Tole Was
SIEG E
A Play
MAURICE ROWDON


CHARACTERS
MARVIN JAMES actor
LIZZY TURNDALE actress
JOCELYN COWELL psychiatrist
The action takes place in a
dressing room at the Vic in
the Strand.


ACT ONE
THE SCENE opens on the empty dressing
room of MARVIN JAMES at the Vic in the
Strand.
This is no ordinary dressing room. Our first
impression is of a bright extravagant show biz
version of a dressing room that might be
suitable for a musical, and indeed it is a
surprise that MARVIN doesn't open with a
song. The dressing room is even equipped as
a mini-stage with a rake and a sophisticated
light and sound system.
Downstage (actor's) right there is a dressing
table with the conventional dressing room
mirror framed with naked light bulbs, except
that there is no glass in the frame and we see
MARVIN JAMES through it.
On the dressing table are two wigs, one grey
(for the play which MARVIN won't dare
name but which takes place in Scotland) and
the other a deep blue-black (for HAMLET).
They are on mounts.
At MARVIN's right hand is a further table
containing the elaborate lights and sound
console, together with a phone, a mobile
phone, a loose radio mike and a pile of
playscripts and unopened letters.
The console, besides controlling the lights
etc, also controls an intercom system linking
this spoiled man to every part of the theatre.
For the purpose of speaking to others in the
admin part of the building or front of house
or backstage he uses the mobile phone.


His swivel chair is a soft leather article
coloured burgundy.
At roughly centre there is a settee partly
covered with play scripts which can easily be
thrown off if sexual dalliance is scripted.
There is for this purpose a thick outsize
blanket and an ample supply of gaudy
cushions.
The entrance to the dressing room is actor's
right. The door opens on to the set and in an
upstage direction.
There is a wide arched opening upstage
centre, beyond which lies an inner room with
a window visible to us---it looks out on
rooftops, for the dressing room is above the
stage.
Right of this arched opening there are
screens behind which MARVIN may undress
in the case of there being visitors.
Immediately in front of these we see a dumb
waiter.
Downstage and to the left, close to the settee,
there is a cupboard in which MARVIN keeps
certain props of a theatrically historical
value (at least to him).
When the action begins we hear hammering
and voices from the main stage, brought to
him by speakers (two for the stereophonic
balance).
The door is being pushed open slowly by a
cane.
The cane is followed by a yellow-gloved hand
and an elegantly cut sleeve owned by
MARVIN JAMES, a handsome man in his (to
say the least) early middle age. He is


dressed urbanely in a striped suit and his hat
is set at an angle last seen in Jack Buchanan's
day. The cane he is holding turns out to have
a silver knob and if we could see it closely it
would turn out to be a tiny replica of the
theatre's cupola.
MARVIN walks to the console and deftly
touches a button with his stick to cut off the
stage noises and with another touch he brings
in the theme music from one of his musical
shows, May Bugs. The music is efahighty
rhythmie, dramatic typelike Brian Eno's
(TheJezebel Spirit and Help me
Somebody are useful models).
MARVIN at once goes into his extraordinary
dance routine from that show, but roughly.
We don't expect such vigor, expertise and
with-it movement from such a suave dated
appearance. Soon his steps pick up to make
a real performance.
At the end he deposits his stick in a rack for
that purpose near the door and then sits
down at the dressing table, switching on the
lights SO that we see him dazzlingly framed.
A copy of The Times lies ready for him. He
opens it and then begins the awesome
operation of scanning the paper from end to
end for a mention of himself. His head and
eyes dart about diagonally and upwards and
downwards with demonic concentration,
taking in every column inch with expertise
and dismissing it with quick disgust. It is all
overin a few moments. Having found
nothing he screws the whole paperinto a ball
and throws it into the empy wastepaper
basket.
He rises and takes off his gloves and hat and
deposits them on a shelf of the dumb waiter.
He removes his jacket and impressive


double-breasted waistcoat, and hangs them
more carefully than a wealthy actor would.
He goes behind one of the screens and takes
off his shirt, throwing it on to the top of the
screen. He emerges in a light smock for
making up which but for the grace of God
could be Hamlet's. He takes his shirt from
the dumb waiter and hangs it carefully.
His movements are precise, charged with a
somnambulistic spontaneity that comes from
daily repetition.
He once more seats himself at the dressing
table, this time to adjust the lights, watching
the lanterns and waiting for each area to light
up. His next movement affords him great
satisfaction. Iti is to fix an amber glow that
shows him off to best advantage.
He gazes at himself with the detachment of
an actor who has been through almost (but
surprises are on hand) everything.
Just as he begins making himself up the
phone rings. He takes no notice. It stops
ringing. He pencils in wrinkles. He leaves
this to try on the-unmentionable-play wig.
The phone rings again. He nonchalantly fits
the wig. He returns to the wrinkle pencil.
To avoid having his work interrupted he tips
the phone off its cradle with his elbow.
There is the faint crackle of a voice at the
other end. As he paints the face in we see
that he clearly favours a Henry Irving view of
the Scottish Gentleman as sardonic and evil.
He dries his hands and picks up the phone.
MARVIN:
Hullo?. Yes.. You what? Could you repeat that?. You
want a pair of my socks?.. ..No you can't, you can bloody well


