Four Hearts - Charlotte Bingham - Bog

Four friends gather regularly to play Bridge, a habit formed over the years, but sadly one of their number, Isobel, has been recently widowed and her oldest friend Vic is taking steps to try and rehabilitate the still grief struck Isobel against the counsel of her husband Jimmy who deems it all too early. Vic persists and when the play opens it is the first time Isobel has ventured out let alone sat at a cards table since losing her husband. But now there is a new face in the game, Hugh, who just happens to have known Isobel in her youth. Hugh is recently married to the seemingly quiet and well-ordered Mary, who turns out to be someone with quite a different agenda altogether, and as with Mary's help Isobel begins to find her emotional feet once more, the god of Disorder takes charge and mayhem emotional and physical ensues before chaos is banished and peace and normality return to everyone's lives as the cards are picked up once more as the game of life moves on. Although set around a bridge game, the play is nothing to do with the game itself but is about the characters who meet to play who have all known each other as it emerges for most of their lives. Far from being about cards the play is about love, friendship, loss, redemption and rehabilitation. For audience and cast alike it requires absolutely no knowledge of bridge at all, only an interest in humanity and how we all try and cope with the hardest hand of all to play - the loss of a loved one.