An Intervention E-Book

Mike Bartlett

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A touching, funny play about what happens when you hate your best friend. One of them went on the anti-war protest, shouted their lungs out, then got horrendously and staggeringly drunk. The other stayed at home, watched TV for a bit, and thought about the future. Mike Bartlett's play An Intervention premiered at the Watford Palace Theatre in April 2014, in a co-production with Paines Plough.

Leseprobe

Mike Bartlett

AN INTERVENTION

NICK HERN BOOKSLondonwww.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Dedication

Characters and Note on Text

An Intervention

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

An Intervention was first performed at Watford Palace Theatre on 16 April 2014. The cast was as follows:

A

Rachael Stirling

B

John Hollingworth

Direction

James Grieve

Design

Lucy Osborne

Lighting Design

David Holmes

Sound Design

Tom Gibbons

Assistant Direction

Kay Michael

Design Associate

James Turner

For Tiberius Ren

Characters

A

B

The play takes place in front of curtains – like Morecambe and Wise, or Abbott and Costello. Only the bare minimum is brought on for each scene.

A and B are designations for speech, not names.

The two characters must be quick and clever but can be played by actors of any age, gender or ethnicity.

The genders of the pronouns in the play should be changed accordingly.

( / ) means the next speech begins at that point.

( – ) means the next line interrupts.

(…) at the end of a speech means it trails off. On its own it indicates a pressure, expectation or desire to speak.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

1.Harmonica

A

Oh.

B

Yeah.

A

You –

B

Yup.

A

Wow.

B

Yes.

A

I don’t believe it.

B

Well it’s true.

A

You would would

B

Support it.

A

Support it

B

Yeah.

A

You would?

B

Yeah.

A

Wow.

B

(nods)

A

I don’t believe it.

B

Okay.

A

Jesus.

B

Shall we stop now?

A

Jesus Christ.

B

Yes.

A

Fuck off.

B

Right

A

Shit a brick. You’re telling me you would?

B

Not sure how else to put it.

A

I didn’t –I never –You would.

B

I would.

A

You would support an intervention.

B

Yes.

Pause.

A turns to the audience.

A

I always look forward to seeing him, he’s got a kind of relaxed air, keen to talk about one of the new books he’s bought, not academic or obsessive not overly detailed, he’s read the kind of books you get on the bookshop table at the front, the kind of popular science, sociology, military historical books the easy ones that accompany a documentary on the Discovery Channel, with a title that’s a question: ‘Was KennedyGay?’ ‘What’s the Point of Men?’ that kind of thing. And it’s amusing, having him in my life as this low-rent provocateur, but it’s precisely this trait, which up till now I liked, this relaxed populist oppositional thinking, saying the vaguely controversial thing for the sake of it, that is now the problem. Because it’s that table of non-thoughts, those glib opportunistic books, which have caused this idea to congeal in his head, which have given him evidence upon which he’s now basing this completely misguided very wrong opinion.

B

Actually, not just ‘would support it’.

A

What?

B

I do support it. I actively want it.

A

Oh no.

B

Because you know if all those people we’re talking about over there if they all had white skin, like in Poland in the Holocaust, or Bosnia in the nineties, you’d be all for getting in there and sorting it out. That’s the real reason why you think it’s not your problem, because those people over there, all of them, are brown.

A

Brown.

B

Subconsciously, you think it’s a different culture. More primitive. So – their fault. Ergo – their problem. Why have you got a harmonica? Did you take it to the thing?

A

You want a drink? I want a big drink. I want a drink that has a very big high kind of outrageously large percentage alcohol content. Because they’re brown?! I want to drown my sorrows, no I want to drown you, I want to damage your interior organs. You should be punished for your despicable views. You should have a pint of something deadly like absinthe or meth.

B

I’d prefer port.