Tag: shorter plays

Mysterium is set on the deck of an ocean liner at night.  Freud and Jung are returning to Europe after visiting America.  Jung thinks America is “a wonderful place,” “intensely numinous,” charged with the “tremendous mystery of the uncanny other.”  Freud says that America is “a pig hole,” the “most vulgar sewer on earth,” “almost entirely constructed of greed, vulgarity, stupidity, self-congratulation, bigotry, and the worship of violence.”  When Jung suggests that they analyze each other’s dreams, Freud refuses to give up what he considers his authority and thinks that Jung may want to kill him.  They squabble, which Jung thinks is good, and Freud says they have to agree on the fundamental doctrine.  Jung says there is no doctrine and, when Freud accuses him of excapades with women not his wife, Jung replies that everyone knows that Freud has been sleeping with his wife’s sister.  The call each other hysterical and Jung cautions Freud about fainting.  A steward enters and asks them to be quiet because some women in the ballroom heard them talking of penises.  He suggests that they separate until they have calmed down.  Freud says that Jung’s theories are “rubbish.”  He feels the ship may have hit something, an iceberg perhaps.  Jung says that Freud is jealous of him because he is younger and stronger and full of ideas.  Freud gets angry and faints.  When the steward enters again he tells Jung that the ship has hit an iceberg and there are a limited number of lifeboats with room for only one more, Jung himself.  Jung says he can’t leave Freud but, after the steward leaves, rationalizes that, as a doctor, he could be of help in the lifeboat which would be an excellent place to study psychological types.  He leaves; we hear singing, then gunshots; and Freud wakes up.  He sees Jung in the lifeboat waving up at him and then sees “that great white thing . . . looming up out of the darkness.  He thinks he must be dreaming and wonders what it could mean.  We hear singing as the lights fade out.

In A Fellow of Infinite Jest, Will Kempe enters a London tavern late at night in 1599 as Shakespeare sits writing a play.  Kempe complains about Hamlet’s advice to the players and learns that Falstaff, a part he enjoyed playing, is not in Henry the Fifth, but, like Yorick, dead.  Shakespeare says there will be no more jigs or improvisations; from now on they’re sticking to the script.  Kempe says the script is just a road map, that he is an entertainer, a comedian, who made it possible for Shakespeare to work in theatre.  Shakespeare says he is grateful but cannot allow Kempe to ruin his scripts with his old irrelevant slapstick routines that have nothing to do with the play.  Kempe rages that the theatre is not a building or words but flesh and blood and gonads.  He says he will be remembered in a hundred years and that Shakespeare is nothing.  He storms out but comes back in, and Shakespeare offers to put Falstaff into Henry the Fifth as long as Kempe says the lines as written.  Kempe refuses and Shakespeare says that Falstaff is dead.  Kempe says he will dance a jig on the smoking ruins of the theatre.  He leaves, Shakespeare writes, and the lights go out.

In Wraith, set in a pub (a table and two chairs) in London in 1946, John Keir Cross and Stephen T. MacFarlane, both thin, pale, fair men in their mid-thirties, talk about Cross’ wife sleeping with both of them.  Cross says he has dedicated his latest book of stories to Mac, as a joke that no one will get.  He admits to plagiarizing the stories about ghosts, puppets, and wraiths from Mac, and Mac asks if Cross has seen his wraith, a Scotch doppelganger who appears just before one dies.  Cross says that his wife is with Montgomery, and Mac says that she is lonely and that it must be difficult living with someone like Cross.  Cross says that a large rat once attacked his child after he had tried to summon the Devil on his BBC radio program.  Mac says the only way to get rid of one’s wraith is to die.  Cross says he plans to drink himself to death and wonders if anyone would notice if he strangled Mac.  Mac says he will die when Cross dies and leaves for the lavatory.  Audrey, Cross’ wife, enters, saying she has been nowhere for a long time but she is back and has read his book and liked parts of it very much.  She says she is glad that he signed his own name rather than hiding behind the name MacFarlane.  Cross says he can’t leave until his friend returns but Audrey says the bartender told her he has been sitting alone drinking and talking to himself.  After Cross and Audrey leave, Mac returns, says that he has been left to pay the tab, and finishes the drink Cross left for him.

