The Human Body (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

Lucy Kirkwood

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 134

Beschreibung

1948, Shropshire: the winter is freezing, austerity is biting and Iris Elcock, GP, socialist and Labour Party councillor, is working tirelessly to implement Nye Bevan's National Health Service Act and its revolutionary promise of free healthcare for all. At home she is a mother, and wife to a fellow GP, an ex-Navy man scarred by the war. But a chance meeting with George Blythe, a local boy who has made it to Hollywood, turns her quiet, certain world upside down. A story of political and private passions, Lucy Kirkwood's play The Human Body was first performed at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2024, directed by Michael Longhurst and Ann Yee, and starring Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport. 'Kirkwood is the most rewarding dramatist of her generation' - Independent 'Kirkwood's script crackles with unspoken desires, disappointments, yearning and some fantastic humour… deftly weaves bigger politics with the politics of a marriage and affair' - Guardian 'Delicate and poignant… has its author's characteristic intelligence and wit, the dialogue crammed with texture and vivacity' - The Stage

Leseprobe

Lucy Kirkwood

THE HUMAN BODY

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production Details

Dedication

Acknowledgements

The Human Body

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

The Human Body was first performed at the Donmar Warehouse, London, on 16 February 2024. The cast was as follows:

IRIS ELCOCK

Keeley Hawes

GEORGE BLYTHE

Jack Davenport

BOB DANVERS-WALKER / GRAHAM HAWES / JULIAN ELCOCK / MR SIEVES / DUNCAN / DUSTMAN / WAITER / REYNOLDS / MR FLACK / AMERICAN REPORTER / USHER

Tom Goodman-Hill

HELEN MACKESON MP / MRS HOWELLS / MRS ARBUTHNOT / SHIRLEY / MR CLEGG / WAITRESS

Siobhán Redmond

INTERVIEWER / GLADYS / JEAN / MRS SIEVES / MARION CUTLER / SYLVIA SAMUELS / JUDY / MRS THWAITE / MR JESSUP / ERICA / AVERILL HUGHES

Pearl Mackie

LAURA ELCOCK / BARBARA SIEVES

Flora Jacoby Richardson and Audrey Kattan

Directors

Michael Longhurst and Ann Yee

Designer

Fly Davis

Lighting Designer

Joshua Pharo

Sound Designers and Composers

Ben and Max Ringham

Video Designers

Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom

Associate Designer

Tom Paris

Associate Video Designer

Owen Visser

Fight Director

Bret Yount

Intimacy Director

Sara Green

Voice Coach

Barbara Houseman

Dialect Coach

Penny Dyer

Dialect Coach

Hazel Holder

Casting Director

Anna Cooper CDG

Production Manager

Chris Hay

Costume Supervisor

Lisa Aitken

Props Supervisor

Martha Mamo for Propworks

Props Assistant

Lauren Thompson for Propworks

Wigs, Hair and Make-up Supervisor

Suzanne Scotcher

Wigs, Hair and Make-up Manager

Rhona Phipps-Tyndall

Wigs, Hair and Make-up Assistant

Dani Michalski

Dresser

Katie Flynn

Resident Assistant Director

Grace Duggan

Rehearsal Company Stage Manager

Lizzie Donaghy

Company Manager

Kate McDowell

Stage Manager

Daniel Haynes

Deputy Stage Manager

Katie Stephen

Assistant Stage Manager

Edie Fitt-Martin

Technical Assistant Stage Manager

Antonia Howlett

Camera Operator

Jack Somerset

Automation Operator

Matt Neubauer

Sound No. 1

El Theodorou

Assistant Set and Costume Designer

Rimu Kwok

Assistant Lighting Designer

Cheng Keng

Assistant Sound Designer

José Guillermo Puello

Stage Management Intern

Joshua Sparks

Production Photographer

Marc Brenner

For Fran B, Ruth G, Ciara M and James T

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable contributions to the development of the play: Ed Hime, Michael Longhurst, Ann Yee, Craig Gilbert, Keeley Hawes, Jack Davenport, Tom Goodman-Hill, Siobhán Redmond, Pearl Mackie, Tessa Ross and Mel Kenyon.

This play was inspired by and heavily draws on David Kynaston’s brilliant social history, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951.

