Ella Hickson Plays: One E-Book

Ella Hickson

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

When her first play, Eight, transferred from student theatre in Edinburgh to the West End and then New York, Ella Hickson was still in her early twenties. She has since built on that promise with a series of engaged and engaging dramas that pit romanticism and optimism against the realities of life as a young person in Britain. Eight (Edinburgh Fringe, 2008), that astonishing first success, is included here: a state-of-the-nation group portrait in monologues, 'an interactive Talking Heads for 21st-century teens and twentysomethings' (Independent). Also included is Hot Mess (Edinburgh Fringe, 2010), a dark and lyrical tale about twins born with just a single heart between them, and Precious Little Talent (Edinburgh Fringe, 2009; West End, 2011), about two young adults graduating into a world that's sold them down the river. In Boys (HighTide Festival, Nuffield Theatre Southampton and Soho Theatre, 2012), the Class of 2011 faces a tricky transition to adulthood in a play that 'powerfully captures the mood of a generation' (Independent). The volume also contains an introduction by the author and two short plays: the previously unpublished PMQ, part of the Coalition season at Theatre503, London, in 2010; and Gift, first seen as part of Headlong's immersive theatre production Decade in 2011. 'On the cusp of greatness'Independent

Leseprobe

ELLA HICKSON

Plays: One

Eight

Hot Mess

PMQ

Precious Little Talent

Gift

Boys

with an Introduction by the author

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Eight

Hot Mess

PMQ

Precious Little Talent

Gift

Boys

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

For

Xander, Henry, Simon, Michael, Holly,Alice, Solomon, Ishbel and Gwennie

Introduction

The plays collected here cover the first five years of my writing career, from 2008 to 2012. The period of life that they chronicle, the memories they contain, the people and productions that surrounded them, form a chapter of huge joy, excitement, promise and laughter. As beginnings to writing careers go, I have been extraordinarily lucky.

I wrote Eight in my bedroom, on Lauderdale Street, in my final year at Edinburgh University. I had just done my finals and was working for the Edinburgh International Film Festival. I was an intern, sorting out gala tickets and looking after A-list celebrities – I made sure Keira Knightley had space to dance, it was impressive stuff. In the evenings and weekends, setting myself the task of two per week, I wrote the eight stories that would go together to form the show. I had done one playwriting workshop with David Greig, who has since become my mentor and friend, so I had some sense of structure, protagonist, reversal, and so on. I also had a youth full of passions and interests to draw on. I’d spent my gap year in the South of France where I’d met a fascinating lady artist – hence Jude. I’d written an article for a local newspaper on Tracey Emin’s recent exhibition and loved studying ‘The Politics and Aesthetics of Contemporary Art’ – hence André. I’d had a wonderful Home Counties childhood of tennis lessons, garden parties, beautiful Christmases and studying Betjeman. I’d had a university of big parties, dramatic love affairs, great friends and all the attendant tears and heartache. Eight, in one way or another, was a chronicle of life up to that point.

If the content was in some way retrospective, the fallout from Eight was all about the future. It was a blast. I’d cast eight brilliant friends from Edinburgh University Theatre Company – and we’d shaped and edited and staged the thing together with the help of Xander Macmillan, our technical wizard. First came the good reviews, then Joyce McMillan (to whom I pretty much owe my career) put it up for a Scotsman Fringe First, then Carol Tambor came to see it and offered us a transfer to New York for a month-long run on the Lower East Side. The ten of us, in our early twenties, stood arm in arm and sung Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’ on the final night of the Fringe. I don’t think I’ve ever, since, been so presently aware of being in the very middle of the best of things.

New York was incredible. We shared apartments in Midtown, we performed each night at Performance Space 122, we’d drink in bars that some of us had to fake-ID our way into. It was impossibly exciting. Instead of just enjoying it, however, I could already feel the anxiety at turning this stroke of luck into something more concrete. The only way I knew how to deal with that panic was via hard work. I had to write another play. David Greig had told me to get one done in time for the next Fringe and it was already March.

I was going out with a wonderful, big-hearted optimist at the time. I felt scared of the future – he felt positive about it. We sat on a New York rooftop one night and shared our competing visions, we kissed in Grand Central Station, we – all of us – went to watch Obama inaugurated for the first time. The optimism was palpable. The adventure was dizzy-making. Miles’s monologue, written a year earlier, had imagined a world where banks might fail… and then, less than a year later, they did. We were heading home into a world of recession.

Precious Little Talent dealt with this strange tension between optimism and fear. Again, the context for one show provided the material for the next, and I wrote the play in the bedroom of said optimistic boyfriend. He was living with three other flatmates; raucous boys that I loved, boys that I envied for their capacity for partying and living in the present whilst I sat, alone, typing and trying to teach myself to write dialogue and form. It was those boys, in that flat, that three years later would make it onto paper in Boys.

With some brilliant dramaturgical help from Katherine Mendelsohn at the Traverse, in 2009, Precious Little Talent did well at the Edinburgh Fringe, but didn’t change my life in the way that Eight had; no prizes, no transfers. It couldn’t have. I found it hard coming to terms, over those first five years, with the fact that you can’t have a beginning like we had, twice. 2009 was the year to turn beginner’s luck into hard graft. I produced and directed Precious Little Talent in Edinburgh, Eight at Trafalgar Studios in London and at The Ringling International Arts Festival in Florida, and wrote Hot Mess ready for the 2010 Fringe. I got an agent and was starting to get into TV and radio with BBC Scotland, as well as doing smaller scratch-night shows in London. As a career started to emerge, it became clear that the theatre industry wanted me as a writer.

By the time I directed Hot Mess in Edinburgh I knew that my chance at a secure career would mean moving to London, focusing on the writing and leaving the directing, producing, and working with a big gang of friends, behind. It felt like it was time to be a grown-up. That Fringe production of Hot Mess was the last of my own plays that I both directed and produced myself. I miss that time dreadfully and yet it was the gateway to a new world of practitioners that would teach me so much. Ellen McDougall directed a wonderful new production of the play, produced by the Arcola at Latitude Festival, the following year.

