NOTE:
Actor/M = the actor playing Marianne
Actor/A = the actor playing Alan
(click here to watch
video of an earlier draft of this scene in rehearsal)
Lights up to reveal the actor playing Marianne sat at the table in
the Lighthouse living area. The actor playing Alan enters, distracted…
ALAN (entering) Where are they?
Actor/A Alan goes to the stereo and puts on the La’s – “Liberty Ship”. He leaves the room.
ALAN (muttering as he leaves) Fucking slippers…
Actor/M When Marianne and Alan are both at home, there’s always music playing. The course of a whole day can be changed by what music they listen to. That’s something they both agree on and they like that.
Actor/A (re-entering) Alan goes straight to the stereo and turns the record off.
ALAN Stupid fucking slippers
Actor/A He stares out of the window. He listens to the
silence.
He listens to the sound of sea birds
He listens to the sound of dry creepers tapping on the window pane.
He feels lonely.
He imagines Marianne upstairs and that man in his bed.
ALAN What am I doing?
Actor/A He picks out “The Best of the Beach Boys” and puts on "Wouldn’t It Be Nice"
ALAN No it fucking wouldn’t
Actor/A He tries "God Only Knows"
ALAN growls in desperation, flicks the stereo off and storms upstage where he broods.
Actor/M At this point Alan should really just choose a record. It can be anything.
Actor/A Alan puts on "You and Who’s Army?" by Radiohead.
ALAN Fuck it.
Actor/A He turns the stereo off.
Actor/M A dull thud as the electricity stops flowing through the wires echoes through the room.
ALAN (looking up at the ceiling) What if he never wakes up?
We hear the DJ…
DJ True love. French. Aged approximately eleven hundred years when last seen six years ago in an alley behind a Parisian gay bar. Hair brown. (lights build on DJ) Gender fluid. Eyes whatever you want them to be. Friends say true love was sick of being sung about. Sick of being chased. (lights fading on ALAN) Sick of people expecting to be surprised. True love didn’t leave a note. True love left their credit cards behind. True love needed a holiday.
Sylvester De Niro. Male. Italian. Aged thirty-nine when last seen on New Year’s Day 1999. Café owner in Whalley range, Manchester. Sylvester was well known and well liked by his many customers and loved by his large family. Sylvester is chiefly identifiable by the missing third and fourth fingers on his left hand. He left in the early hours of New Year’s Day to make a phone call. Nothing further has been heard from him.
Empathy. Replaced some years ago by polite concern verging on boredom. Sorely missed, especially at parties.
Pity. Not so much missing as slowly eroded. Old as the hills and just as worn down. No eyes. No distinguishing marks. Thought to be everywhere. Unconfirmed sightings continue but becoming rarer.
Belief in magic. Almost gone.
Lights fade to reveal The Stranger, standing on the bed. He is stunning. Sound of shortwave radio/Aurora Borealis?
He stands for the first time in over a year, unhampered and unaided, on his own feet. The skin he inhabited those past thirty years has begun to fill out again, but it doesn’t feel the same. The person that seeped out of this skin, in all that liquid, has gone and he does not know yet what has taken its place.
It feels strange. It feels like a leaf unfurling, it feels like a heartbeat, it feels like the pulse of a star.
He doesn’t think any of this.
He opens his mouth and light spills out. Golden, silver, velvet, silken, miraculous light.
Lights change to reveal…
COPYRIGHT OF UNLIMITED THEATRE