Other sources which have been invaluable include: The Citadel by A. J. Cronin, Welcome Home by Ben Wicks, Edith Summerskill: The Life and Times of a Pioneering Feminist Labour MP by Mary Honeyball, Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist by Laura Beers, Jennie Lee: A Life by Patricia Hollis, Alice in Westminster: The Political Life of Alice Bacon by Rachel Reeves, the vast treasure trove of Pathé films available on YouTube, the account by Roald Dahl of Patricia Neal’s stroke and rehabilitation in the Australian Women’s Weekly (22 September 1965), Dr Geoffrey Rivett’s extraordinarily detailed online document, 1948–1957: Establishing the National Health Service, and Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation by Colin Grant.

L.K.

Characters

in order of appearance

BOB DANVERS-WALKER

DIRECTOR

IRIS ELCOCK

LAURA

HELEN MACKESON MP

INTERVIEWER

GLADYS

GRAHAM HAWES MP

OFFICE GIRL

GEORGE BLYTHE

JULIAN ELCOCK

WAITRESS

JUDY STOPES

MRS HOWELLS

MRS ARBUTHNOT

SYLVIA SAMUELS

AMERICAN REPORTER

MR SIEVES

BARBARA

ERICA

SHIRLEY RYAN

DUNCAN RYAN

DUSTMAN

WAITER

USHER

REYNOLDS

JEAN

MRS THWAITE

MR FLACK

MR JESSUP

MR CLEGG

GIRL

WINSTON CHURCHILL

MRS SIEVES

MR EAVIS

MARION CUTLER

HOTEL MANAGER

AVERILL HUGHES

Suggested Doubling

1. IRIS ELCOCK

2. GEORGE BLYTHE

3. LAURA / BARBARA / GIRL

4. BOB DANVERS-WALKER / GRAHAM HAWES MP / JULIAN / AMERICAN REPORTER / MR SIEVES / DUNCAN RYAN / DUSTMAN / WAITER / REYNOLDS / MR EAVIS / MR FLACK

5. HELEN MACKESON MP / WAITRESS / MRS HOWELLS / MRS ARBUTHNOT / SHIRLEY RYAN / WINSTON CHURCHILL / HOTEL MANAGER / MR CLEGG

6. DIRECTOR / INTERVIEWER / OFFICE GIRL / GLADYS / ERICA / JEAN / MRS SIEVES / MARION CUTLER / SYLVIA SAMUELS / JUDY STOPES / MRS THWAITE / MR JESSUP / AVERILL HUGHES

Setting

Act One takes place in January 1948, in Shropshire and London.

Act Two takes place between May and July 1948, in Shropshire, Blackpool and Wales.

Notes on the Text

Although the scenes are set across multiple locations, a fluid, economical style of staging should be found. Please don’t be weighed down by slavish detailed realism.

This play must be produced in a sustainable manner.

An asterisk (*) before a line indicates simultaneous speech.

A forward slash (/) indicates an overlap in speech. A comma on its own line (,) indicates a beat. A beat is shorter than a pause. It can also denote a shift in thought or energy.

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

Prologue

BOB DANVERS-WALKER, a British Pathé film announcer, enters. Muffler round his neck. Scripts in his hand. There is a mic.

BOB. Morning, gang.

We hear the DIRECTOR’s voice through a speaker.

DIRECTOR (voice-over  ). With you in just a tick, Bob.

BOB. All right. You want to kick off with the war in Palestine or the Lady Doctor?

Pause.

DIRECTOR (voice-over). The Lady Doctor.

BOB. Jolly good. (Very sotto.) Doctor, Mrs, Councillor, Doctor, Mrs, Councillor –

He dissolves into coughing.

I’m so sorry, I’ve got the most stinking cold. I’ll be all right in a – (Another cough.) excuse me. I’ll be all right in a minute.

He takes out a hip flask, a medicinal swig. That’s better.

DIRECTOR (voice-over). All right, shall we go for one?

BOB. Certainly.

He speaks into the mic. A live-action portrayal of a Pathé newsreel begins.

Doctor, Mrs, Councillor. A Pathé close-up of Iris Elcock.

IRIS ELCOCK (late forties) enters, posing with her twelve-year-old daughter LAURA.

One of the busiest women in England, Mrs Iris Elcock, takes time off for a stroll with her daughter, Laura. But she can’t afford to relax for long! Soon she’s off to work, as Doctor Elcock, GP.

LAURA skips off. IRIS picks up her doctor’s bag.

One of the sick and suffering will soon be feeling better for her quiet sympathy and skill in the art of healing.