I wrote PMQ for Coalition, a night of political theatre curated by Nadia Latif at Theatre503, and it was directed by James Dacre, whom I subsequently asked to direct Precious Little Talent at Trafalgar Studios in 2011, which I produced. After opening night, I ran across town to do the Old Vic New Voices: 24 Hour Plays. I was so loath to leave Edinburgh and my old, safe life that, when I got into the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme, I commuted between London and Edinburgh for nearly a year, on the sleeper train. It was insane. I was living between my Edinburgh flat and my gran’s spare bedroom and writing in cafés and restaurants. I can still remember the Baker Street Pizza Express where I wrote PMQ and my gran’s upstairs study where I wrote Boys – a play about not wanting to give up on the best bits of youth.

I pushed myself incredibly hard, and was exhausted most of the time. I was very sure that hard work was the antidote to the uncertainty of the future. The problem was that the producing – the emails, phone calls and publicity pushing – responded well to high-octane efficiency. The writing, less so. If you push it, you panic and the writing stops. It’s like a small horse, you have to be kind to it. I had no idea how to do that. I was a long way from any understanding of myself as an artist or what I was doing as art. I did, however – even then – get this strange tingling sense when I felt things were a bit good. It was usually in the monologues, a sense of flow, where my brain would get out of the way – a break in the panic clouds. Something was starting to get a bit sure of itself.

Eventually I gave in, broke my own heart, left Edinburgh and moved down to London and into my friend’s flat on Southgate Road. There’s a great David Foster Wallace quote: ‘Everything I’ve ever let go has claw marks on it.’ I left Edinburgh kicking and screaming.

What I’d lost in terms of team and kindred spirits by leaving the university years behind, I’d started to gain in a new community in London. Many of the people I’d met on Coalition are still friends now. That year I did a Radio 4 workshop that resulted in my first radio play, Rightfully Mine, but also, and much more importantly, my long-standing friendship with Nick Payne. Simon Stephens came to see Hot Mess at the Fringe, he set up my attachment at the Lyric Hammersmith and gave me a theatrical home when I came to London. Simon also asked Nick, Ben, Alice Birch and me to teach at Rose Bruford College, creating the world’s best supper club that is still going strong. Those early offers of belonging were crucial.

Robert Icke and Rupert Goold took a collection of young writers away for the week with Headlong Theatre to create Decade. Rupert, Rob and Headlong became a new gang that I was very proud to be part of. It was there that I learnt about theatre as provocation and met another good friend, Adam Brace. Rupert, more than anyone, taught me to say the unsayable (Brace runs a close second) – which was totally formative to the work I’ve written since, and which led to my writing Gift. It was written straight out – I hardly changed a word. Whatever that thing was that I had been starting to get sure of, was getting stronger. It seemed to work in monologue, when I could work from instinct. The second I tried to hammer it into form or structure, my mind got in the way and I stumbled and things became unclear.

Boyswas the big attempt at trying to conquer conventional dramatic form. Three acts, six characters, a full-length play. It was written on the Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme and, whilst the Court didn’t produce it, it became my calling card for meetings with other theatre companies. Headlong became the home for Boys. My first meeting was with Ben Power, then at Headlong, who I sold on some idea about a play set on an oil rig, which would arrive in a different form, at a different theatre, six years later. Rob had picked Precious Little Talent out of a pile of scripts and asked if I had anything new, I sent him Boys. He would go on to direct it for Headlong at HighTide and Soho Theatre. It was a collaboration and production that cemented my sense of myself as a writer as something distinct from directing or producing. I came to see direction as transformation rather than facilitation. It was a letting-go of total control that liberated my writing. The writing became the central concern and has remained an uncompromising pursuit ever since. When Boys played at Soho Theatre in June 2012, I realised I was a professional writer. It also led me to Rachel Taylor, my agent, expert note-giver and constant ally, in a career that is ever-shifting.

Boys was the gateway to bigger commissions, bigger plays and new stages. It led me into a very happy time with the Royal Shakespeare Company on my adaptation Wendy & Peter Pan, developing two new plays with the National Theatre, and the six-year challenge of writing Oil, which, whilst exhausting, gave me some of my best work, most valued collaborators and a discovery of what I was capable of – in terms of grit, rigour and interrogation of form.

I have continued to struggle with the solitude of being a writer, and still – in the loneliest moments – am desperate to direct, run a venue, or just run hard away from myself/my computer towards the belonging of a gang and the pragmatism of making things happen in the world rather than the central, daily conversation being with yourself, inside your own mind. What I am always grateful for, however, are the people that my profession has brought my way: incredible collaborators, friends and artists with whom I have had the most exciting conversations of my life.

The particular preoccupation of writing, the constant nagging pursuit of the next project is an obsession and a privilege that, when I started, I had no idea would make my life’s work. I think now, if I’m honest, as hard as I try to run from it, it’s got me. I am a writer, and there’s probably no escaping it, and maybe I don’t want to. As one play is finished the next starts forming in my mind, a new sense of something impossible that is asking, in vain, for a solution. The task gets more demanding every time. When I love it, which is often, there’s nothing better on earth. There’s maybe something liberating about realising it’s not really a choice. And as for gang? We might all be working in different buildings and often on our own, but writers and theatre-makers are an incredible community that I look forward to spending the next decade being part of.

Ella Hickson

April 2018

EIGHT

Premise

One of the central characteristics of the commercial world that Eight explores is ‘choice culture’. From channel-surfing to Catch-Up TV and X-Factor voting – we are a choosy bunch, we get what we want when we want it. Eight reflects this in its set-up.

When I directed the first production of the play, I offered the audience short character descriptions of all eight characters before the play began. I then asked them to vote for the four characters whom they wanted to see. As the audience entered the auditorium, all eight characters were lined up across the front of the stage – but only the four characters with the highest number of votes would perform. The other four characters would remain onstage, reminding the audience that in each choice we make we are also choosing to leave something behind.

Such a process is not essential for a performance of Eight and directors, of course, should remain in control of the line-up and order of play if they should so wish.