sweat in your own! What an idea, collecting great actors' socks!
How didyou get my number anyway?. What?. Well why in the
hell didn'tyou say SO in the first place?. Ah, you've just had a
shock. But when were you anything but worried? And when
were box office receipts anything but down?.. Listen, I told you
ages ago, they'll never take another play by the Old Chap this
year, particularly after that lousy Lear. I was all for doing a
Coward revival... Yes I know there've been three this year but
they are safe. Having once filled the Henry Miller theatre with
Present LaughterI know what I'm talking about... .It had
nothing to do with your direction, a Coward play directs itself!
They were touting tickets at hundreds of dollars! Forty percent
of my capacity was black, Coward was pure Wasp until I came
along!. What? It was paper? I've never had paper in a show
of mine,you're delirious... Well of course it's going to be paper
for The Play, we'll be lucky to sell the first row! It makes me
sick, doing The Play. He'ssuch a miserable old bugger.
Murdering people in their beds and getting on his wife's nerves
and having nightmares at the dinner table. Iknow what I'd have
told him to do with that brief candle if I'd been his wife! Anyway,
what are the takings?. .Oh my God! Ishan'tgo on!. What's
that? I'm upset because The Times didn't mention me this
morning? I've toldy you repeatedly I don't give a damn about The
Times, I don't even take it let alone read it (with a bland
glance at the wastepaper basket). As for you, you're sore
because you can't direct, it's simply not within your range of gifts,
it never has been. Ishall never forget the time Istood behind no
fewer than fifteen armour-clad henchmen at the Final Dress and
your little voice comes piping up from the stalls-- -'Marvin's
completely masked!". Masked, I was obliterated! Nobody could
see the top of my head, let alone hear me speak! That's not
blocking, that's blundering!. I see,you're too distraught to
speak are you? And you've heard it all before have you?.. Your
who? Your ex-wife? Ididn't even know you were
married... She what?. Well of course she left you, you got a
divorce didn'tyou?. You went back together?. You married
her twice? And what's the state of play at the moment?.. She
ran out of the house---?
LIZZY TURNDALE enters right, a cup of
coffee in her hand. She is a bright attractive
young woman with wide black eyes. She is in
aj provocative one-piece.


She stands there uncertainly, glancing about
the dressing room in an inquisitive, even
insatiable manner.
MARVIN (cont.) To what? Come here? What the devilfor? Because she's
in love with me? Oh for God's sake man they alls say that!
Anyway I'm not responsible for your domesticskirmishing. As
far as I'm concerned you've cooked your bloody goose this
morning--you've lost your lady and your leading man in onefell
swoop! I am certainly not going to play to a 55% house. Butl'll
tellyou what I am going to do. I'm going to play Hamlet.
LIZZY nearly drops the coffee.
He slams the phone down and only now
seems to realise what he has just said. He
leans back in his burgundy chair gazing
before him in a dream.
MARVIN (to himself, mumbling) Ha, are you honest?
LIZZY:
MARVIN (jumping) Who the---?
He stares at her, then at the cupshe is
holding. He rises and courteously takes the
cup from her, deposits it on his dressing
table.
Suddenly he grabs her. She is about to
scream but he puts his hand over her mouth.
MARVIN (cont.) Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of
sinners? (Breaking from her) No dammit, it just won't do!
He returns to his dressing table sulkily and
resumes his making up. But suddenly he
tears off his wig and begins creaming out his
wrinkles.
He puts on a smoother foundation and is
quickly a younger if not young man. He tries
on the blue-black wig and leans back with