IRIS swaps her doctor’s bag for a shopping basket.

And when Doctor Elcock has finished her morning rounds, she takes on her second job of the day, as a housewife, though like all mothers, her coupon situation won’t always let her buy just what she wants.

IRIS swaps her basket for a briefcase.

Time now to set off on her third job, to Westminster, for Doctor Elcock is also Labour Councillor for South Shropshire, and Parliamentary Secretary to Miss Helen Mackeson MP, one of Mr Bevan’s advisers in the Ministry of Health.

HELEN MACKESON MP enters (sixties, red hair, Leeds accent) in a fug of cigarette smoke, and shakes hands with IRIS for the camera.

Together they are part of the team hoping to implement the National Health Service Act later this year, to make healthcare available to all, free of charge. Here in the Lady Members’ room, Doctor Elcock and Miss Mackeson, known as ‘the Fiery Particle’, discuss a speech on malnutrition.

He starts coughing again.

Excuse me.

He exits, as HELEN steps up to the dispatch box in the House of Commons Chamber.

HELEN.…The Right Honourable Gentleman has said that there is no need for a welfare state, as there are more deaths in this country from overfeeding than underfeeding. I think he must be speaking of his own acquaintances and not from a knowledge of the country at large. Are we to –

Parliamentary laughter from the MPs.

Thank you, are we to understand that –

Lights up on IRIS, listening to a feed of HELEN’s voice coming through a speaker, she mouths the speech along with her.

IRIS and HELEN. – it is the considered view of His Majesty’s Government that the working classes of this country cannot allow themselves to hope for a better standard of health than the one they presently tolerate?

A female INTERVIEWER (twenties) enters. IRIS sits with her, a little stiff.

BOB. As you can see, Doctor Elcock isn’t afraid to face tough questions. And here’s a young housewife who isn’t afraid to ask them.

INTERVIEWER. Doctor Elcock, are you dismayed by the threat to the National Health Service presented by the opposition of so many members of your own profession?

IRIS. Well of course we can’t do it without them! It’s really a revolution, what we’re attempting, and nobody enjoys change – I know I don’t! But the people cannot wait any longer.

INTERVIEWER. And tell me, do you think many women could live a double existence as you do? Earn their living outside of the home and still bring up their families?

IRIS. Oh certainly. But only if the community helps them. We need day nurseries, like the ones which worked so well during the war. And of course the other thing is that you must have a cooperative husband!

They both laugh.

It doesn’t work at all if the husband objects! But I’ve got one of those so I’m very lucky.

INTERVIEWER. He’s a doctor too, is that correct?

IRIS. Yes, Julian’s a GP.

INTERVIEWER. But not an MP!

She laughs.

IRIS. Well, neither am I, yet!

INTERVIEWER. Yet!

IRIS. Indeed.

A lull. Eventually:

INTERVIEWER. Do you have any household hints or tips for the viewers at home?

Pause. IRIS fixes her with a benign smile.

IRIS. To keep a lettuce fresh, place it in cold water with a small, clean lump of coal.

INTERVIEWER. Thank you.

Pause. IRIS looks at camera. A shift in her, less sugar, more grit.

IRIS. Was that all right?

DIRECTOR (offstage). Yes, thank you, Doctor Elcock, we’re just checking the gate.

IRIS looks at her watch.

ACT ONE

One

January 1948. The House of Commons ladies’ lavatory. As IRIS enters, HELEN is wearing a loud zebra-pattern coat and going through papers with GLADYS, her secretary.

IRIS (the coat). Where on earth did you find that?

HELEN. Dickins and Jones. It’s marvellous, isn’t it? How did it go?

IRIS. I sounded a bloody fool, should never have let you talk me into it.

HELEN. Do you want to become an MP or not?

IRIS. Yes of course. / But –

HELEN. Well you must do these things if you want to reach the women’s vote –

IRIS. Helen, I’ve written five articles in the past month alone to appeal to the women’s vote, / don’t –

Interrupting, HELEN turns to GLADYS.

HELEN. Gladys, do you read the Workers’ Weekly? Tribune? The New Statesman?

GLADYS. No, ma’am, I read Good Housekeeping, sign here please.

HELEN looks at IRIS – ‘See? – and signs the papers GLADYS proffers.

IRIS. Are you on the ten o’clock? I thought we might go over the research on dentistry –

HELEN. No, I’m in the London flat tonight. Here, powder your nose before you go.