Eight was first performed at Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, on 2 August 2008, with the following cast:

DANNY

Henry Peters

JUDE

Simon Ginty

ANDRÉ

Michael Whitham

BOBBY

Holly McLay

MONA

Alice Bonifacio

MILES

Solomon Mousley

MILLIE

Ishbel McFarlane

ASTRID

Gwendolen von Einsiedel

Director

Ella Hickson

Stage Construction

David Larking

Technical Director

Xander Macmillan

The production transferred to Performance Space 122, New York, as part of the COIL Festival, on 6 January 2009, and Trafalgar Studios, London, on 6 July 2009.

Characters

DANNY, twenty-two

JUDE, eighteen

ANDRÉ, twenty-eight

BOBBY, twenty-two

MONA, eighteen

MILES, twenty-seven

MILLIE, thirty

ASTRID, twenty-four

(BUTTONS, mid-thirties)

DANNY

Danny is a well-built man in his early twenties. He sits on a black box in the centre of the stage with a corpse’s head lain across his knee, he is feeding water to the corpse. He is wearing jeans, a black wife-beater and black boots. Danny is twenty-two years old but he appears much younger; his learnt manner is one of faux aggression; however, he fails to disguise an underlying vulnerability. Danny is a little slow but essentially sweet.

Danny, hushed, talks to the corpse.

Here you go, little one – head up, ’ave some water, come on, your lips are all crackin’, come on. Look, I can’t be doin’ everyfing for you, it’s ’ard enough sneakin’ in for nights, that fat bastard porter is gunna see me one a these days and I’ll get fuckin’ nailed. Now come on, darlin’.

You’re a nightmare, int you? I used to be the same. Mum always said I was a pain in the neck, always bawling when she was tryin’ to get stuff done.

Danny walks forward and begins to address the audience.

Mum used to work for one of them poncey magazines; it’s why we had to move up north, to Preston; it’s newest city in England, you know? I was dead excited, shouldn’t have been. . . borin’ as fuck here. Mum’s job was to make sure all the people on the front cover of the magazine looked right. I used to watch her, it was like magic, she’d give ’em big old smiles and scrape off all their fat, anything not perfect she’d jus’ rub out, make it disappear. When she was done all them people looked beautiful, like, like – dolls. The problem was it made me sort a sad to look at all the ugly people after that; all them people who look fat or spotty or just sort a strange, when Mum made it seem real easy to look just right.

At school, Hutton Grammar, I was never bright so sports were always my thing, and I was always big, like my dad has been. They used to call him Monster Cox, which I always thought was cos he was built like a tank but it turned out it was cos he had a massive dick. He died in the Falklands, he was a Sapper, part a the Royal Engineers, had a bit more up top than me. (Laughs – self-deprecating.) Mum always seemed a bit afraid after Dad had gone, she seemed sort a smaller, she didn’t look ‘right’. I guess that was why I wanted to get big, like Dad had been, to make things better – protect her, like.

I was sort of keen on goin’ down the gym after school, cos it helped wiv rugby, and girls and that, so Mum, for my eighteenth birthday, bought me my first tub a protein shake, CNP Professional. At first it was just a hobby. I’d do, say, two hours after school, not much, like, reps of twelve – squats, crunches, lunges, flat-bench press, barbell curls – just the usual stuff. But it started feelin’ really good.

I was feeling better and lookin’ better, I can’t remember which one came first – they sort of seemed like the same fing after a while. So I upped my hours. And yeah, there was pain but I could ignore it – I was focused like crazy; I felt I could do anything. I was like one a Mum’s pictures, getting tighter and bigger and more and more perfect.

And soon it came. I could feel it. Sitting at the back of the classroom – I could feel my traps straining to get out a my school shirt, and all the girls were lookin’ too, they could see that I was different, they could see the strength, the fearlessness – my body was proof of the size a my balls. I didn’t need to be a hero, it was enough just to look like one.

But, but after a while people stopped lookin’, and it didn’t feel so good, it didn’t feel right. I was still getting a bit bigger but the change wasn’t as, as powerful as it was at the start so I started thinking all the same things again like why I didn’t have a girlfriend, what the fuck was I going to do with my life and what Mum was going to do all on her own if I went ’n, ’n. . . It was like down the gym I’d felt perfect, unstoppable, and then suddenly nothing was perfect any more.

My dad always said, ‘The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.’ (Trying to be brave.) So I signed up, 4th Battalion, Duke a Lancaster’s Regiment, trainin’ every Tuesday down Kimberley Barracks. We were the new boys; they called us Lancs in 4th Battalion, the babies. Hauled in one day ’n pretty much shipped out the next – direct service to Basra, unsure whether you had a single or return, that’s what all the lads said. We didn’t have a fucking clue what we were doing, but I wasn’t bothered, I was there to fight – end of. I was pretty popular too; apparently it’s quite comforting to have your arse covered by a lad built like a brick shithouse.

His vulnerability dissolves a little – his face hardens, suddenly he seems older, tougher.

’Bout halfway through my tour, the day came, the older squaddies had always said it; one thing’ll happen, one day and you’ll never be the same. Mine came, 24th June 2007, it was my twenty-second birthday. We’re creepin’ into some sleepy suburb, the Warrior tanks were following us up. Tension was up, the drivers were spiked, chewin’ coffee granules ’til they dribbled black – but all was quiet – we were just having a nose about – (Stops, stares at the audience.) – I’m out front. (Snaps head round.) Suddenly, in bowls a fuckin’ Yank Humvee – (Danny jumps on top of the box.) – they’re chargin’ through, all shouting ‘GET SOME’, pelting out bullets like it’s a fuckin’ fairground ride. . . my lot hit the deck thinking Jonny Jihad’s out to play – (He jumps down and hauls the corpse up in front of him as if it were a rubble barricade.) – I’m squatting, low behind some rubble, waiting for the storm to pass when ‘Booooom!’. . . There’s smoke, I can hear screams but muffled, like, and. . . I’m down. (He falls to the floor, begins to drag himself back up onto the box, panting, frightened.) There’s pain. . . in my left leg, those tosser yanks had woken a mean fuckin’ beast, there were rag’ed Fundie Jundies runnin’ fuckin’ everywhere – I looked down and the whole of my left leg, hip to toe, skinless.