Loopy Rye, part of the Pendragon Cycle, uses a unit set with, DR, a chair in the Flowers Boarding Hotel, Blaine Plum’s desk and chair facing downstage RC, a bench in the cemetery LC, and tombstones under an old tree DL.  Characters are onstage throughout the play which begins in 1925 but goes back to events that occurred in 1872.  We hear the sounds of a ticking clock and an old piano playing Chopin’s 13^th Prelude as lights come up on Loopy in the DR chair.  Blaine Plum, Lavinia’s father, is seated at his desk, Augustus Ballantine is on the bench, and Lavinia is sitting with her back against a tombstone.  Loopy as an old man talks about learning to tune pianos, mentioning names of characters in the Pendragon Cycle, and as the lights come up on Lavinia he identifies her as a lost girl.  Blaine (in 1872) tells Lavinia that she has to see Doc McGort because she has been vomiting every morning.  Augustus tries to talk with Lavinia in 1872 while Loopy in 1925 remembers how a family was found dead at Grim Lake.  He talks about how people treated him and how he likes rain, china bowls, sparrows, and the smell of horse manure and hay.  Blaine in 1872 tells Lavinia that Augustus has agreed to marry her, but Lavinia says she doesn’t even like him.  As they talk, Loopy tells us in counterpoint the history of Ghost Hill with herds of buffalo moving through the forest and Delaware Indians who lived in the caves.  Loopy says he likes to talk to the crows and thinks being the village idiot is a big responsibility because dumb people need someone they can feel superior to.  He says he gets uneasy when the Carnival comes to town and he moves to the tombstones to talk to Lavinia in 1872.  He warns her about coming to the cemetery at night, saying there are ghosts and a lot of people fornicating.  She asks him what he sees when he looks into people’s windows at night.  He says he has seen just about everything, including her taking baths.  He admits to leaving drawings of her on the back porch, but she doesn’t think he drew them.  She takes out a piece of paper and asks him to draw her.  As he does so, Blaine tells his daughter that if she doesn’t marry Augustus he will throw her out of his house without a penny.  She says that Augustus is not the father of her child and only says he is so he can marry her and get Blaine’s money.  When she tells him Loopy is the father of her child, Blaine says he is going to have Loopy locked up in a mental institution.  She realizes that her father has already put his plan in motion.  Blaine admits that Augustus told him that he saw Lavinia and Loopy in the cemetery.  Lavinia says that her father is paying Augustus to marry her.  Blaine says they are coming to take Loopy to the institution where he will be castrated and lobotomized.  Lavinia looks at Loopy drawing and tells her father that if he leaves Loopy alone she will marry Augustus and do whatever Blaine wants.  She says if any harm ever comes to Loopy she will take her child and disappear.  Blaine accepts her offer on condition that she never speak to Loopy again, never look at him or acknowledge his presence.  As we hear, faintly, the Chopin Prelude again, she walks to the bench and sits next to Augustus.  Loopy finishes the drawing, puts it on the tombstone, and goes back to his chair, becoming an old man again.  He tells us that Lavinia never said a word to him after that and would pass him on the street as if he wasn’t there.  He says she knew as she played the piano at night that he was outside her window but she wouldn’t look.  He says she died young and he sits by her grave at night.  He saw her through the window looking at his drawings.  He watched over her little girl and then the little girl’s children.  He says the best thing about love is that it doesn’t make any sense.  Like God.  And the crows.

Another two-character play in the Pendragon cycle, Draw a Face, Win a Pig, takes place in the law office of Jacob Armitage, 49, as Mary Casey, 24, accuses her mother of stealing and eating the pig she won at the county fair for drawing the best picture of George Washington.  She wants to sue her mother and father and everyone who ate some of her pig and says she will pay Jacob by allowing him to take certain liberties with her.  She says she has seen him looking at her with lust in his eyes and knows he visits a house of prostitution.  She says she is a virgin but will allow him to take certain negotiated liberties with her in the name of justice because her pig was like a child to her.  She says her father has a barn full of stacked-up pianos and that Jacob’s father drank himself to death so he knows what it is like to be trapped.  Since Jacob will be disbarred if he accepts sexual favors from a client, she says she will accept his proposal of marriage.  He admits he wants to sleep with her and asks, if he marries her, she will forget about the pig.  She says she will take that as a yes.

