Author: Jim McGhee

Further Adventures of Tom and Huck is set in the living room of Tom’s brownstone townhouse in New York City in 1876.  Tom, very well-dressed, tells a shabbily-dressed Huck how glad he is to see him.  Tom and Becky are married, have a cook, a nanny, a maid, and “a English coachman manservant flunky,” and Becky drinks a lot.  Huck asks for a drink and Tom gives him some Scotch.  Huck tries to drink it down but chokes and spits, saying that the liquor tastes like embalming fluid.  Tom says he made a lot of money during the war.  Huck was shot in the head, held as a prisoner, and has bad dreams.  Tom tries to get Huck to remember a balloon ride they took years earlier to Europe but Huck denies that there ever was a balloon.  Becky enters in a bathrobe and thinks that Huck is a bum.  Tom says he has to go to the sausage factory to check on his “simple-minded half-brother Sid.”  When Huck says he came to New York to kill Tom, Becky offers to pay him.  She says Tom is a monster, a liar, and a cheat, obsessed with money.  As Huck vacillates, Becky offer herself, twice, if Huck kills Tom slowly.  She tries to get Huck’s pants off and they fall onto the sofa as Tom enters.  Huck admits that he came to New York to kill Tom because Tom talked him into enlisting in the Confederate Army and then deserted the first time they heard enemy fire, leaving Huck to be wounded and put in a prison camp while Tom went north and got rich.  Tom says that war is a great place to do business and that it’s the American way.  Huck says that his best friend Jim is dead and, after Becky passes out on the sofa, tells Tom that Jim was killed by a gun that exploded in his face, a gun probably supplied by Tom.  Tom says it was just “good old American business,” but Huck sits on the sofa and cries.  Tom asks him if he remembers when they buried a marble in the hope of digging it up again to recover anything they had lost.  He says that the spell didn’t work, but that he learned that superstition and religion were bullshit, although he still has the notion that somewhere, perhaps in an attic, is everything he has ever lost.  He says that what he misses most is going fishing with Huck.  He wishes his kids were more like Huck and says they are more like Sid.  Becky lifts her head to say they are Sid’s kids, not Tom’s.  Furious, Tom shakes her and starts strangling her but Huck pulls him off and he and Tom fall onto the floor.  Tom says that the country is all about money and that his life isn’t worth “a mouthful of ashes.”  Becky comes back with a large carving knife and chases Tom around the sofa, slashing at him.  Huck tries to intervene; Becky trips, and plunges the knife into Huck’s chest, killing him.  Tom assures Becky that no one is going to know what happened, that Huck is a stranger, a nobody, and they’re going to roll him up in a rug and run him through the sausage machine.  The lights fade as Becky sits beside Tom, who has Huck’s head in his lap, crying as he says that he and Huck had some exciting adventures in that balloon, some good times.

The setting for the four-character (2m, 2w) one-act Letters from Quebec to Providence in the Rain represents two old houses, one in Quebec and one in Providence, with some furniture being part of both.  We hear whippoorwills in the darkness and then see Petrus taking some letters from an old book, Drago’s Occult Notebooks, that he had bought that morning from a girl selling books by the river.  Vanessa questions him about his motives, and Petrus tells her that the letters are written to someone named Vanessa by a Jonathan and were mailed from Quebec to Providence.  Lights come up on Jonathan speaking, not writing, a letter to Vanessa about moving into a house in Quebec.  Vanessa tells Petrus that she had a brother named Jonathan, now dead.  Jonathan speaks of hearing the sounds of a girl talking to herself in the bath and lights come up on Marianne in the tub, speaking in the third person of Vanessa meeting her roommate, Marianne, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  As Petrus and Vanessa continue their conversation about Vanessa’s brother, Jonathan describes how he went up the stairs to the bath and found the water running and the tub about to overflow, but “nobody was there.”  Marianne speaks to Petrus, calling him a “wicked boy,” and tells him to close the door because he’s letting in goblins.  She then continues her narration of Vanessa bringing her roommate Marianne home to Quebec to meet Vanessa’s brother Jonathan who fell hopelessly in love with her.  Vanessa tells Petrus that she went to Brown University because she was fascinated by the writer H. P. Lovecraft who lived in Providence.  She says she brought her roommate Marianne home with her over Christmas break and corroborates what Marianne said earlier about Jonathan falling in love with her.  Marianne says she used to walk by Lovecraft’s house at night, and Jonathan, still speaking a letter, asks Vanessa if Marianne ever speaks of him.  Marianne asks if Petrus is out there on the staircase.  Vanessa narrates an idea for a story about a man who buys a book from a girl by a river and finds some old letters inside.  Marianne says that Jonathan wrote her hundreds of love letters but she never wrote back.  Petrus says that there is a photograph in the book with “From Marianne, With Love” on the back.  He asks Vanessa if she knows the girl in the photograph and Vanessa says she can’t be certain, that the time she spent in the mental asylum with the drugs and shock treatments have addled her memory.  Marianne tells Vanessa (in an earlier time) that she has met  “a most wonderful young man” named Petrus Van Hoek, an artist who studies the anatomies of young women and is taking photographs of her in the bath.  Vanessa (in a later time) tells Petrus that she was jealous and confronted Marianne while she was in the bathtub.  Jonathan says that he climbed the stairs to the bathroom and found Marianne lying dead in the tub.  Vanessa says that “the murderess” was hiding behind the door and hit the intruder in the head with the bulldog door stop, realizing later that it was her brother who has never been right in the head since.  Vanessa says that “she” began receiving letters from Quebec, written by her brother, and she goes back to confront him but ends up wandering the streets of Quebec thinking it is Providence.  Jonathan says he goes to the house, finds Drago’s book, and sees that the name on the inside front cover is Petrus Van Hoek.  Vanessa tells Petrus that he was Marianne’s lover; she wonders why he came to read to her in the hospital and then took her into his home.  He says she knows why and that it is time for her bath.  The lights fade and we hear whippoorwills in the darkness.  