He is now back on top of the box, he stares down at his leg – he pauses, quiet, shivering.

It was like the bullets stopped, like there was silence. I stared. My leg was red and bloody, not a patch a skin on the thing – I could see all the muscles, workin’, t. . . t. . . twitchin’, all the ligaments – I couldn’t even feel the pain. I touched it, it was soft and warm and huge, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Then, suddenly the pain and the smell, the stink of burnin’ flesh – I screamed – Aaaaaaaaah!

There was no way I was seeing service after that. Burns all over me leg, they took the skin from my arse and patched it together, scrape bits off, add bits on. It fuckin’ fascinated me and as it healed, I, I missed it. It was like, seeing that, seeing how perfectly constructed I was beneath it all, I guess it was Dad’s influence, the engineer in me – but I. . . I swear I’d never seen anything work so well. It was like suddenly all Mum’s front covers, all those perfect men and women, they were nothing now, even getting ripped wasn’t the same, the buzz is underneath the skin, that’s where everything was right.

So I started workin’ here. I’m a stripper. . . of bodies. . . dead ones. They ask me to peel back the skin, but careful like cos they use it for people with burns, like me. Then I slough off all the fat so they’re ready when the medical students come in. . . (He turns to the corpse.) Shh, I know, it’s horrid, don’t worry little one. (He puts his hands over her ears and hugs her to him, whispering.) Medical students use ’em for their anatomy classes, it’s not fair to talk ’bout it in front of them, though. (Takes hands off.) I work during the day, but then I hide whilst the porters swap shifts – when everyfing is dark, I creep out, it’s awful quiet and somehow calm, like – and they’re all lying there and I can just be with them, sitting a while.

I give ’em nicknames like all the squaddies used to do, like Dad was Monster Cox and I was Danny Boy, so over here we have Holey Joe, not because he’s religious or anything but on account of the hole they left when they cut his pacemaker out, apparently they make the crematoriums explode and no one needs that at a funeral, eh? Then there’s Bruiser, through there, cos he’s a little banged up, I don’t know why, something must a happened to him before he came in. He’s like a father to me; he just listens and listens for hours.

And then here, here she is, this is Mouse, my little mouse, cos she’s so small and fragile but so perfect-looking, I look after her real well, I never let her get cold or leave her on her own for too long, she gets lonely, like Mum did.

What it is, is that when someone is willing to sit with you, all exposed and vulnerable like they are, it makes you want to share, makes you tell ’em things you’d never tell anyone else. Cos they don’t mind if you’re big or strong or if people like ya, they’ll listen anyway. And you listen right back. . . listen. . . hard. . . to that silence. . . beneath all the noise. . . and you can hear ’em. . . breathing, and quietly now. . . real quiet like, their hearts start to beat.

He climbs in next to the corpse on the box, places his head on her chest to hear her heart beat then lies down next to her and pulls her arm over him and drifts off to sleep.

Blackout.

JUDE

Jude is eighteen years old, dressed in school trousers, shirt and a tie. A large black block, centre stage, acts as a bed and a dinner table – navigated around in the opening sections.

This time last summer, Dad sent me to the South of France. The day I left, he stood on the front step and saluted my departure, like some bloody sergeant major, pair of baggy corduroys, copy of the Guardian wedged under his arm.

‘Off you go, my son,’ he yelled. ‘You will walk away a boy and return a man!’

Except I could barely hear him cos he had Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony booming out of every window. (Moves to sit on block.) When I stepped off the plane, the first thing I felt was the heat – it smacked me in the face, the stairs burned my feet through my shoes; I strained to see the city in the distance, but I couldn’t see a thing, I was shitting myself.

Taxi dropped me off at Boulevard Victor Hugo. Now, my dad would have been in his element. I could hear his voice in my head: ‘Did you know, Jude, that without Victor Hugo, I strongly doubt we would’ve ever had Dickens.’ Really, Dad, that’s fascinating. I felt for the sandwiches he’d put in the bottom of my bag, but I’d eaten them on the plane.

He starts moving behind the block, down a ‘street’.

Twenty-three, twenty-four – fuck a duck. . . It was huge. Wrought-iron gates squeaked open, I carried my suitcase up to this big green door; the paint was all cracking off it in the heat. There were old-fashioned shutters and yellow walls. It looked like all the Riviera photos that Dad had showed me before I left, all those stories about – (Sits, imitates Dad, talking down to imaginary Jude.) – ‘Fitzgerald, Picasso and Hemingway, when genius was valued, Jude, and the women, oh, the women, beautiful muses with wild eyes and. . .’ Oh, what did he say?. . . Oh yeah, ‘reckless abandon’, as if he was a hundred years old and he had been there himself – sad act.

I breathed in. I knocked. I was shown to my room by a crazy and crooked-looking woman with fag breath who kept scowling as my bag slammed against the stairs; ‘Pardon,’ I whispered weakly, with this pathetic smile like I’d just peed myself. (Smiles.) She growled – (In a growly French accent.) – ‘Madame Clara will return later, little boy, for the dinner,’ alright. (Sits on the side of his bed and looks around agog.) As much as I wanted to be back in Poynton, my French room was. . . pretty fucking cool. The walls were covered in black-and-white photos that looked like scenes from old movies and that. There was a hat stand, here, in the corner – (Imitates popping his hat up onto it.) – next to the bookshelf. . . busting with crusty old novels, all in French, then my window. . . floor to ceiling, old shutters that proper creaked and a balcony, little radio, huge old mirror – it was brilliant.

He flicks on the radio – Laura Fygi’s Le Continental – he continues absentmindedly whilst dancing a bit and unpacking.

Three months here might not be so bad, there was sun and sea and there were bound to be women – (He thinks.) – in bikinis. I was an independent man, my own room – I could be a Riviera gent; look sharp, become fluent. . . in the language of looove. . . eat well, get to know the place, maybe make friends with a. . . baker. (Jumps on block.)

‘Bonjour, Jude!’

‘Bonjour, Pierre!’

‘Say, Jude, where is that young lady I saw you with, eeh, she is very good-looking, no?