Pianos, a play in the Pendragon cycle, is set inside a barn in Armitage, Ohio, in 1908.  Myrtle Casey and her husband Willy, both 98, are talking about the barn being full of pianos that Willy has collected over the years.  Myrtle is tired of having cows in the house because there is no room for them in the barn.  She tells Willy they are a laughingstock of Pendragon County, that no one can play broken pianos, and that it’s dangerous to have pianos stacked forty feet high.  Willy says the pianos can be fixed and reminds Myrtle that she nagged him many years ago to get a piano.  She says it is dangerous for 11-year-old Jimmy.  She calls to Jimmy and we hear a sound like something running across a keyboard.  Willy doesn’t hear the sound but Myrtle thinks Jimmy is up on top of the pianos.  We hear another piano sound and Willy calls to Jimmy to come down.  He tells Myrtle that God is in the pianos, that music is God’s revelation, and the pianos are like a mountain one climbs to get to one’s salvation.  He goes off left to save Jimmy.  Myrtle warns him but we hear piano noises as, offstage, Willy climbs up, saying that he has had a vision and the ultimate revelation will come when he has climbed the mountain of pianos.  He shouts his readiness to receive the meaning of existence.  Myrtle looks up in horror, covers her face and screams as we hear a terrible cacophony of falling pianos.  Lights black out and we hear Willy’s voice in the darkness telling Myrtle that he heard God’s voice.  When he begins to describe what the Lord said we hear “an even louder cacophony of many, many falling pianos as Willy screams.”  Then silence and the sound of chickens clucking.

In The Baltic Sea, two old men, Kelso and Mott are huddled in the dim glow of a small fire in a tunnel deep beneath the city.  Kelso talks to Mott about the early tv show, What’s My Line?  Mott rattles off a series of surrealistic images.  Kelso says “they” come up from under the ground like slugs after the rain, using strange passageways under the earth and deep under the Baltic Sea.  Mott says the Baltic Sea is a gigantic hoax, perpetrated by the Lithuanians and inhabited by talking fish.  Kelso says he was forced into the sewers by the CIA and Mott continues his description of bizarre events.  Mott offers Kelso a drink from a bottle of the finest New Jersey wine.  Kelso says that God told him to emit gas, and Mott says he met God under the roller coaster at Coney Island.  Kelso says he knows things that could bring down the government and accuses Mott of being “one of them,” telling him he will kill him with a can opener.  But Kelso then says he doesn’t feel well and asks what could be wrong with him.  Mott says he poisoned him and Kelso falls over dead.

     The unit set for Darkpool (3m, 1w) includes an office with table and chairs, a bench in a rooftop garden, and the balcony of an apartment.  Dutch, 47, and Mick, 29, overseas operatives of Darkpool, discuss their responsibility for killing people in a war zone.  Mick thinks they will be punished but Dutch assures him they will be protected.  Max, 53, introduces the men to Justine, 30, a lawyer with a specialty in public relations.  Max tells the men that they will be taken care of because working for Darkpool means they are part of God’s family and have a special dispensation to take whatever measures become necessary.  He says democracy is an illusion, and the military are cannon fodder.  Darkpool is the muscle that multi-national corporations use to get and keep power.  Max says that when Jesus comes again he is going to be “one of us.”  After Max walks off, Justine asks Dutch to leave so she can talk with Mick alone.

     She invites Mick to dinner at her place as the lights fade and come up on Dutch and Max in the rooftop garden at night.  Max says that the Christian community needs to be ready to take back America from the secular liberal conspiracy that’s hijacked it.  This great crusade will promote the sovereignty of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  He says Dutch is in trouble because he didn’t follow his orders to neutralize all the inhabitants of a certain house in a certain village.  He warns Dutch about being too arrogant to follow instructions and the scene shifts to Mick and Justine sitting at night on her balcony.  Mick tells her that when he and Dutch were on their way to some little village, Dutch stopped and turned around and headed back, but they got lost and ended up in the middle of a traffic jam, hearing what sounded like hostile fire.  He and Dutch started shooting, thinking there might be suicide bombers.  Justine says she needs to edit his story to help a potential jury or the public in general understand it in a way that doesn’t shed negative light on him.