A man, Rupert, and a woman, Senta, sitting on wooden chairs inside a room lit by moonlight, speaking of themselves and of each other in the third person, recall, in A Legacy for the Mad, their on-again off-again affair, a recollection that grows increasingly bizarre.  Rupert says that her apartment smelled sometimes of cigars and that he could smell her perfume in his room months after she had gone.  He speaks of making love with her against a wall of the zoo, the “greatest experience of his life,” but says that she then refused to return his phone calls for months.  Senta shifts to the first person, saying, “I was in Spain. . . .”  When he says that as a boy he gathered mushrooms his mother would cook and serve with lamb and green jello, Senta says that her husband loved mushrooms.  Rupert says that “after some years” he felt that she trusted him enough to share her memories, although he was never certain whether she was inventing them.  One night she took his hand and told him how her husband had died when a wagon turned over and he struck his head on a stone.  She says that he left all his money to an insane asylum, with nothing for her or the children.  When Rupert, now speaking directly to her, asks about children, she says she doesn’t have any, and Rupert says he doesn’t believe anything she’s said.  Senta says her husband was a Swedish ventriloquist who once made love to her at the zoo, “the greatest experience” of her life.  Rupert says he loves her.  She says that the owls have come to devour them, and Rupert, reverting to the third person, hopes that the zookeepers will be bringing green jello for lunch.

The Passion of Merlin and Vivien in the Forest of Broceliande is a short one-act for a man and a woman.  Merlin is not “incredibly ancient” but he is considerably older than Vivien.  We hear the sound of birds and thunder and see leaf shadows as the lights come up on a moss-covered tree stump.  Merlin sits on the stump and takes a drink from a small flask that Vivien offers.  He says he has taught her everything he knows.  She replies that he has made her laugh a thousand times and never took advantage of her.  She says she wants to give him something and Merlin notices that his hands feel like claws and his heels seem rooted to the ground.  She says the potion is beginning to work and he is turning into a tree.  Merlin feels betrayed, but she says that he taught her that trees were holy things and that she needs to be by herself.  Merlin’s arms begin twisting upwards, “palms up, fingers spread like twigs.”  She kisses him and puts the locket he gave her for protection on his upturned claw-like hand.  She leaves and we hear the birds and the rain in the darkness after Merlin says how proud of her he is.

     What Shall I Do for Pretty Girls? is a long one-act play in 15 scenes for four characters–William Butler Yeats, Maud Gonne,  Iseult (her daughter), and Georgie, Yeats’ wife.  A simple unit set represents different locations in France and London from 1917 to 1938.  We hear the ocean and the sounds of many birds as the lights come up on Maud (late 40s) and Yeats (early 50s) in 1917 on the Normandy coast.  The noise of her birds makes it difficult for them to hear what the other is saying until Yeats closes the door.  Maud wonders if Yeats has come to ask her again to marry him, since her husband has recently died.  She says she is worried about her daughter and thinks that Yeats should propose to her.  Yeats says that Iseult asked him to visit, but Maud wants him to convince Iseult to come to Ireland with her to escape the war.  Maud is terrified that her daughter will be killed before she has had a chance to live.