some satisfaction.
LIZZY's astonishment gives way to steady
curiosity during all this. She sits down
quietly on the settee.
He turns to her, expecting to find her in her
former place, then finds her.
MARVIN (cont.) Whose idea was that, bringing me coffee? Not our director's
by any chance? Not Nigel Burbage's? What a ridiculous idea to
assume the name of an Elizabethan actor-manager, don'tyou
think so? (He sips the coffee) You've put sugar in.
(Resuming his making up) Never put sugar in Marvin James's
coffee. Put it in his tea. Not his coffee. They know it at the
Savoy and the Algonquin but in the theatre where he's been
resident star for fifteen years news is apparently slow to travel.
(Without looking in her direction) Why are you here?
Wheedled your way into the job to get my autograph or
something? Are you after my socks? Chap on the phone last
night was after my socks. You have nice tits, I'll say that.
LIZZY:
What?
MARVIN:
She speaks but one word---what'. (Turning to her with a leer)
LIZZY:
Who do you think you are?
MARVIN:
Oh my God not that line! (Continuing his make-up) Not
after Eliza! What'syour name anyway?
LIZZY:
Lizzy Turndale.
A stunned silence. He turns towards her
slowly.
MARVIN:
No one's called Lizzy Turndale. It'simpossible. Andyou've
made a bad thing worse by abbreviating the Elizabeth, don'tyou
see that? However, it's the turn in Turndale I dislike most.
Turning round, turning away, turning up, turning out, it's all bad
news, reminding one of funerals, Wednesday matinees and
Number Two tours, not to say the closing of shows on second
nights. It spells something rather worse than doom---the drab.


Elizabeth has been overdone anyway---two queens and Taylor.
No, Lizzy Turndale's completely self-defeating. What's your real
name?
LIZZY:
Jean Stokes.
MARVIN:
That makes me like Lizzy Turndale.
LIZZY (gazing at him) It's exactly what he said. You're completely unreal.
MARVIN (unruffled) Who said?
LIZZY:
Nigel.
MARVIN:
Who's he?
LIZZY:
Your director. He'sjust directed you in Macbeth.
MARVIN (jumping up in wild panic) What did you say? Oh my God! You
said it! You said the word (dragging her upfrom the settee
and pulling her roughly to the door)!
MARVIN:
Get out, go on! Get out quick! and KNOCK!
He pushes her out of the door and closes it
smartly.
MARVIN (cont., screaming at her through the door) Knock three times!
LIZZY (off) What?
MARVIN:
Oh don't keep saying what woman! This is a matter of life and
death! Knock on the fucking door three times!
LIZZY knocks on the door.
He is visibly relieved.
MARVIN (cont.) You may come in.
She reenters.
MARVIN (cont.) Now turn round three times. Turn! Go on!


He whirls her round three times.
MARVIN (cont., hurrying back to his dressing table) I'll have to tell Nigel
about this. It'll kill him. In fact we can'tgo on. (Grabbing the
phone) Oh my God. We'll have to do Brighton and all stations
to Richmond, oh my God (dialling), I told him we'd never be
able to open cold like this. Nigel? The woman, God knows who
picked her upi for the kitchen, she came in here and named the
fucking Play.. Yes, she actually named it! She'll be whistling
next, the stupid bitch! Isent her outside but it's a bad omen
Nigel and together with your news of a poor house I don't think
we can open, anyway I've never thought that opening cold was a
good idea on the Play, I think we'd better open at Brighton---
What?.. This is what?.. .The second shock?. What? Oh
do stop talking about your bloody ex-wife man! This is a theatre
and---1.. What? (Turning to stare at LIZZY) That's right,
Lizzy Turndale. And she's an---an--
Very quietly he puts the phone down, his eyes
still on her. He leans back in his chair and
takes a leisurely sip of coffee. Then he gets
up and approaches her.
MARVIN (cont.) Soyou're an actress. (Putting his nose within an inch of
hers) You're Nigel Burbage's wife aren'tyou? (As she is
aboutto speak) It's no use you lying, he'sj just told me! You
came here on the pretext of bringing me my morning coffee and
what you really wanted was to put a bad spell on our production,
thus ruining your husband. (Remembering) Hey, wait a
minute! Didn't he tell me you were in love with me? (Sitting
down by her) Now let's go into this methodically. Why are you
here?
LIZZY:
Because I'm in love with you.
MARVIN:
No I mean the real reason. Why did you name the Play?
LIZZY:
Because you don'twant to play in it.
MARVIN (rathertaken aback) That's perfectly true. Now why don't I want
to do Macbeth? You will notice that in naming the Play I've
joined your little subterfuge.
LIZZY:
Because you don't know how to play him.