     In the fourth scene, Mick enters as Dutch is eating breakfast.  Dutch says that Justine’s job is to make sure that Mick won’t say anything that could hurt the company.  Light fades on them and comes up on Justine and Max drinking coffee.  Justine tells Max that she thinks Mick will be all right and Max warns her to be careful.  The scene shifts back to the rooftop garden where Mick tells Justine that, because of a childhood injury, he sometimes thinks he hears bees.  They talk about watching other people sleep and Justine tells Mick he must play the character of an innocent man.  Justine then talks with Dutch, telling him that she doesn’t like him but her job is to help him.  He asks her how long it has been since somebody really fucked her and she slaps him very hard across the face.  He grabs her by the neck and kisses her as Mick enters.  Justine tells Dutch that if he ever does anything like that again she will shoot him.  Mick says that he and Dutch shot real people, women and children and old people.  Max enters and tells Mick that there are no innocent people, just degrees of guilt, and that they are not murderers but global stabilization facilitators.  After Mick and Justine leave, Max tells Dutch that Mick doesn’t know how to play the game and could have an accident.  He also tells Dutch that Justine is his daughter and that the cleaner everything is, the closer one is to God.  Dutch responds that to worship God is to worship chaos and suggests that God wants zombies come back from the dead.  Max narrates how, in a swamp, he stared into a deep, dark pool of water and learned that God is the Devil.  Then he changes the subject by asking Dutch how his daughter is doing in Princeton, pointing out that she would be in financial difficulty if Dutch got sent to prison.  Max says he loves the rooftop garden, but it is so high up that someone might fall, or jump.  Justine enters to say that she can’t find Mick, and Max sends Dutch up to the roof garden to find him, telling his daughter that everything will be taken care of.

     Lights come up on the rooftop garden as Mick tells Dutch that he hopes that he can take Justine away to a nice, quiet place where they could settle down and have a couple of kids.  Mick says he shot those people because he was scared.  Dutch tells him that they will go to prison if he tells the truth, and when Mick says he has to tell the truth he moves to look over the edge of the garden, saying it is a long way down.  Mick thinks he hears bees and the lights fade and go out.

In Borneo, Harry, a large man of 40 with a deep voice, and Rita, a woman in her 30s with beautiful long red hair, are sitting in bamboo chairs on a verandah at night.  We hear occasional faint jungle bird noises and the sound of a film running through an old projector.  Harry speaks of re-editing a film and Rita mentions that she has been learning about poisons, adding that perhaps “he” could be persuaded to walk on to the rotted wharf and fall through the boards, a nail piercing his carotid artery.  Harry comments that that has been done before and says he is on the edge of an abyss.  She says he sits in the dark watching the same scenes over and over, and she thinks he should cut the nude scenes, telling him that she didn’t want to do them.  He speaks of editing the scene in which a jealous husband murders his wife.  She tells him that all he cares about is the film, that he worships death.  He replies that he is making a movie about a man who lives in Borneo with his beautiful wife but every take seems to have something wrong with it.  He begins to wonder if he actually murdered his wife or if he only imagined it, like a scene in a script that was never shot or was left on the cutting room floor.  Rita says that everything is devoured in Borneo and he says he is keeping in the nude scenes.

In Relativity, an elderly Albert Einstein and a middle-aged Kurt Godel sit on a bench in Princeton, New Jersey, in the autumn of 1954 as Kurt wonders why, in the movie, there are seven dwarfs and why he can’t remember their names.  Kurt is convinced that mathematicians are trying to poison him and suggests that the Wicked Queen has given Snow White a radioactive apple that makes the castle glow.  He says there may be an infinite number of parallel variations of the fairy tale.  Albert wants to go to one where they are not having this conversation.  Kurt says there are time loops in Albert’s equations that make it theoretically possible to visit the past.  Kurt thinks it odd that Albert sat down on their walk, and Albert tells him he should find someone else to talk to because he, Albert, can’t live forever.  Kurt says that since time is an illusion, there is no death.  Kurt says he has always been looked at as if he were some sort of insect.  Albert, who has fallen asleep, wakes up and tells Kurt that he needs to make new friends so he will not be utterly alone.  Kurt replies that he happens to like the illusion of Albert’s company.  Albert says he has been trying to work out a grand unified theory but has failed.  He tells Kurt that he cannot start over because he will be dead in two months.  Kurt says that Albert is his friend and he loves him.  That, he says, is not an illusion.  Albert says the name of the last dwarf is Happy.  Kurt says he doesn’t think so and Albert suggests that they walk, but the light fades on them before they get up.