     The lights fade and come up on Yeats and Iseult walking on the beach.  She has overheard at least part of his conversation with her mother and asks if Yeats would like to kiss her and ask her to marry him.  He does; she refuses.  Yeats says he doesn’t want to be alone anymore and wants children.  The lights fade on them and come up on Iseult and Maud in the house as Maud asks her if she had a nice walk with Yeats.  She tells her daughter that he deserves a bit of happiness before he’s too old to enjoy it.  Iseult tells her mother that she is moving to London, and the scene shifts to a tea shop in London as Iseult tells Yeats that she can’t marry him.  He says that he has found someone named Georgie Hyde-Lees that he may ask to marry him.

     In darkness we hear the sounds of a violent thunderstorm as lights come up on Georgie and Yeats on their honeymoon.  Yeats is upset because he feels he has betrayed Maud, Iseult, and her.  Georgie sits at a desk with pencil and paper and says that the pencil is automatically writing, that she has no control over it.  Fascinated, Yeats reads what has been written and puts other pieces of paper under her hand, an event he describes to Maud in the next scene, telling her that every night they receive “page after page of complex messages from a bewildering variety of entities in the spirit world.”  He says that when Georgie’s hand cramps the spirit voices talk in her sleep, giving him precise and detailed instructions about how to give his wife pleasure in bed.

     In the next scene, Georgie is lying in bed in a trance, speaking to Yeats in “a strange, unearthly but somewhat dignified voice” about letting Iseult work out her own destiny.  He follows the spirit voice’s instructions to get his wife some tea and then rub her feet.  When he leaves, Georgie sits up in bed and says, “Shit and onions!”  Then, in the eighth scene, Iseult and Georgie are having lunch in the tea shop and Georgie tells her that the spirits are concerned about Yeats spending so much time tormenting himself about Iseult.  Georgie offers to introduce Iseult to one or two eligible young men.  Iseult says that Georgie’s spirits are a “great load of ballocks” and calls her a charlatan.  Georgie says that she and Yeats are moving to Ireland and that she is pregnant.

     The scene changes to Maud’s house in Ireland where Maud and Iseult have come in out of the rain, Maud having escaped from an English prison.  Yeats tells Maud that she can’t stay in her own house because Georgie is six months pregnant and is sick with pneumonia.  He pleads with her to go, saying that he is terrified his wife will lose the baby.  Maud stomps out into the rain and Iseult kisses Yeats, saying she wishes the child were hers.  The scene ends as Georgie shouts at Yeats to close the door.

     Yeats, now a father, is walking in a park in London with Iseult, cautioning her about her friendship with Ezra Pound.  She says she has had sexual intercourse with Pound but that it should have been Yeats.  She asks him to let her find her own happiness, or unhappiness.  He says he reserves the right to worry.  The lights fade on them and come up on Maud visiting Yeats and Georgie, complaining that Iseult has married a young man who gets drunk and beats her, is unfaithful to her, and abuses and humiliates her in public.  Maud wants Yeats to convince Iseult to leave her husband.  Georgie agrees and Yeats leaves.  In the next scene Iseult tells him that she is pregnant and he insists that she leave with him.

     Lights come up on Maud in prison, an effect created by the shadows of bars on the floor.  We hear a cell door slamming shut as Yeats walks into the light and tells her that he is angry that the loveliest woman he ever knew “has turned herself into a bitter old crone for the sake of politics.”  She refuses to let him get her out of jail, but asks that he take Iseult (who lost her baby) and her son.  Iseult appears, “looking haggard,” and Maud orders her to go with Yeats.  After the light fades on them we hear the sound of a ticking clock and Yeats tells Georgie that he has been getting Iseult out of prison.  Georgie chides him for spending time with a “damned farting swami” and says that he never loved her.  He says that they have their two children and she says that he has his “damned stupid metaphors for poetry.”

     The last scene takes place in a farmhouse (created by the sound of chickens) in the late 1930s.  Iseult tells Yeats that he married exactly the right woman but that she would run off with him to France if he wanted.  Maud comes on to ask Yeats if he is going to propose to her one last time.  Iseult tells Yeats that “only the poets win.”  She and her mother sit on a bench on either side of Yeats, each taking one of his hands.  Iseult wonders if they have gotten everything wrong, and Yeats says that they could have done nothing else, that, if one is lucky, one loves, and “that’s all there is to be said about it.”