MARVIN:
I don't want to play him.
LIZZY:
Because you can't. You're too old-fashioned.
MARVIN:
Old fashioned? I'm considered the most avant garde man in
the business! Students travel from all over the world to see the
man who's always different, who performs the Old Chap as you've
never seen him performed before, as a new event!
LIZZY:
But that's old hat!
MARVIN:
Avant garde means ahead of the time!
LIZZY:
You're only ahead of the time when you were twenty. That's
years ago! You've stayed there ever since. People don't even
use the word avant garde any more. They don't know what it
means! And all you do is turn the stuff on its head. You make
Julius Caesar a fairy, Othello a dwarf and deathly pale and in love
with a Venetian hooker called Desdemona and the top brass
don'tl like it, your males always have to be in drag and your
females in high boots carrying whips. It's SO obvious!
MARVIN (gasping for air, hardly audible) But everyone knows---my
characterisations are diaphonous, pellucid---words used by the
critics---you see the Old Chap's plays work far betterfor the
surface being flawed, I play against the character, don'tyou see
that?
LIZZY (with a touch of compassion) Butyou've never had a really new idea.
Romeo behaves as if he hates Juliet and sneers his way through
the tender lines and in such a rush you can't understand a word,
Hamlet says everything like he'sin a pub reciting the sports
section, Lear's just had his twenty-first birthday and has a thing
about being old and his daughters are his sisters and they egg him
on, except Cordelia, to think he really is old and that he screwed
his mother and by the end of that show no wonder one of the
critics said this was the Shakespeare interpretation of all time
and they looked forward to Lord and Lady Macbeth as two
queens, Hamlet as his father's ghost and A Midsummer Night's
Dream as an ice drama.
MARVIN (weakly) As a matter of fact I did have in mind---he was a bloody
awful critic by the way, drank himself to death---I did have in


mind Lady Macbeth as a dike and him/ACDC. I mean it really
does work. They hire someone to play Macbeth and they take the
rap for the murders because they want the next king to be a
woman.
UilE
A puzzled silence.
/s stast
LIZZY:
Don'tyou see, everybody's ignorant now? You can't stand
Shakespeare on his head if they know nothing about him,on his
feet! I mean, they want to know, shit, what's all this about?
They don't get the words! And all you do is mess about with the
business! If the stage directions say whisperyou've got to
scream, when they say creep along like a sleepwalkeryou run!
It's like the Royal Court fifty years ago, all you needed to do to
get an audience was toput your hand in a pram and bring it out
with shit all over it---but the list of outrages has been exhausted
now Marvin--
MARVIN (jumping up with a scream) NOT MARVIN! You will not call me
Marvin.
She shrugs. He rises, paces round in
thought.
She leans back, her eyes closed. He stands
watching her.
LIZZY:
Conversation doesn't move with you. (Opening her eyes)
That's what Nigel said. Itjust goes put-put-putting on but the
vehicle remains stationary.
He looks bewildered, steals a glance at his
dressing table.
MARVIN (very quietly) Then why are you in love with me?
LIZZY:
Théwalls could crack, trees could grow through the auditorium,
rats could overrun the dressing rooms and every other man and
woman could be dead buty you'll still be up here recording
yourself and looking in that damned mirror and seeing your
audience through it.
MARVIN:
But my acting, you must be in love with that too!


LIZZY:
You see? You can't be other than yourself.
MARVIN (abjectly submitting to his need for an immediate answer) You
won't tell me?
LIZZY:
I think it's because you never ehange, neverlisten. The sun
doesn't look at me or listento me but I love to bask init.
(Gazing at him with real curiosity) You can't be anything
Ws Su
but whatyouare,banyou? If the world shrivelled up you'd go on
beingyourself/as a little spot of grease.
MARVIN (with uncomfortable insincerity) I'm myself,yes. What else can
I be?
LIZZY:
All my life you've captivated me. In the end people don't care if
Shakespeare's been shot to hell, it's your movements and your
voice that count, you could be saying hickery dickery dock for an
hour and sixty minutes, nobody would notice the difference.
MARVIN:
So---I don'tl look old?
LIZZY (sighing) You even talk old, like it was 1900. I mean, you never talk
ordinary.
MARVIN (still abject) Because I'm not ordinary?
LIZZY:
Do you know what Nigel calls this dressing room?
MARVIN:
Why don'tyou tell me?
LIZZY:
The Vic Upstairs. The successful stuff takes place at the Vic
downstairs while Marvin jerks himself off upstairs.
(Regretfully) Have I hurtyou?
MARVIN:
The question isn't that. (Almost to himself) It's how I'm
going to hurt you.
LIZZY (this passes her by) If you played straight---I mean instead of playing
for dirty laughs when you're supposed to be sterling noble, and
high tragedy when it's knockabout farce, people would see you've
got nothing inside you! You're all outside! But that's an asset.
Your walk and your voice and your fascinating way of being
absolutely nothing- that's what used to draw the crowds! They
were never a real theatre audience but what does that matter now


's deed
that theatre doesn'texist? You don't need to have an inside.
I 6 4eed
MARVIN:
Ah, SO theatre doesn'texist!
He fixes his eyes on her for a long time,
during which she fidgets uncertainly, and
then he rises briskly.
MARVIN (cont.) Well, to work!
He goes to a drawer at his dressing table and
seizes a bunch of keys then walks smartly to
the door and locks it. There are three locks
and he does the job slowly and precisely.
MARVIN (cont. as he walks back to her, holding up the keys) For the
insurance people, you know. Insist on three locks. Now, Miss
Turnout (sitting close to her), I think we can agree on one
thing- -that I have to change? Isn't that what) you've been
suggesting? A rebirth? And then we have to remember thatyou
too have a career. And that needs a brush up, doesn'tit?
LIZZY:
MARVIN (screaming with quite horrible force) IS THAT RIGHT?
She jumps and backs off.
MARVIN (cont.) It'swhy you came here isn'tit? Let me tell you something
about actors--everything about them is autobiographical, even
their tears at somebody's grave are rehearsed! First of all are
you vulgar enough for the stage?
She is silent.
MARVIN (cont.) Do something vulgar.
She suddenly puts two fingers in her mouth
and does a deafening whistle.
MARVIN (cont., gripping her round the throat in horror) Stop, stop!
She screams sO loud that he loosens his grip
at once.