‘Eh, Pierre, she some needs some rest. . . from all the lovin’.’

I’m bloody hungry. What’s that smell? It’s like peppers or something. . . this could actually be bloody brilliant. . . God, it’s hot, I need to get out of this stuff, I’m sweating comme un cochon – (Finds himself funny, starts taking off his shirt and shorts as he’s dancing.) – and cologne, I’m definitely the kind of man that likes. . . colooogne – (Imitates spraying.) – mmm, the smell of that food. . .

He does a final twist, pretending to spray the perfume in his pants. . . He suddenly stops and the music cuts.

‘Hello. . . um, um. . . p. . . pardon. . . Madame, Bon-bo-bonjour.’

His eyes hit floor, the same weak, ‘peeing smile’ continues, painfully embarrassed, humble. . .

(To front.) She was standing there, in the doorway; half woman – half silhouette. I glanced up, red nails and long, chocolate hair – blurry through the cigarette smoke.

(Looks at his feet.) I want to die, I want to die. . . I want to be wearing trousers.

Pause. One quick second glance.

Her cleavage, crinkly, brown – like a Sunday roast. (Looks down at his crotch.) Oh God, no, don’t you dare, don’t you dare make this any fucking worse –

He edges his hands over his. . . Looks up, smiles. He puts on a very strong accent, changes pose to imitate her.

‘It’s Jude, no?’ she says. . . perfectly. . .

(Gulps.) ‘Yes, oui, yes.’ (Clears throat in an overly manly way.)

‘Dinner is ready – in the kitchen, downstairs, you should – err – dress for dinner.’

‘Yup, yes. . . yes, I should. . . I should, I will – thank you, pardon.’

Whilst re-dressing, he pulls trousers up from ankles, moves over to the kitchen, pulls out a chair – and nods recognition to imagined dinner guests.

The table was full of wine and strangers. Funny-sounding French and hands grabbing at massive bowls of food: salami and anchovies, little blobby tomatoes and fat balls of mozzarella, all swimming in thick oil, it smelled of basil and olives. I took one olive – just the one. Clara looked down from the head of the table at me, ‘C’est tout, Jude? Tch tch. . .’ (Wags his finger.) The two other lads, sitting opposite me, laughed. Jimmy on the left – a painfully stupid American who was absolutely, totally, incredibly excited about everything. . . always, and couldn’t speak a fucking word of French – made me look pretty good. Then on the right we had Fabian, the quatri-lingual Bavarian; this scrotum-bursting, yak-haired, man-beast who kept having to pop off to play contact sports and plough wenches. . . twat.

It was a circus, controlled by the heavenly hostess, the red-lipped ringmaster. Not a piece of food passed her lips, she just quietly supped on red wine, and watched, smiling, as we gorged ourselves.

He moves over from the chair to the bed.

For the next three months, between language school in the morning and getting drunk in the evenings with Dipstick and Goliath, I spent my days sneaking glimpses of Clara. Her gold St Christopher twinkling in her cleavage over breakfast; wrinkled fingers dolloping handfuls of breast into expensive French lace. I had inhaled the heavy scent of woman. Perfection did exist, Dad had been right to have his idols. Clara Moretti, my Madonna.

Dad, in his absence, had finally come into his own. I had all this, this. . . urgh inside me, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t concentrate, there weren’t enough wanking hours in the day. The only thing that made it any better was that little library Dad had packed me. I devoured every book, cover to cover. She became my aged Lady Chatterley, my jaded Juliet, my latter-day Anna Karenina, but I was just Quasimodo – looking longingly from afar, catching glimpses of her perfection whilst I remained this skinny, pasty and increasingly terrified teenager. It killed me; the more time I spent with her, the worse it was. I read books to her, I helped her cook, I watched her paint and all whilst she looked at me with sad and sympathetic eyes. She’d let me sit on the end of her bed when she got ready in the evenings – I’d fix the clasps on jewellery that glinted in the eyes of other men. She wore her age differently with me, like it was heavy to carry, as if her skin was like an old friend that wouldn’t let her forget a thing, not for a second.

As it got late, Mediterranean men would arrive in dark cars and wrap her in their heavy coats and they’d take her away from me; for those men, her age became like armour – I fucking hated those men for making her that way.

He takes his shirt off and lies on the bed.

At night, I could hear her fuck those Mediterranean monkeys, grunting and squealing as I lay, staring at the ceiling, sweaty and sleepless.

One night, Clara got a phone call at about ten. It was pouring with rain, the wind was furious, slapping the shutters back and forth against the walls. I could barely hear the conversation over the noise, but she was going out, to Monaco, for the night. I tried to sleep, I couldn’t. It was so hot and humid, I paced my room, I smoked a bit. I was, I was. . . I had to walk, to breathe. I found myself outside her door. I pushed it open. The inner sanctum, without her in it; it was quiet, airy, the storm couldn’t touch it.

He enters ‘Clara’s room’ and sits on the bed.

Her white bed, the wooden floor, the tiny crystal bottles and trinkets sat gracefully and quietly, they were delicate, sophisticated, they aimed to tempt. . . one by one, the perfect crystal shattering, clouds of musk and powder flew up in my face. (He chokes and backs away.) Her lingerie, where I knew it was. Those perfect puckered legs wrapping around some fat Italian. (He starts pulling at the stockings.) Whore’s stockings, black silk, all over her pure skin; expensive bras, made by a million hands, grubby little Parisian hands on her perfect body, holding her up and in. . . and – (Runs back to her dressing table, mimics making-up.) – pots of paint, the black soot in her eyes and the blood red on her lips, to paint the idol, as if she could get any more beautiful! Dad hadn’t said it was like this! The lovers in his books – they were heroes, the passion of battle, he said – the honour of devotion, love makes a man but look at me – (He sobs a little.) – I’m fucking pathetic. I’m nothing. . . because she’s everything.

He slides to the floor, sobbing, head in hands – he’s young, vulnerable – quietly now, much more sombre.