She hands IRIS a compact. Gives GLADYS a look. GLADYS understands, retreats.

IRIS. I – all right…

IRIS checks her face, powders her nose.

HELEN. You shouldn’t be so self-conscious. You’re very articulate, you know, if only you could stop being so clenched.

IRIS. Clenched?

HELEN. Yes. It makes it seem as if you’re trying to give us medicine we don’t want. When actually, Socialism is inevitable.

IRIS laughs, returns the compact to HELEN, who checks her own face.

The country voted for it didn’t they? It was all there in the manifesto, ‘Labour is a Socialist party, and proud of it.’

IRIS. That was three years ago. The country isn’t drunk on victory any more, it’s poor and bored and tired and one day the window for change – real change I mean – will close. It’s already closing. Very soon it will be shut, and we shan’t be able to get it open again.

HELEN. What an intoxicating ray of sunshine you are. While we’re on our own. Don’t you think you’d better speak to Julian?

IRIS. What do you mean?

HELEN. You know what I mean.

IRIS laughs at her solemn face.

IRIS. Helen, I honestly do not have the foggiest idea.

And now HELEN is on the back foot.

HELEN. Iris, he’s been speaking out against the Health Service.

Pause. IRIS stares at HELEN, trying to conceal her horror.

My God. You really didn’t know, did you? Iris –

IRIS. I think. No, I. There must be a mistake, Julian and I are very much… he feels / as strongly as I do that –

HELEN. He’s put himself forward to represent the ‘No’s at the BMA meeting.

A long pause, IRIS reels. HELEN takes out a letter. Hands it to IRIS.

This came across my desk. He’s sent it to at least a hundred consultants and GPs in the west of England.

IRIS (reading, sotto). ‘No promises the minister may make in the press are worth a tinker’s cuss.’

HELEN. Yes, it’s rather fruity. Obviously something like this… looks rather bad for us. For you. If the press were to –

IRIS. No, of course. I’ll speak to him.

IRIS battles her rage and nausea. HELEN starts combing her hair.

HELEN. War’s made a lot of people change their minds on things. Don’t take it too badly. It isn’t personal.

IRIS. No, of course.

HELEN tuts, tosses her comb down, the teeth have snapped.

HELEN. Another one broken. I do think we could do better on combs, that’s my third this month. Come on.

She propels a shell-shocked IRIS out into the foyer.

I’ll telephone you in the morning, will you be at home?

IRIS. No, I have my clinic.

HELEN. All right, I’ll try you there.

GRAHAM HAWES MP (sixties) is waiting with a newspaper, HELEN waves to him. GLADYS comes forward with HELEN’s briefcase. She takes it, kisses IRIS and crosses to meet GRAHAM. They smile at each other, as they exit together.

GLADYS leans into IRIS, whispers:

GLADYS. He buys her clothes for her, you know.

IRIS gives her a look, won’t have Helen gossiped about.

IRIS. Well we know who to blame then, don’t we?

Two

The refreshment room at Paddington Station. IRIS picks up the public telephone, waits for the operator, as, in the background, an OFFICE GIRL approaches a man at a table. He is GEORGE BLYTHE (fifty-three). The OFFICE GIRL says a few shy words to him. He looks up, smiles, signs the paper she holds out. She rushes off, giddy.

IRIS. Bridgnorth six-two-seven-nine.

GEORGE goes back to his newspaper. IRIS does not notice, as her call is connected.

Hello, Julian? It’s me.

Split stage to JULIAN ELCOCK, at home in the Elcocks’ house. JULIAN (fifty-two) has a badly mangled foot and walks with a stick. There is also a metal plate in his head.

JULIAN. Hi, darling. Go all right? By the way, Shirley rang about the Whitsun holiday. Filey’s out but Blackpool might work.

IRIS. Lovely – darling, Helen told me something extraordinary, she said you’d gone over to the ‘No’s.

Pause.

She showed me a letter you’ve been sending out, do you…?

Pause.

JULIAN. Yes, I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that.

IRIS. Meaning to – when?

JULIAN. This line’s awful, where are you?

Irritated, IRIS yanks at the phone cord. Behind her, GEORGE is leaving the refreshment room. He says something to the OFFICE GIRL on the way out and she screams with laughter.

IRIS. Only this is the first I’ve heard of it, and the plebiscite is weeks away, so when exactly where you planning on telling me?