Ravenhill Plays: 1: Shopping and F***ing; Faust is Dead; Handbag; Some Explicit Polaroids (Contemporary Dramatists) (18 page)

Motel room. Three days later. Empty
.

Enter
Alain
.
Looks around
.

Enter
Pete
.

Pete
     I sorted Donny out.

Alain
     You got rid of Donny?

Pete
     I got rid of Donny.

Alain
     How did you do that?

How did you get rid of Donny?

Pete
     Doesn’t matter. Donny has gone. Donny has been sorted out, okay?

We have to go.

I’ve packed.

Alain
     Where do we have to go?

Pete
     I don’t know, someplace.

Just move on.

I’ve cleared our traces here.

Few more minutes and we’re moving on.

Alain
     You don’t want to stay here?

You don’t want to conceal yourself?

Pete
     That’s not possible any more.

See, word is out. The word is out there.

They’re all looking for us. They’re checking each and every motel in the state and we stay here, they’re gonna find us.

Alain
     You want to keep running?

Pete
     That’s right.

Alain
     All the time, you just want to keep running?

Pete
     That’s the only thing to do.

Alain
     You can’t think of another possibility maybe?

Pete
     There are no other possibilities.

Now, come on, move.

Alain
     No.

Pete
     Don’t argue with me.

I don’t need this.

Alain
     We’re not gonna run around like this.

I have the disc.

Pete
     You have . . . ?

Alain
     Last night, you were sleeping.

I got the disc.

I’m staying here.

Pete
produces a gun
.

Alain
     I’m staying here.

Pete
approaches
Alain
.

Alain
     I’m staying here.

Pete
     You come with me.

You give me the disc.

Alain
     Who was cruel?

The Dutch woman or the Japanese man?

It was the woman, the woman was cruel.

Because she understood the use of metaphor and he understood nothing.

Pete
shoots
Alain
.

Alain
falls
.

Pete
retrieves the disc.

He cradles
Alain
.

Pete
     I think that many people here would consider that the Japanese guy was cruel.

Because he shot her. He ate her.

And I think that many people here would find that cruel.

And that woman, see?

She would never have found that mailbox.

Chorus
     Looking back, now I’m an adult, I think I used to cry at night not because the world was such a bad place. Well, okay, not just because the world is such a bad place.

But also because I wanted the world to come to an end. Like Armageddon or Hellfire or Total Meltdown or some such catastrophe. And I cried because I felt so guilty because it was gonna happen any day and it would be all my fault for wanting it so much. But the world hasn’t ended. It’s going on and on. And I keep on looking for signs that it’s getting better like Momma told me. But I can’t see them. So, it hasn’t ended and it’s not getting better. It’s just going on, on and on and on.

And I wonder if I should feel something about that.

But – you want the truth? – I don’t feel a thing.

See, I’m the kind of person who can stand in the middle of an earthquake and I’m just like ‘whoa, neat earthquake’.

And I wonder what made me that way.

Hospital room
.

Alain
is on a drip
.
Pete
is reading from a piece of paper
.

Pete
     Because man is dead. For so many centuries, we have believed in his existence. This thing, this construct, this thing we called man. But one day, some day in the twentieth century, he went and died. Sometime after Belsen, sometime after Kennedy, sometime after MTV, he went and died. As surely as, several hundred years ago now, God died and we trembled to live in a universe without him, so now we look around and see that man is no more.

What do you think?

Alain
     Well, yes, this is . . .

Pete
     Is it good?

Alain
     Yes. This is fine.

Pete
     Shall I carry on?

Alain
     Please.

Pete
     But now we see, we feel that we are no longer the subject but the object of forces, we are a confusion, a collision of . . .

A beeping sound
.

What is that?

Alain
     It tells me to take my pills.

Pete
     You wanna get them?

Alain
     No.

Pete
     Okay.

So we’re . . . there’s . . . okay, okay, I got it . . . so the question is: How will we live our lives? For just as surely as there was a great battle between the centuries-old myth of God and and the newcomer Science, so the next millennium will see the fight between those who embrace and those who deny the death of man.

Would you say it’s in any way derivative?

Alain
     What would you say?

Pete
     I’ve included examples of ‘original thought’.

Alain
     Then, fine.

Pete
     For instance, well . . . for example, you make no references to MTV. I guess because you didn’t have MTV when you wrote the book, right?

Alain
     Exactly.

Pete
     So that’s an original thought, yes?

The beeping returns, louder and shriller
.

Keeps on going, doesn’t it?