Potter, a man, sits in a large chair and Jasmine, a woman, is at a small desk as we hear the sound of rain falling in So This Is The Elephants’ Burial Ground.  Potter comments on the heat and suggests that Jasmine could take off her clothing since they are “way out here in the bush” with no one around.  Potter asks her a series of questions and is not pleased with her noncommital answers.  Jasmine says she went to the store to get bread and was told by the baker that his oven was hot.  When Potter asks her who the letter she isn’t writing is for, she says it’s for whoever opens the door.  She tells Potter that she saw a man waiting in the garden again and Potter says that she’ll probably find his bones picked clean by predators.  Potter says he was a war hero, decorated for shooting his Captain.  He says he was well liked everywhere and that he won a prize for singing.  He tells Jasmine that she adores him and asks her to bring him a book.  When she asks what color the book is he says he is color blind.  He says he wrote a book about silkworms many years ago when he was recovering from malaria and in love with a beautiful girl who played the violin.  He says the girl died by stepping in quicksand; he then accuses Jasmine of being careless and leaving three pennies on the carpet by the bed.  Jasmine says they must have fallen from the torn pocket of her coat.  Potter asks her if she tore the coat at the baker’s when he was showing her his oven and Jasmine says she is going out to the elephants’ burial ground to sing and dance naked in the moonlight.  Potter tells her she’s not going anywhere, that the baker was found burned to death in his own oven.  Jasmine says she thinks she will stay in and the light fades out as we hear the sound of rain.

In Goat, a short one-act for a man and a woman, we hear in the darkness the sounds of subway trains passing above and see a flickering fire in front of a man sitting, warming his hands.  Lil, with a flashlight, asks the man if his name is Goat.  He tells her to go away, but she says she needs him to do something for her.  He says there are snakes everywhere, that he kills and eats them and makes boots out of their skins.  He asks her why she has come to this lost place and tells her that he is here because he was cast out.  Lil says that Goat knows her husband and his brother and their father because the father is also Goat’s father.  She says things were fine until the second son came along and Goat was replaced in his father’s affections and pushed out.  The third son was Adam, her husband, the moron.  Goat says he dreams of falling into the abyss, and Lil says she dreams about the garden and wants Goat to help her get back at the father by tricking Adam’s new wife into breaking the rules and begin a “relentless chain reaction.”  She says Goat is the only one who can make the father pay for casting them out.  He can wear his snakeskin boots, she says, and we hear the sound of “something violent and terrible going by” as the light fades out.

As the lights come up on Marilyn Gets Ice Cream, a short one-act, Knees, a short, pudgy janitor in his thirties is sitting on a white wooden bench in a Tastee-Freeze in Phoenix, Arizona, on an evening in March, 1956, while Jake, in his twenties, is sweeping up.  We hear a buzzing sound which Knees attributes to beetles that can’t stay way from the lights.  He tells Jake that the pretty second-grade teacher he liked got fired for inappropriate behavior.  Knees tells Jake to call him Arthur and asks if Marilyn Monroe has been back.  Knees says that a black limo pulled up to the store and huge chauffeur got out and ordered two ice-cream cones, saying that Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Gleason were in the back seat.  Knees couldn’t see through the dark glass of the back window and tells Jake that they’re making a movie called Bus Stop.  But Knees says he will never be absolutely certain he was that close to Marilyn, and that he felt he was possibly close to establishing a relationship with Lou Ann, the teacher.  Jake says she would never have anything to do with the janitor at the grade school.  Knees says that she might be capable of deep human compassion and tells Jake she was seen screwing some guy in the coat room after school, apparently her fiance from Nebraska.  Knees complains that he can never get close to women, that they either leave like the teacher or are behind dark glass like Marilyn.  He goes on to tell of the time when he met a really nice girl in a bar, but when he went to buy her a drink, the bartender looked down at his short stature and asked if he was standing on his knees.  Everybody in the bar laughed and now he is “a fucking walking joke.”  He says he walked into the coat room and saw “the nicest girl you ever met, being fucked like a dog by some shit-kicker from Nebraska.”  He tells Jake he is going to the rodeo tomorrow and hopes that he will see Marilyn there.  He asks Jake if he is going to the rodeo and Jake replies, “I don’t think so, Arthur.”

Patty, a 19-year-old blonde, and Sharon, a 19-year-old brunette, are wearing swim suits as they sit in lawn chairs at night in 1968 in the back yard of an apartment near the Arizona State University campus in Under the Pomegranate Trees, a shorter one-act play.  They talk about playing near a long row of pomegranate trees near the athletic fields where a girl named Cindy liked to tease the boys by pulling up her skirt.  Sharon reminds Patty that she swam naked with some boys and Patty says that she was pretending to be Marilyn (Monroe).  They speak of a Mrs. Cain who, Sharon says, tried to run her over with her car because she was jealous of her relationship with Ben.  Patty says that Ben loved her and not Sharon.  Patty tells Sharon that one evening she touched Ben “there” as they were sitting under the pomegranate trees and that she knows he will never forget.  Sharon begins to cry and we hear the sound of an ice cream truck playing “The Band Played On.” Patty talks about the excitement of having power over someone and asks Sharon if she would like her to touch her so that she would always remember being under the pomegranate trees.