MARVIN (cont.) What an extraordinary noise. Two extraordinary noises.
Now---where were you?
LIZZY:
I was saying you're unreal.
MARVIN:
No I mean what drama school.
LIZZY:
Oh, RADA.
MARVIN:
I thought that scream was RADA. I'll also say this. For
somebody married to Nigel Burbage you're remarkably
intelligent. Not that intelligence goes with acting awfully well.
LIZZY:
It certainly doesn't get in your way.
MARVIN:
And your repartee's good. Talent for improvisation---in the
event of Marvin James ghosting. You see, my dear, I'm going to
call this Operation Rebirth. No doubtyou think you'll be leaving
here for lunch. Nothing of the sort. You'll be lucky to be out of
here in a week. You're going to pay for that line about
intelligence not getting in my way, I'll have your guts on display
forit.
LIZZY:
Listen--
MARVIN:
Now don'tstart that television-response stuff, you'll be saying let
me out of here in a minute.
LIZZY (jumping up) Let me out of here I've got claustrophobial
MARVIN (pushing her roughly back into herseat) But the idea isn't to keep
you in, Miss Turnout! It's to keep others out!
LIZZY:
He also said you were completely bloody bonkers.
MARVIN:
You see, my dear, I'm going to take you hostage. But more of
that later.
He returns to his dressing table and resumes
making up.
MARVIN (cont.) You'll be my Ophelia. It's a good part for you because it isn't
really a part at all. You're going to play it for sex.


LIZZY:
I always do.
MARVIN:
They denied Hamlet to me as a young man. They ridiculed the
idea when, in my early forties, I was still eligible for the part.
They said I was too big in the middle area. Now that this is no
longer true, now that I'm prime Lear material and thin in the
shank I shall give them a younger, in the sense of more vital
Hamlet than they've ever seen. They say a woman can't play
Juliet until she's too old for it, the same is true of Hamlet, Miss
Turnout. My mother, I mean Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, will
probably be half my age, but she shall be seen as a crone next to
my adolescence.
LIZZY:
I'm not a bit afraid. Allyou do is talk.
MARVIN:
That's what you think. You don't witness me at this moment
removing Macbeth and replacing him with Hamlet? You don't
hear me say Macbeth shamelessly and thus joining you in the
clever bad spell you put upon our production? You have given
me courage my girl! (Busy with his face) And I can see you're
a marvellous fuck. But why,you will ask, make up as Hamlet two
months before rehearsals can possibly begin, and when the
opening of Macbeth is billed for the coming Thursday? Because
this is REVOLUTION my dear. Talking time is over. The
screaming will begin. And you will provide it.
LIZZY:
Nigel says that actors never commit crimes, they're not interested
in anybody enough to murder them.
MARVIN:
The first part's right but not the second. They don't murder
because they murder a thousand times onstage and know what a
bore it all is compared with a nice cup of coffee or a bounce in
bed. Don't worry, my dear, it's all going to be acted.
LIZZY:
And the endless speeches. He mentioned those.
MARVIN:
This time he's going to listen to every word. (Withsudden
earnestness) Ihope he's still in love with you?
His earnestness sweeps her out of her
scepticism.
LIZZY:
Ohyes! He knows I only run after men who can do without me,


SO he divorces me to show he can do without me.
MARVIN:
Which of course he can't.
LIZZY:
Oh no.
MARVIN:
So he will hear those screams with a measure of concern!
He dials a number on the phone.
MARVIN (cont.) Nigel. I haveyour ex-wife here. Listen carefully.
MARVIN beckons LIZZY towards him. She
comes. He suddenly seizes her and manages
to grip her SO that his arm is locked round her
neck from behind. We can see in this all his
revenge for what she has said to him.
MARVIN (cont.) Iintend either to strangle her or plunge a dagger in her neck.
I haven't decided which. You may take this as a joke. But I warn
you that she may be found dead. IfIwere you I'd remember your
own words, Marvin James is a madman.
He tightens the grip and she screams
frantically.
MARVIN (cont.) Did you hear? Did you recognise the voice? But we can do
better than that.
He lays the phone on the table and releases
her, leaving her staggering about clutching
her throat.
He goes briskly to the cupboard upstage of
the settee and pulls it open. She watches
with horror as he draws out a dagger.
She grabs the phone.
LIZZY:
Nigel, Nigel! He is mad! He's---!
MARVIN approaches her menacingly. He
grabs her after a little chase.