It’s important you take your pills.

Alain
     It’s nothing.

Pete
     I’m joining my dad.

He’s taking me on as a sort of number two. We did a deal on the whole chaos disc thing.

Because, see, I don’t believe you.

Sure, I get your point. See, I can do the whole Death of Man speech thing, you know?

But where’d it get us?

It got us Donny.

And I don’t want that any more.

He screws up the piece of paper
.

My dad built this house.

Well, hundreds of guys built this house out of my dad’s . . . vision.

And in my father’s house, his vision of the future, of perfection is realised.

Well, look, you own a painting, okay?

And that painting has a mood. But some days that may not be your mood and here is this painting mooding out the wrong mood down on you, you know?

But my dad has solved the problem.

He buys the exclusive rights to like hundreds of total masterpieces and then programmes them into walls and if your mood changes, click, whirr, the pictures change also.

And many, many other problems, he just went right ahead and solved.

I hate my dad.

But you offer despair, you know that? And it may be true, but it doesn’t get us anywhere.

I’m sorry, I have a meeting to go to now.

I really want you to get better.

I really think you should take your pills.

Alain
     I don’t want the pills.

I don’t want to get better.

Pete
     Got you a present.

He hands
Alain
a present in wrapping paper
.

To remind you of Donny.

See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya.

Exit
Pete
.

Alain
opens the present.

A shoebox.

He opens the shoebox.

Enter
Donny
.
No eyes
.

Donny
     I was on the boat to heaven and my momma was there and she told me you were going to die and go to hell. So I came back because I didn’t want that.

He’s gone now. Gone to his daddy and they’re gonna take over the world.

I’m not gonna leave you. It’s okay, I ain’t ever gonna leave you.

Come on now. Take your pills.

He pours water into a glass and cradles
Alain
’s head as he feeds him two pills
.

That’s it. Okay.

Handbag
, commissioned by Actors’ Touring Company, was first performed at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio, London, on 14 September 1998. The cast was as follows:

Directed by
Nick Philippou

Designed by
Gideon Davey

Lighting by
Simon Mills

Sound by
Christopher Shutt

Produced by
Hetty Shand

Mauretta

Suzanne

David

Tom

Phil

Lorraine

Prism

Augusta

Cardew

Moncrieff

Constance

The first production of the play doubled the characters as follows:
Mauretta
–
Augusta
,
Suzanne
–
Constance
,
David
–
Moncrieff
,
Tom
–
Cardew
,
Lorraine
–
Prism
.

A slash in the dialogue (/) is a cue for the next actor to start their line, creating overlapping dialogue.

Suzanne
,
Mauretta
and
David
waiting
.

Mauretta
     I hope he’s alright.

Suzanne
     It’s probably just a bit difficult . . . performing . . . to order.

David
     It means a lot to Tom. It means a lot to both of us.

Mauretta
     To all of us.

David
     And when it means so much . . . to all of us . . . then it must be difficult to have a wank.

Suzanne
     . . . A wank?

David
     Alright. It must be hard to spill your love seed. / Summon up the spirits of the ancestors of fertility.

Suzanne
     I’m not saying . . . no. Just wank’s a bit . . . functional.

David
     Alright.

Pause
.

Mauretta
     If Tom’s finding it a bit difficult. . .

David
     He’ll be fine.

Mauretta
     Yes, but if the pressure’s really / blocking . . .

David
     He’ll get there.

Mauretta
     Then maybe you / should . . .

David
     No. We agreed. This is Tom’s . . . I mean, I’m right behind Tom . . . but Tom really wants to . . . I mean, no kid wants to end up with my gene pool.

Mauretta
     You shouldn’t be so / down on yourself.

David
     Gene swamp, really. I’m still trying to sort myself out. Tom’s more . . . sorted.

Pause.

Mauretta
     Maybe we can help him.

Suzanne
     A helping hand?

Mauretta
     Well, I think that’s David’s territory.

David
     I’ll give it a go.

Mauretta
     I mean . . . I don’t know. Music or something.

David
     I know, I know.

He produces a porn magazine.

This should do the trick.

Suzanne
     No.

David
     Might get him going.

Suzanne
     No. No.

Mauretta
     If it does / the trick. . .

Suzanne
     I’m not having my . . . our baby is not being / conceived with some oiled-up, fake-tanned rent-a-dick porn model. I’m not having that.

David
(
showing different pages
)     This one? This one? Or . . . how about? (
Porn star voice.
) Hey, Brad, my parents are away for the summer. How about / coming over and having a kid?