And then she came back, she found me – in amongst her underwear. She stood above me, backlit by the street lamps on the road, her coat was wet, she said, she had to get dry – and her dress fell around her ankles, aging flesh creased and beautiful around her waist and down her thighs. She came towards me, lifted my face to hers and kissed me, hard; she asked me to hold her, to undress her – I did. And she was there, naked, all of her, to touch, to be had – she was above me, around me; she told me I was beautiful, angelic – she was human now. Her flesh between my hands, the weight of her, her perfume faded, there was just the smell of skin – her eyes pleading, the wet of her lips, her hands on me, I had her.

He wakes next to her, we see disgust in his face – the idol has fallen.

When I woke, the rain had stopped; the morning sun lay across her wooden floor and it crept into the creases around her eyes. She looked her age; too old to smell of wine and cigarettes, too old to have mascara down her face, too old for her lipstick to be smudged across the face of a seventeen-year-old boy.

Pause. He wipes his hand across his face, gets up and gets dressed back into school uniform. He stares out at the audience, something has been lost.

Blackout.

ANDRÉ

André, originally Andrew, is a twenty-eight-year-old gallery owner. He enters his gallery, clearly shaken, takes a moment to catch his breath and positions himself on a high stool.

I have to say, this wasn’t the ending that I had in mind. I’m not sure what I did have in mind. Probably a whisper of a ‘happy ever after’, you know, wearing matching cardies, sharing digestives, but I hadn’t thought I’d been stupid enough to pin anything on it actually happening. It’s easy for the Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties of this world, but we’re a little low on route planners for Prince Charming and. . . Prince Charming. Serious lack of ‘fairy’ tales.

This certainly isn’t one, is it? I think we can all agree that coming into work half an hour late on a Monday morning and finding your boyfriend hanging from the rafters by a Hermès scarf, well. . . it’s not exactly ‘happy ever after’, is it?

That bloody scarf; I’ve always maintained that a high price means high quality but who knew Hermès could take a man’s weight? And let’s be clear, he was no skinny little fag, he was a big fat chunky. He was never going to wear it; I don’t know what I was playing at giving it to him. He wasn’t the scarf type, you see, Hermès or otherwise – never had been. I spent my teenage years trying my very hardest to look like Cyndi Lauper. Him? No, going with a button fly over a zip was his idea of outrageous.

Where’s that sodding ambulance? He can’t just be, up there, like that. I guess the rush isn’t on once they know resuscitation heroics are out. More or less a removal job now – heavy load, lads, mind your backs. His big, purple face is dribbling all over an Emin print. Why he chose the bloody stockroom? It’s not like he was being shy, putting a Hermès noose round your neck, it’s not quite the same as popping a few pills and drifting off, is it? He might as well have done it in the front fucking window, nice bit of performance art. . . No, he wanted to save this one just for me, one-man show.

I bet I’m not insured for suicidal dribble either – that’s 5k down the shitter.

They’re bound to judge, aren’t they, snoopy little paramedics? One art gallery, two queers, one corpse, that’s never going to look good, is it? They’ll look for syringes and. . . hamsters and expect some paid-by-the-hour twelve-year-old to pop out with a dummy in his gob. I wish we’d ever been that bloody exciting. He used to get a hard-on doing the tax return. . . seriously. . . it was the stationery, he said, the smell of fresh paper, straight-lines, colour-coding, gave him a buzz. He kept this place shipshape. It’s our empire; Captain Admin and Sergeant Schmooze. It’s all you need in the art world: a number-cruncher and someone that can talk bollocks at a million miles an hour, that’s me.

He was never in it for the art. We caught the wave of the YBAs, you see, all that Hirst and Emin nonsense in the early nineties, when you could piss in a pot of formaldehyde and make a million, as long as you did it loud enough and in front of enough people. Dingy Hoxton warehouses and precocious teenagers sticking two fingers up at the establishment; like it had never been done before, like this time it might all crumble at the sight of their shit-for-brains art and polysyllabic waffle.

And all of them led by the grand high witch of overpriced nonsense. . . Miss Tracey Emin!

He turns and talks to Tracey Emin as if she is there.

‘Now, Tracey dear, what you’ve done here with this little “bed” piece, is just not do your washing for a long while and what’s happened is you’ve come off looking like a bit of a grubby slut, so come along, pumpkin, pop yourself in the shower and we’ll get this tidied up.’

He really hated that Tracey Emin, and it took a lot for him to hate anyone; he said she looked selfish. I mentioned that might be because we were standing in front of a ten-foot photo of her scooping money into her lady garden. He said not, he said she had selfish eyes; that she was making tragedy a commodity and that was unforgivable.

You’d bloody love this, wouldn’t you, Tracey darling. . . ‘World’s most boring man recovers old birthday present from flamboyant boyfriend and hangs himself with it’ – wonder how she’d flog it? Something simple, get right to the core of it, probably some of those embroidered stick-men things – five grand a piece, for a game of Hangman.

He hated it, the drama, the hype – he tried not to, he read everything there was to read, he really felt that if people were paying all that money then there must be something in it that he couldn’t see. Bless him. He always tried to see the good in things, invariably it wasn’t there. See, it was never his world, it was mine.

I loved it, the parties, the glam, the feeling that you were getting away with it, free booze, free food, free drugs – people knowing your name. Recognition, it’s short on the ground, you get it where you can. But he never needed it, not like me. I’d be raving my tits off in DayGlo and he’d have a pint and go home early, boring sod, didn’t like the noise.

It was the same at the openings, print fairs, biennales – he’d lurk, he’d actually look at the art, whilst I schmoozed, made us contacts, did deals, showed my face, it’s who you know not what you know, always has been, always will be. He never understood that, he felt that things should succeed on their own merit. Tch, tch. . . Not any more, love.

He never used his gayness either, and gayness is pretty serious ammunition in the art world. It’s an indisputable qualification; gay men do aesthetics like black men can sprint, it’s just fact. But he just didn’t have very much gay in him. (He raises his eyebrows.) What I mean is, he was the least gay gay I’d ever met – well, excepting this recent episode, which, if he doesn’t mind me saying so, is somewhat queeny. He drank Stella, hated gyms, never wore a pair of matching socks in his life, practically heterosexual. It was his niche: ‘Totally normal bloke that happens to fuck men, please keep off the grass’ – no cottaging, no arty wankers, no underage sex – go back to the nineties or see my seedy boyfriend if interested in any of the above. I was the yin to his yang, the Vivienne Westwood to his Marks & Spencer’s, the St Tropez to his Bognor bloody Regis, and he needed me, I made him sure of who he was, by constantly reminding him of what he’d never be, what he’d never want to be. He was safe and sound on his patch, the only straight gay in the village.