She struggles and tries to bite him. He
plunges the knife into her neck and blood
gushes forth. She screams blue murder and
her dress is covered in no time.
MARVIN calmly takes the phone again,
wiping some blood from his hand and
throwing the dagger into the wastepaper
basket.
MARVIN:
All I did was draw a little blood. I promise not to kill her yet.
Hadn'tyou better notify the police? This is serious. Not a
rehearsal, Nigel. Not a play. But first let me getyour ex-wife
seated. I mean I need to kill her later, which requires her to be
alive now, SO I missed the jugular, just.
He helps the sobbing, quivering LIZZY to
the settee.
MARVIN (cont.) Stop blubbering, it was only superficial!
LIZZY (inspecting the blood) This is ketchup! You fucking---!
He signals her frantically to silence, then
returns to the phone.
MARVIN:
As I said, I managed to avoid the jugular, this is where a little
knowledge of pathology counts, Nigel. Now these are my
demands. First the Final Dress and the previews will not take
place. You will inform not only the police but the media about
this. You will tell them thatyour ex-wife who leftyou for good
not an hour ago is being held hostage by an enraged Marvin
James in his dressing room at the Vic on the Strand, and for
God's sake don't say New Vic as if we're an imitation of the Old
one, you were always such a bloody fool about that kind of thing.
By the way, any attempt to batter down Marvin James's door will
produce an entirely dead Lizzy Turndown in a split second. How
the hell did she get that name by the way? (Turning to LIZZY)
Didn'tyou tell me Stokes?
LIZZY (trying to speak as she wipes the ketchup off) !
MARVIN:
Understandably she's distraught, Nigel,you can perhaps hear the
gurgles, she must have lost a pint of blood at least. Amazing how


much we have of it, isn'tit? And its brightness, due I believe to
the presence of oxyhemoglobins or did I get my lesson wrong?
But to return to business you will announce this morning a
Hamlet production with me in the title role, at this theatre, at the
Vic Downstairs as I believe you call it.. What?. Oh for God's
sake man youth depends on the legs and mine are in mint
condition.
He crashes the phone down.
LIZZY has in the meantime staggered to the
cupboard and is staring at its contents.
MARVIN (cont.) I must say that last scream was even better than the first.
LIZZY:
Iwasn'tacting that time.
MARVIN:
You never do otherwise than act, my dear. We are of the same
breed. (Taking her affectionately round the waist) I
suppose you're wondering what this little display is about?
LIZZY:
YesIam.
MARVIN:
It's my little museum of stage daggers. Several date back to
1701. I have some of the most memorable daggers ever used.
(Pulling one out) Garrick! (Replacing it and pulling out
two others) These were used to murder Duncan in Henry
Irving's Lyceum production in 1888. (Replacing them) And
then of course there are the most up to date ones you can find on
the market. I used a 1963 spring dagger on you which quite
frankly I didn't expect to work. But, as you see (indicating her
blood) it was most efficient. Now why don'tyou slip behind that
screen and put on one of my dressing gowns? (Drawing her to
the screen) You'll find a wash basin, why don'tyou wash out
that ketchup, it hopefully won't stain too much?
She follows helplessly, going behind the
screen.
We hear her washing the dress.
MARVIN (cont.) That's Clarissa's dress from May Buds isn'tit?
LIZZY (off) Yes.


MARVIN:
I have eyes in my little asshole don'tI? Didyou put that on to
flatter me?
LIZZY (off) It thought it might give you pleasure.
MARVIN:
Where did you find it?
LIZZY (off) At Angel's and Berman's. They wanted fifty pounds a day for it.
MARVIN:
Didyou give it to them?
LIZZY (off) Nigel did.
MARVIN (sitting at his dressing table and gazing before him with
pleasure) Isuppose it is sort of historical. To buy ityou'd
probably have to pay thousands.
LIZZY (off) Vivien Leigh used it for Antony and Cleopatra.
MARVIN (disregarding this, since it is about another actor, with a
characteristic sideways movement of the head) Isuppose
your husband has a lot of wonderful anecdotes about me? For
instance how I exhausted three leading ladies during the
Broadway run of May Buds?
LIZZY (off) He said they couldn't take you always dropping your lines and
never being letter word perfect even by the end of a run. He said
you had half your speeches pinned to the back of the furniture.
MARVIN:
They could have done the same, the silly cows! Acting isn't
learning lines!
LIZZY (off) He said it was only the Americans kept you alive because of all
their stuff about the Brits and tradition and all that. And they
expect Shakespeare to be boring anyway. He said you're an
effigy rather than an actor and that's why your Macbeth was going
to play to 15% capacity.
MARVIN (quietly) Fifty-five.
LIZZY (off) Fifteen. That's another thing you do, wishful listening. He said
fifteen.


