The Time Machine: A Comedy E-Book

Steven Canny

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 93

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

When the worlds of science-fiction and science-fact collide… extraordinary things can happen. Dave is the great-great grandson of H.G. Wells, author of the 1895 novella The Time Machine, a book that foretold (with suspicious accuracy) the future of the human species. What if the ideas in that book weren't entirely fiction? Right now, Dave and his friends Amy and Michael must set out on a journey through time… the journey of a lifetime! The Time Machine: A Comedy is (very loosely) adapted from H.G. Wells by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, whose previous adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles was a hit in the West End and subsequently for numerous companies worldwide. It was first produced in 2023 on a tour of the UK, before a run at Park Theatre, London, produced by Original Theatre and directed by Orla O'Loughlin. Fast-paced and wise-cracking, this riotous retelling zips from the nineteenth century to the end of the world, and (with any luck) back again. It will suit any theatre company looking for a time-bending adaptation of a well-loved story – and a surefire audience-pleaser.

Leseprobe

Steven Canny & John Nicholson

THE TIME MACHINE

A Comedy

(Very loosely) adapted from the novelby H. G. Wells

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Characters

Note on Text

The Time Machine

About Original Theatre

About Park Theatre

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

The Time Machine was first performed at New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, on 23 February 2023, before touring the UK and transferring to Park Theatre, London, on 30 November 2023. The cast was as follows:

ACTORS

Michael Dyla Dave Hearn Amy Revelle

Director

Orla O’Loughlin

Designer

Fred Meller

Lighting Designer

Colin Grenfell

Sound Designer

Greg Clarke

Props Supervisor

Katie Balmforth

Costume Supervisor

Acknowledgements

Our experience is that a new play is the positive result of an act of faith engaged in by many, many, people. We’re indebted to our friend Mark Shanahan for the early research and development. We’re also very grateful to Original Theatre for their support and encouragement. Lots of people made positive contributions in the development process but the people we owe most to are the original cast and director. Amy, Michael, Dave and Orla have committed time, love, energy, imagination and their collective pleasure in – and understanding of – making people laugh. They’ve interrogated when things were half-baked, always asked meaningful questions and have offered generous and thoughtful solutions to problems that have caused us bellyaches and headaches. Making people laugh is such a pleasure and a privilege and we’re incredibly lucky to have had the chance to do this with people we love and cherish. And if the play doesn’t make you laugh… well, it’s obviously all those other people to blame! Thanks for reading.

S.C. and J.N.

For our dads

Characters

ACTOR 1, Michael ACTOR 2, Amy ACTOR 3, Dave

The actors also play:

LADY GRETA ZSA ZSA ZSA DR EVAN BINKLEY FRANK FROM EASTENDERS PAT BUTCHER FROM EASTENDERS MISS PIGGY KERMIT MEGHAN MARKLE PRINCE HARRY QUEEN VICTORIA FILBY MRS RICHARDS MARY SELBY WELLS WEENA MORLOCK

Note on Text

We will learn that Amy, Michael and Dave have created many shows together. This is their new offering and, production-wise, they’ve scaled up. However, since they’ve thrown all the budget at the set, responsibility for operating technical aspects of the show remains in their hands. Future casts should use their own names.

If something has gone wrong within a scene, a dialogue line might be attributed to the actor’s name rather than the character they’re playing. So in effect, they should play this line as themselves, not the character. Ideally, a plant is required to play a front-of-house person and a pizza-delivery person (although it might be possible to use theatre staff). The people brought up on stage in Act Two however should be genuine (unknowing) audience members.

Where there is a reference/jokes around specific locations, or cultural references that won’t ‘read’ outside of the UK, please feel free to make adjustments accordingly and run them by the authors.

ACT ONE

Pre-set: USR: a chaise longue covered with a sheet (black tat), behind it, a small table with a tray of tea, a stand for a plant. USL: a drinks trolley covered with a sheet (black tat), a set of steps.