Then all of a sudden, about two years ago, out of nowhere, he’s overrun, in come the queers that aren’t queer, they’re getting married, they’re wearing wellies and walking black Labs, they’ve got people carriers and kids instead of drug habits. The back alley had become memory lane and the sodomite became suburbanite. The poof had evaporated. These days being subversive is more of a hobby than a necessity. Even the names have changed – poof, queer, fairy, fudge-packer – they’re not whispered or spat at you any more, they’re hair products, club names, magazine titles, turn on the telly before work and watch Lorraine Kelly rubbing Poof in her hair.

So it all stopped, all changed, nothing left to hide or defend, why do it in the dark when it’s all over bloody GMTV?

He hated it, how was he meant to tell himself apart? All that acceptance, you’ve never seen a man so lost – he had nowhere to go; he’d been sucked in, invaded, by normal.

Finally, Emin’s getting old, that’s where I got back from this morning, before. . . before this. I was at the National Gallery, twenty-year retrospectives start showing the wrinkles, love. Get a little bit of distance on it and it looks even more like bollocks than it did in the first place. If only he could’ve seen that. If he could’ve stepped outside of it all for long enough, got out of this place, got away from me, he would’ve seen that this isn’t it, that this world of overpriced nonsense wouldn’t win. I guess he couldn’t see how it could be any other way; the faithlessness got to him, ate away from the inside.

I could see it happening, I watched him quietly shatter beneath it all. Sitting on the couch, eating himself into oblivion, there’s more macaroni cheese in that corpse than I can bear to think about. But I didn’t do anything. I told myself he knew, that deep down he could see, this world that I had brought him into, this shallow, shameless world of men with millions pandering to the tantrums of teenagers like Emin, of queers desperately trying to stay queer, I thought he could see it for what it was, see me for what I was, a joke.

But no, he thought we wanted more, he thought that if naked and dirty wasn’t enough then it was time for paraplegic or post-op and he didn’t want to see it, he didn’t want to see me scrabbling around in the dirt for the last bits of different that were left, the not yet exploited; it was me; it was the fact I was still doing it, that’s what he couldn’t bear – if we could have both laughed at it from the sidelines, fine – but he thought I hadn’t seen, he thought all of this, was me.

But what if I’d stepped down, if I’d stopped pretending. . . I couldn’t carry him, I tried to get him down, lift him from the knees, I did, I had him in my arms, I took his weight for a second but he was too heavy. So I had to let go, let the Hermès take the strain. I stood there, watched his bloated, purple head loll forward – there was the shock factor, first time I’d felt it in a decade. And so perhaps this was his parting gift? To remind me of what it was like when people. . . stared, the thrill of shocking – how it had been when we were something to look at.

So this is it, the final fling for the queers at the fringes, the underground fairies. . . a little souvenir of when difference existed. And he thought this was what I wanted, what I missed? I would have given up the drama the day I met him, in all his beige glory. I’ve been bored of pushing the sodding envelope for half a decade, I just never thought to tell him, I thought he knew I was playing make-believe – but he didn’t, I never told him that he, he was home.

Blackout.

BOBBY

Bobby is a twenty-two-year-old mother of two – wearing a red Adidas tracksuit. She is seated on a table. We imagine her kids, Kyle and Chloë, four and six, at her feet in front of the telly. She’s reading down to them with enthusiasm. Bobby has a strong, working-class Edinburgh accent, she mimics an upper-middle-class English accent when impersonating Mrs Beeton.

(Reading.) ‘’Twas the night afore Christmas, an’ aw through the hoose, no’ a creature was stirrin’, no’ even a moose – ’

Chloë, will you shut up and listen!

‘The stockin’s were hung by the chimney wi’ care, in the hope that St Nicholas soon wud be there.’

I know we dinnae hae a chimney, Chloë. . . but we do have a lovely plasma-screen telly. We can hang our stockings b’that, right? – Yes, Santa will know where to find ’em – They have so got televisions in the North Pole. . . How else d’ye think Santa got so fat if he wasnae watchin’ telly aw the time, eh? Now enough, you two, bed, now scram.

As (imaginary) Chloë leaves, smaller Kyle turns around to Bobby.

Kyle, darling, what’s wrong, wee man? Off you go with your sister.

She pulls him up onto her knee, wipes his tears.

Big boy like you’s no’ scared of Santa, is he? What is it? (Listens to him.) Oh darlin’, I dae ken if yir dad’s gonna be here in the mornin’. Who knows, eh? But what I do know is that he loves you very, very much and he’s sent me the biggest, bestest present in the world for you to open in the mornin’. But he wrote me a wee note to say that you werenae to get it unless you were in bed by twelve. . . there’s that grin, go on – awa’ you go, oot like a light – ye’ve got ten minutes afore I’m coming to check!

Bobby moves to behind a small table where she is packing stockings. She addresses the audience from here on in.

He’s got them the biggest, bestest present in the world? What cack. That selfish cunt costs me double every fuckin’ year, just makin’ sure they dinnae realise what a pathetic shite he is. I’m too skint. I got caught by work, back in November; fiddling gift vouchers oot on the scheme. I was nicking the odd bundle, and sellin’ ’em on for half the price, everyone’s happy – ’cept Mr Tescos, o’ course, he wasnae too pleased. Smug bitch in management caught me, gave me the push, three fuckin’ weeks before Christmas. Is she havin’ a laugh?

‘Sorry, bairns, Christmas is cancelled this year!’ Tch, as if.

I’d started thinking up some pretty scary ideas for makin’ cash when I seen this advert in the local newsagent: ‘Housewife seeks home help to aid in Christmas preparations.’ Ten quid an hour, eight hours a week – brilliant. What the fuck kinda Christmas takes two people three weeks to prepare for, I dinnae ken, but I needed the cash.