MARVIN (stunned by this and almost in tears) Ifilled the Henry Miller
theatre with Present Laughter for over a year! And do you see
these lights? What actor in the world has his dressing room
equipped with an elaborate light and sound system by means of
which he can simulate a performance in perfect privacy?
(Throwing himself on the console and after plunging the
stage into darkness introducing silver strobe effects). It
cost thousands, thousands!
LIZZY is suddenly there behind him,
beautifully got up in his dressing gown but
she is a grotesque jerky figure under the
strobe effect.
LIZZY (putting her hand on his shoulder) Marvin... (He becomes still) I
didn't know you could be hurt. He said you couldn't be hurt.
She puts her arms round him and he seems to
cry on her shoulder.
LIZZY:
Change the lights to something sweet!
MARVIN (breaking from her with dry eyes) Look at this! Golden autumnal!
The strobe effect is killed and a mellow
harvest light steals up.
MARVIN (off) Try and beat that.
LIZZY:
I thought you were crying.
MARVIN:
I could never manage that. They used to squirt water in my eyes
from the wings.
LIZZY (walking away) Did you know how you got your nickname?
MARVIN:
LIZZY:
'Hamlegs'. From the famous quote My legs are in mint
condition'!
This is too much for him. With a roar he
jumps up and grabs her by the hair.


MARVIN:
You're a critic aren'tyou? A fucking reporter! Isuspected it in
that second scream- (Shaking her) Are you a damned
feminist---a lesbian---a radical--you're a friend of Vanessa
Redgraves!
LIZZY (flinging him off with unexpected success SO that he reels away)
Nigel always said you couldn'ttake criticism! That'syour
downfall he said! That'swhy: you're a museum piece, why it's
impossible to direct you, why playwrights fly to the Bahamas when
you announce an interest in one of their scripts! 'Old Marvin',
they say, 'old Marvin's like a nostalgia record, a Madame Tussaud
revolutionary'! (Sticking her face in his) But Hamlet's more
than legs!
MARVIN:
Tell me this, you slobbering moist bitch, how is it Nigel keeps me
in this theatre, and my photos in the foyer, and my bust in the
circle bar?
LIZZY:
Because he's in love with you! Because he's a fucking pouf!
MARVIN:
The phone rings.
MARVIN (cont., picking the phone up with afurious gesture and
bellowing into it) What isi it? (Turning to LIZZY and
waving the phone at her) This has saved your life! (At the
phone again, very quietly now) Oh really? (Again to
LIZZY, with sarcastic charm) It'syour husband. (At the
phone again) No, my dear,Irepeat this isn't a joke. I'm
already ankle-deep in your ex-wife's blood and she happens to be
hanging on to life by the merest thread. Believe me, if you don't
get your over-used arse here in ten minutes flat she will never
scream again! Secondly, I'm going to unplug this phone and you
will talk to me from now on, and SO will the police, by means of
the intercom system. You will not, repeat not, negotiate with me
through the door because, being an actor, I need my voice.
He slams down the phone, then detaches it.
LIZZY (before he can start up again) You're like a fucking intellectual
without an intellect! Look at the way you played that scene when
Icame in. You might have been a radio announcer. You just
stalk and talk! (Putting herface close to his again and


shouting as if he were deaf) You remember what Hamlet
said? Suit the action'---action, action, Marvinl---"suit the action
to the fucking word, the fucking word to the action'! All you do is
moon around trying to mask everybody else. No wonder the
Macbeth receipts are five percent of capacity!
MARVIN (frantically) You said fifteen!
LIZZY:
Five! You don't think Nigel would dare tell you that do you?
He wants your arse! (As MARVIN lunges at her and she
pushes him back) Let's go through that scene you always turn
into a Purcell Room recital.
He allows himself to be led to centre stage.
LIZZY (cont.) Take it from I did love thee once.
MARVIN:
What?
LIZZY:
Don'tsay what! Say the line!
MARVIN:
I did love thee once.
LIZZY:
Indeed my lord you made me believe so.
MARVIN:
You should not have believed me. For virtue cannot SO inoculate
our old stock but we shall relish of it. Iloved you not.
LIZZY:
OK now get hold of me---like this (grabbing his hand and
putting it over her mouth, then drawing his head close to
her ear).
MARVIN (hissing in her ear, not without personal malice) Get thee to a
nunnery.
LIZZY:
Good, now turn it round and smile.
He leers at her.
LIZZY (cont.) Smile!
MARVIN:
That's a Marvin James smile!
She takes his hand and puts it down the slit in


