Precious Little Talent & Hot Mess E-Book

Ella Hickson

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Two plays by award-winning playwright Ella Hickson. Precious Little Talent is about a father desperate not to forget his daughter and two young people determined not to be forgotten by the world. It was first performed at the Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and later, in a revised, full-length production, at the Trafalgar Studios, London, in April 2011. Hot Mess is a dark and lyrical tale about friendship, loss and loneliness. Twins Polo and Twitch were born with only one heart between them: where Polo is not looking to be loved, Twitch can do nothing but. Hot Mess was first performed at the Hawke & Hunter Below Stairs Nightclub, Edinburgh, in August 2010, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Leseprobe

Ella Hickson

PRECIOUS LITTLE TALENT & HOT MESS

Two plays

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

PRECIOUS LITTLE TALENT

Dedication and Epigraph

Acknowledgements

Original Production

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Epilogue

HOT MESS

Dedication and Epigraph

Author’s Note

Production Note

Acknowledgements

Original Production

Characters

Hot Mess

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

PRECIOUS LITTLE TALENT

For Simon

With thanks for his optimism

‘The difficulty is that the English are finding it impossible to give any account of themselves except for identities that they are dragging up from the past. There has never been a time when some coherent account of English National Identity was more needed.’

Krishan Kumar

‘American Democracy: a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in each other and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart and if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it then we might not solve every problem but we can get something meaningful done.’

Barack Obama

‘E pluribus unum’ – ‘Out of the many, one.’

Motto on an American one cent coin

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank, first and foremost the Jameses; James Dacre for his relentless energy and commitment to high standards and James Quaife for his super-human ability to make things happen at short notice. I thank them both for working round the clock, for keeping the faith and for having the tenacity and tolerance to have maintained a sense of humour when things have got tough.

I would like to thank Simon Ginty, Emma Hiddleston, John McColl, Cat Hobart, Xander Macmillan, Polly Bennett and Jessica Winch. Much of the original script was influenced by conversations with these people. I consider myself hugely lucky to have worked with such talented collaborators.

I would like to thank Katherine Mendelsohn, David Greig, Carol Tambor and Kent Lawson.

Finally, my thanks go to Jess Cooper and my family for their unfaltering support.

Ella Hickson

Precious Little Talent was first performed at the Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, on 6 August 2009, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with the following cast:

SAM

Simon Ginty

JOEY

Emma Hiddleston

GEORGE

John McColl

Director

Ella Hickson

Technical Manager

Xander Macmillan

Stage Manager

Cat Hobart

Movement Director

Polly Bennett

Producer

Jess Winch for Tantrums Ltd

A revised full-length production transferred to the Trafalgar Studios, London, on 5 April 2011, with the following cast:

SAM

Anthony Welsh

JOEY

Olivia Hallinan

GEORGE

Ian Gelder

Director

James Dacre

Designer

Lucy Osborne

Lighting Designer

Mark Jonathan

Sound Designer

Emma Laxton

Producer

James Quaife for Tantrums Ltd

Characters

SAM, nineteen, American

JOEY, twenty-three, English

GEORGE, sixty-one, English, Joey’s father

The play takes place in

New York, December, 2008

New York, February, 2009

London, April, 2011

ACT ONE

One

Late night.

Christmas Eve, 2008.

A rooftop – New York City.

SAM (to audience). It’s Christmas Eve in the winter of two thousand eight and the night is cruel and beautiful and it feels like it’s the first time it’s ever been that way. I’m sitting on a rooftop, downtown New York City; in front of me midtown, pouring out into the night like a million luminous toothpicks, but right around me is black, black and death. I’m nineteen and I’ve got an erection, right tight into the front of my pants ’cos I can feel a woman’s breath on the left side of my neck. This nervous little breath, panting, just beneath my ear; the moisture in it licking at me in the dark night and I so desperately want to turn around and suck that in, so desperately – but I keep my hands on my thighs, just like this and I say ‘hey’.

JOEY. Hey.

SAM. What’s your name?

JOEY. Joey.