This house, right – (Whistles.) – fuckin’ mental! It was oot Corstorphine way, proper big-square number, fuck-off front door, little path, four windaes. It was like the pictures Kyle brings hame frae school. Actually, I dae ken why he’s no’ drawing concrete blocks wi’ wee orange windaes? Mind you, he’s still drawin’ me an’ his dad holdin’ hands – so he’s clearly an optimist.

The woman I was workin’ for, her name was Mrs Beeton – she was really old and sweet, always makin’ me cups of tea wi’ these wee ginger biscuits. She had this big old family comin’ up from London for Christmas, so she had to make puddings and cakes and pies but she was old, she got really tired, dead quick. I was sort o’ glad I could gie her a hand. I thought it was a bit rough none o’ her lot stayed tae help oot. They’d just come, stuff their faces and fuck off. She’d say, ‘That’s what mothers were for’ – guess she’s right. I don’t think any of ma lot’ll stick about once they’re old enough to go. . . why would they?

She pulls her jumper in tight and heads over to the window.

It’s getting cold. (Looks out.) Aw, would ye look at that? It’s snowing – aw please stay till mornin’, they’ll love that.

There was this one afternoon at Mrs Beeton’s, she called it ‘Stir-up Sunday’. She’d come in frae walking the dogs. I was daen the ironin’ in the kitchen, listening to The Archers – her choice, no’ mine. I’ve got no patience wi’ a bunch a twats that were getting fuckin’ radgey over a duck. When oot o’ her cupboards, no sort o’ ceremony aboot it, Mrs Beeton starts pullin’ bags an’ bags o’ currants, an’ sultanas an’ nuts and cherries an’ all of it swimmin’ in eggs. It was like Jamie Oliver’s Christmas special but wi’ a bit o class.

‘Silent Night’ slowly begins to play.

An’ in her big old kitchen, fu’ of heavy plates and heavy cutlery, and heavy old chairs and tables, wi’ big orange lights an’ wee little candles and her in her red apron, and her hair all pinned up, elegant-like. And she was playing these Christmas songs. Noo, we’re no’ talking Wham or Mariah Carey, or none o’ that shite, this was a choir, and it was dead beautiful. And I watched her chuck aw this stuff in. She kent exactly what she was daen, like she’d been daen it for years, like it was some sort o’ ritual.

Music down.

She asked me to grate an orange fir her. I felt stupit for gettin’ sort o’ excited, like a kid. Int that pathetic? Here I was, daen this old dear’s ironing and peeling a fucking orange an’ I could hardly contain masel. Life’s no’ that bad that some old dear’s skiv work was going to make ma day; but it did. . . it really did. It was the smells. Oor Christmas, at hame, when I was a kid and Ma was aboot, it looked awright but it ne’er smelt a much, part frae Mum’s fags and a wee wiff o’ Iceland turkey. But the smell o’ Mrs Beeton’s kitchen! My God, I asked her what it was.

‘Cloves, mostly,’ she said. ‘Cinnamon, your well-pithed orange of course, Bobby, a bit of brandy, nutmeg. . . sugar and spice and all things nice.’ She laughed, she found hersel’ quite funny quite a lot. She was sweet, though, there was nae agro to her, just sort of calm and quiet an’ – just solid, ken?

As I was standing there aw misty-eyed, looking at her, wishin’ I could take her hame and give her to ma kids for Christmas:

‘Here you go, bairns, happy Christmas, have a better mum!’

She turns to me and says:

‘Have you made your wish, Bobby?’

‘Wish? Wish what?’

‘Wish while you stir, dear. Oh, you have to wish, that’s the whole point of it.’

‘Oh right. . . Silly me, eh, forgot aboot ma wish, didn’t I?’

Slower, softer, begins to cry.

So, I started makin’ this wish about Christmas and my kids and. . . that. . . that. . . maybe it would be nice if we. . . maybe for once. . . could. . . (To the audience, apologising for tears.) – Sorry. I’m sorry. Like a stupit bloody kid maself I started cryin’, and Mrs Beeton looked embarrassed, which is fair enough, what with her cleaner blubbing into her Christmas cake. She says:

‘What on earth is the matter, dear?’

Through sniffles – getting progressively violent, building to a crescendo that is uncomfortably aggressive:

‘I. . . I don’t know,’ I said to her. ‘But it’s just that it’s Christmas and your hoose, it looks like Christmas and it feels safe and my flat disnae look like Christmas and it’s never felt safe, no’ for one single, fucking day and I don’t know how to fix that, but I want to fix it, cos it’s no’ fair that my kids can’t have what you have! Why can’t they have a Christmas like this, eh? Wi’ aw them smells, and carols, and the big old tree aw covered in twinkling shite an’ everything that feels rock fucking solid.

What did you do, Mrs Beeton, that I never did, eh? Did you work harder? Cos I work fuckin’ hard and I cannae make it like this. Or did you just have some good luck? Or, or maybe you just got given it aw an’ you didnae dae a fuckin’ thing!’

She’d backed her way into the armchair in the corner when I’d been shoutin’. She looked scairt, just a wee old lady, a wee old lady wi’ me aw up in her face. There was silence, felt like hours o’ it. And then slowly, I just sort of gave up.

Mrs Beeton pulled herself up oot the chair, and looked doon at me, this pathetic greetin’ mess. I thought she was gonnae shout, or throw me oot but she just wiped her hands doon her apron, and said:

‘Come along, Bobby; pull yourself together, these cakes won’t make themselves.’

She drove me to the bus stop that night, she got out the car, an’ handed me my things and said she’d see me the next day. No’ even a whisper o’ what had happened. As I was walking away, she caught my hand:

‘If you must cry, Bobby, do it quietly, where they can’t see you. Children are like animals – they can smell the fear on you. Plenty of people will show them real life. You, Bobby, you must give them magic. Birthdays, Christmas. . . it just has to be better than real, that’s all.’

She hugged me. It felt like Mum, wrappin’ me up in a towel, oot o’ the bath when I was wee, aw warm and red and bubbly.