Scene One – Introductions

Music, swirling lights and smoke (‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin or ‘Step on Up’ by Rockin’ For Decades). After a few seconds the announcement begins.

DAVE (over music). Esteemed audience members, welcome to this wonderful theatre. Prepare to be amazed and please welcome to the stage, Dave –

The announcement and music cuts. Pause. MICHAEL appears (in rehearsal-room clothes).

MICHAEL. Please just bear with us.

Music/announcement immediately restarts.

DAVE (over music). Esteemed audience members, welcome to this wonderful theatre. Prepare to be amazed and please welcome to the stage, Dave –

Announcement and music cuts again. MICHAEL enters again and straight off the back of this…

MICHAEL. Right, well that’s all gone tits up. Hello.

He has a laptop (that runs the show). AMY appears (in rehearsal-room clothes), upbeat. MICHAEL is pressing keys.

AMY (bold, keeping energy up). But no worries, hello, because sometimes a challenge can become an opportunity.

MICHAEL (distracted). Yes.

AMY. For a song.

MICHAEL. No!

AMY (big announcement). So while we resolve this technical issue… London, this is ‘Believe’ by the global icon, Cher!

DAVE (off). No it isn’t!

DAVE bursts in, also in rehearsal-room clothes.

Ha, ha! Thank you, Amy, but an a cappella Cher song will thankfully not be necessary. (To audience.) Rest assured, we’re now back on track. Are we?

MICHAEL (tapping keys). I’m not exactly sure what’s –

DAVE. There we go. Esteemed audience members, tonight you will bear witness to a startling and alarming revelation about H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine that will change the way you view the world. For ever. Now, I appreciate that most of you will have come here tonight expecting to be entertained. You need to let that thought go. My name is –

‘Immigrant Song’ kicks back in.

MICHAEL. We’re sorted. Sorry, Dave.

DAVE. No, leave it on, it works. My name is Dave Wells: actor, writer, director and intellectual adventurer. Dave… Wells!? A coincidence? No! Because I am in fact… actually turn it off, it’s really distracting.

MICHAEL cuts the music.

Because I am in fact the great-great-grandson of Herbert George Wells himself.

MICHAEL. Aka H. G. Wells.

DAVE. Yes indeed.

AMY. You can close your mouth, sir.

MICHAEL. The resemblance is actually uncanny.

DAVE. This is Amy Tymes – actress.

AMY. Actor. And singer.

DAVE. And this is Michael O’Reilly – just actor.

MICHAEL. And company tour booker.

DAVE. They don’t need to know that. People of Finsbury Park –

MICHAEL. And other London boroughs.

DAVE. Until a matter of weeks ago…

A few pieces of confetti flutter down from the flies. They all clock this.

Until a matter of weeks ago, the world had assumed that H. G. Wells’s seminal time-travelling novel was a work of fiction. But no. We can reveal that it is in fact –

MICHAEL. Fact.

DAVE. Fact.

AMY. The events described within the book…

MICHAEL. Are real.

DAVE. Are real!

A theatre lamp blows and sounds real. A believable but augmented ting. They all look up. It’s obviously a bit darker.

(To the audience.) Sorry, a light just blew. Is that safe?

MICHAEL. It’s just a patching issue with the LED. It’s fine.

DAVE. Is it?

MICHAEL. It’s been PAT tested.

DAVE. Who’s Pat?

AMY. Just carry on.

DAVE. Now. I’m not expecting you to comprehend what I’ve just told you straight away.

MICHAEL. We certainly didn’t.

AMY. Nope. Seemed like total bullsh–

DAVE. So… in order to convince you of the truth, we need to begin at the beginning.

MICHAEL starts pushing the covered chaise longue from SL to SR in front of the covered drinks trolley.

AMY. A community centre near Ealing where we were rehearsing The Importance of Being Earnest – the show we’d actually, properly, rehearsed and were supposed to be performing here this week.