SAM. No shit, mine too!

JOEY. Really?

SAM. No, it’s Sam. I’m sorry – I don’t know why I just said that.

(To audience.) She laughs this funny little laugh and it sounds funny so I say –

You sound funny.

JOEY. I’m English.

SAM (to audience). She says, all like that, all ‘I’m English’, like that.

(To JOEY.) So you’re British, eh?

JOEY. No, I’m English. No one’s really British. People who say they’re British are just embarrassed about being English.

SAM. What about the Scots and the Irish?

JOEY. They’re Scottish and Irish.

SAM. And isn’t there Wales?

JOEY. Everyone sort of forgets about Wales.

SAM. Tough to be Welsh, eh?

JOEY. I guess.

Pause.

SAM. Politics makes for bad sex.

JOEY. What?

SAM. Um – sorry, it was something my dad always used to say – I – I don’t know why I – um… So… you’re up here for, um – a little air?

JOEY. Yep.

SAM (to audience). So I’m thinking ‘a little air’, like taking a turn on the veranda, like a midnight, moonlit stroll, like Audrey Hepburn at dawn before breakfast time at Tiffany’s; like this is the moment you might tell your kids that you met and she says –

JOEY. Hepburn.

SAM. Hepburn?

JOEY. Hepburn.

SAM. How did you do that?

JOEY. I just – how old are you, Sam?

SAM. How old are you?

JOEY. Twenty-three.

SAM. No freaking way – me too!

JOEY. Really?

SAM. No, absolutely not, I’m nineteen. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I – you can check my driver’s license if you want.

(To audience.) And she only fucking does! She slides these little British, English, fingers right into my back pocket, so as I can feel the bump of her ring dig in against my butt cheek – and then BAM; I stare her right in the face, eyeball to eyeball, and that little licky breath is all over my face and my lips, all warm and moist but I don’t flinch an inch… she has this pale skin and pink cheeks like she’s been out in the snow…

(To JOEY.) Your hand is in my pocket.

JOEY. It’s warm.

SAM. Okay, keep it there. That’s fine by me.

(To audience.) And then I’m sure you won’t believe this, I’m sure you will have heard this said a thousand times before but piano music starts to play. A really well-known tune, I know, but it was, I swear to you –

Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ starts to play.

That’s it! That’s exactly the one! I swear, I swear, ladies and gentlemen, it came swinging up over the fire escapes like a beautiful baboon and fills right up all the air around us like it’s smoke and ashes and she looks at me, right dead smack in the eyes. She has beautiful eyes, like two tiny tiny fires and she pokes out her little tongue all pinky in the night sky and she… licks me. Right across my top lip; and I feel like it might just be the end of the world if she leaves.

And suddenly we’re running fast as our feet will take us, stamping down fire escapes, looking in on late-night offices where tired and desperate men are sitting and watching dollars dropping like flies but we’re running, fast and quick and furious. We’re headed down Bleeker where the lights are kind and the windows are crowded up with smart stuff and slutty stuff and it’s cold, you see, so cold that my fingers get numb so as they might be tempted to let go of the very best thing that they have ever had the pleasure of holding on to –

(To JOEY.) You want to take the subway?

JOEY. Sure.

SAM (to audience). We take the uptown 6 train that goes all the way up and down Manhattan, scratching its back along the side of Central Park – we take it all the way up through Astor and Union and 59th and 96th and all the way on up to Harlem and when we get to the top we just come right back again and on our way back down we just can’t stop looking at each other and we laugh and we put our hands over our faces like kids in a bathtub –

JOEY. I want to get off.

SAM. Okay.

(To audience.) I take her hand and I lead her off that train and I’ve judged my timing right because we emerge right into the middle of Grand Central Station.

Have you ever been there? Oh, I’m sure you have in movies once or twice or probably a thousand times but can I ask you to try and imagine it as if you were seeing it for exactly the first time? As if you hadn’t seen a single movie, like you’ve never enjoyed Cary Grant running through or De Niro on his Midnight Run – imagine please that you had never even bought a picture postcard. Imagine all those chandeliers as if you had never seen a single thing twinkle in your life ever before.

