexually aggressive working class woman with a young son and a dim lorry driver husband called Des. Frankie, who is not afraid to wear glasses, constantly teases, bullies and torments Susan while also carrying on a verbal guerrilla campaign against Mrs Baslow’s authority.

The other ‘girls’ include Sandra, a suicidally depressed young woman; Pat, a small-minded middle-aged housewife who always insists on looking on the bright side; Liz, a sexy cynical ex-teacher; Ann, an unmarried mother; chronically bored Jenny; and Sally, a school failure who was recently diagnosed as epileptic.