DAVE. But all that changed when I walked into rehearsals carrying a cardboard box.

MICHAEL. This was the moment our lives changed for ever.

DAVE brings on a free-standing door from the USR wing and places it USR. A sign that reads ‘rehearsal room’ hangs on it. AMY grabs a script, MICHAEL grabs props.

DAVE. And so that is the moment we must recreate for you first. Please be aware that everything you will see from now on is true. As it happened.

MICHAEL. This is verbatim theatre!

AMY. Using the actual words we used.

DAVE. More or less.

AMY. The actual words. With no extemporising by one of us in particular to make himself look good.

DAVE. Whatever. And action! (He hides behind the door.)

Scene Two – Rehearsal One

MICHAEL and AMY are sitting on the chaise longue, rehearsing.

MICHAEL (reading). ‘I am known for the gentleness of my disposition and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature. But I warn you…’

He drops out of character on AMY’s look.

What?

AMY. Just talk normally. It’s not panto.

MICHAEL. ‘From the moment I saw you I distrusted you. I felt that you were false and deceitful.’

AMY. What? What’s brought this on? Is this still about the awkward sex we had on tour?

MICHAEL. What?! No, that’s all Oscar Wilde. And what do you mean, awkward?

AMY. Do you really want to discuss this now?

MICHAEL. Yes.

AMY. Okay, well firstly I hadn’t planned on wearing such a tight-fitting top…

DAVE bursts in with a box.

MICHAEL. Where have you been?

AMY. And why are you sweating so aggressively?

DAVE produces a manuscript.

DAVE. You remember me telling you that my family’s been asked to donate all my great-great-grandfather’s papers to the British Library? Well get this.

He kneels in front of them. Lights change. They all freeze. Very brief, fun, time-passing music effect until the music stops and they unfreeze.

MICHAEL and AMY. ’Kin’ ’ell.

DAVE (to the audience). What I revealed to them was that this is the original, ink-scribbled manuscript for H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine.

A phone rings in the audience. It’s the USHER’s. He/she exits to take the call.

It was discovered in a locked box in my auntie’s attic, along with other personal items – H. G. Wells’s shaving mirror and this beautiful knife he kept on his desk…

AMY. No, I think that’s the prop knife for the Morlock scene later.

MICHAEL stabs his hand with the retractable/trick blade.

MICHAEL. They must have got mixed up.

DAVE. So the one-of-a-kind antique knife is just sitting on the props table?

MICHAEL. It’s fine. I’ll switch them back later.

DAVE. Amy, my chair please. Here we go.

AMY fetches an office chair on wheels. DAVE sits.

MICHAEL. Prepare to have your minds well and truly bended.

DAVE. Bent. Within these pages are detailed descriptions of events that took place after my great-great-grandfather had died! But it doesn’t stop there. Exhibit One.

AMY. A hundred-year-old photo of Dave Chisnall winning the 2023 darts Players Championship.

DAVE. Dated in Wells’s unmistakable handwriting! Go ahead, Michael. Pass it around… that’s enough, it’s priceless. Exhibit Two.

AMY. One concert ticket.

DAVE. For a Take That reunion tour featuring Robbie Williams in 2025!

MICHAEL. Yes London, you heard it here first.

DAVE. And finally. Exhibit Three. Amy, will you please read out the letter from Mr William Heinemann, H. G. Wells’s publisher.

AMY. ‘Dear Mr Wells. I fear you have lost control of your senses. Your journal entries suggesting, for example; “an era of flower power” seventy years from now in the 1960s, are utterly ridiculous.’

DAVE. A lucky shot-in-the-dark prediction? Clearly not. Now. For those of you who haven’t read the published version of The Time Machine – and, frankly, I’m appalled and disappointed in you – it describes how the human species evolves eight hundred thousand years into the future –

MICHAEL. Trigger warning: it’s not pretty.

DAVE. No – not unless we make significant changes to our behaviour.