And do you know what I did – right then, right in the middle of Grand Central Station? I pulled her right around and I kissed her, real hard. And when I stopped, when I stopped and stood back and I looked at her, she said the strangest thing, she said… ‘I don’t believe in you.’

Two

Earlier that evening.

An apartment beneath the rooftop.

TriBeCa – New York City.

SAM and GEORGE are playing a game of chess.

GEORGE. Your move.

SAM. I got nothing. I can’t see what you did there.

GEORGE. I blinded you with skill.

SAM. Pretty much.

SAM begins to pack up the chessboard.

GEORGE. What are you doing?

SAM. I’m packing up.

GEORGE. Why?

SAM. It’s bedtime.

GEORGE. Don’t be a quitter.

SAM. It’s bedtime.

GEORGE. I’ll decide when it’s –

SAM. I got to do it before I go, George.

SAM goes to put a tabard on.

GEORGE. Refill my Scotch before you go putting that thing back on.

SAM refills the glass.

SAM. Anything else?

GEORGE. You could fetch me the paper but you are, no doubt, permitted to do that in your official capacity.

SAM. Tea or Ovaltine?

GEORGE. Tea.

SAM. You know, they think tea’s got more caffeine in it than coffee.

GEORGE. ‘They’ have begun to talk nothing but bollocks. I don’t want that piss-weak stuff either.

SAM. I just don’t want you not to –

GEORGE (interrupting). Milk first! Let the milk cool the tea, don’t let the tea heat the milk.

SAM. I’ve already put milk in there.

GEORGE. Hm.

SAM. Your blister pack’s empty for today, you already taken your meds?

GEORGE. They’re called pills and yes I have.

SAM. Are you sure?

GEORGE. Yes still means yes.

SAM. Okay. I ironed some clean pyjamas if you –

GEORGE. These are fine.

SAM. You’ve been wearing them for –

GEORGE (interrupting). They’re fine.

SAM. You want a hand shaving?

GEORGE. No.

SAM. It’s been a while since –

GEORGE (interrupting). I do apologise, am I offending your sensibilities, Sam?

SAM. I just thought it might be itchy.

GEORGE. Well, it’s not, and if it is, I’ll itch it.

SAM. Okay, I’m just going to turn your blanket on and then I’ll –

GEORGE. I can flick a switch!

Beat.

SAM. George, did Marina come in this morning?

GEORGE. Yes… you know she did, I know she did, we all know she did. She wrote her name nice and large on the timetable in big pink felt-tip because, of course, I can’t understand standard English letter formations unless they are the size of small countries and the colour of reconstituted flamingos.

SAM. Just checking, George.

GEORGE. And once it’s written, MA-RI-NA – wipes the rest of the timetable clean as if she imagines that in that act of reading it I spray it with the various products of my various incontinences. Does she? Hm?

SAM. George?

GEORGE. Does she think that the neon letters are so cryptically befuddling to my addled brain that in a fit of confusion I violently secrete on the thing? Bafflement, confusion and consternation – I’ve just spat, snotted and dribbled all over this shiny timetable, I do hope – M… M–

SAM. Marina.

GEORGE. I do hope Marina is back in tomorrow to wipe it clean.

SAM. George?

GEORGE. Yes?

Beat.

SAM. She’s just trying to keep things clean. She’s just got habits.

GEORGE. Well she can un-habit, uninhabit my bloody kitchen and stop wiping the sodding timetable.

SAM. I’ll tell her to stop wiping the timetable.

GEORGE. I’d be most obliged. (Beat.) Are you in tomorrow?

SAM. It’s on the timeta… yeah, I’m in.

GEORGE. Why don’t you have somewhere better to be?

SAM. It’s double pay.

Pause.

GEORGE. What about your – uh –

SAM. Family?

GEORGE. Yes.

SAM. There are enough of them to look after each other.

GEORGE. Right, well, in which case you should probably buy a bird.

SAM. Yeah?