her dressing gown, obliging him to fondle her
breasts.
MARVIN:
Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
LIZZY:
Not why wouldst thou! It's Why comma wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners?
MARVIN:
That's interpretation!
LIZZY:
Oh shut up and drag me to the floor!
Finally she pulls him down. Then she draws
his hand up her leg, under the gown.
LIZZY (cont.) OK go on!
We hear police sirens in the distance.
LIZZY (cont.) Go on!
MARVIN:
Iam myself indifferent honest butyet I could accuse me of such
things that it were better my mother-
The sound of rushing steps along the corridor
outside, right.
MARVIN (cont.) It were better my mother had not--
A violent hammering on the door. Shocked
out of their wits, MARVIN and LIZZY sit up
and stare at each other.
NIGEL BURBAGE's voice comes blaring
over the intercom.
BURBAGE (VO) Lizzy this is Nigel! Areyou OK? Talk to me Lizzy! Is it true
he's keeping you hostage? Lizzy!
Suddenly LIZZY screams in the most
bloodcurdling fashion.
MARVIN (hissing at her) What are you doing?


LIZZY (hissing back) Tell him you mean business, go on!
As he fails to act she screams again.
BURBAGE (VO) Oh Marvin, Marvin don't hurt her Marvin! Let her alone for
my sake Marvin!
LIZZY (hissing) Tell him to vacate the corridor outside, not to hammer on the
door.
MARVIN (in a quite fantastic bellow) I've given you your directions
Burbage! If the police---!
LIZZY jumps up and gets the radio mike
from the table. She thrusts it into
MARVIN's hand. He is still on the floor.
MARVIN (into the mike, quiet and collected at once) If the police aren't
here in a jiffy she dies by strangulation! Though she could quite
easily die from loss of blood before then!
The police sirens come nearer.
BURBAGE (VO) They're on their way Marvin! You can hear them Marvin!
LIZZY screams again.
MARVIN (hissing at her) All right, don't overdo it! Fucking Method acting!
LIZZY (shouting frantically into the mike) He's trying to strange me Nigel
(making throttled noises)!
MARVIN stares at her aghast.
LIZZY (cont.) He's got guns as well Nigel! (Screams) He's got two 45-
calibre rifles, a .357 Magnum pistol, a sawn-off shotgun, a 9mm
Walther pistol, an AR-7 survival rifle, about three .22 calibre
pistols, a .30.06 with telescopic sights!
MARVIN (hissing) What the---?
BURBAGE's answer now comes blaring over
the intercom.


BURBAGE (VO) Marvin, Marvin, don't do anything unwise, we'll have the
Hamlet production---I
LIZZY gives MARVIN an intimate you-see?
expression.
BURBAGE (VO) We'll strike the Macbeth set now, there'll be no Final Dress
tonight! (Yelling frantically) Marvin, Marvin, are you there
Marvin?
MARVIN (to LIZZY, pulling the mike away from her and sitting on it)
Are you trying to get me in gaol for life dammit? What are you
talking about, guns'?
LIZZY:
That was a Bonny and Clyde hash-up I did in rep. (Seizing the
mike by thrusting her hand under him and then speaking
into it again) He wants you to leave the corridor free, Nigel, he
doesn't want you hammering on the door!
Steps on a staircase outside.
BURBAGE (VO, aside to someone, still frantic) Iknew the mother would
go mad one day! (Shouting again) I'm going to the end of the
corridor now, Lizzy, the police have just arrived, keep calm
Marvin, we love you Marvin, we believe in you Marvin!
LIZZY (to MARVIN) Now. You and I have got lots to talk about.
MARVIN (with menace) I'll say! (Trying to scramble to hisfeet but she
pushes him back) I'm going to tell them the truth!
LIZZY:
It'll be the first and last time in your life if you do!
The intercom cuts in with the urbane voice of
THE HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR,
henceforth to be called H.N.
H.N.(VO) Good morning Mr James. Have you a problem? Police are now
surrounding the theatre and I'myour Hostage Negotiator. I've
had considerable experience of this kind of thing Mr Marvin and
if there's the smallest chance of our coming to terms right now,
please state what the terms are and I'll do my best at this end.
MARVIN (hissing) Who the hell's this prat?


LIZZY (hissing) Tell him T've stated my terms to Nigel Burbage, he knows
perfectly well what Iwant.'
MARVIN:
What do Iwant?
LIZZY (hissing) Hamlet with me as Ophelia like you said!
MARVIN (hissing) Fuck you!
She screams again.
Now then Mr Marvin let's talk this over calmly, are you OK MIss
Turndale?
MARVIN (into the mike) I've made my demands, Nigel Burbage knows what
they are!
We are impressed by his instant change of
mood for the intercom.
LIZZY (hissing) Good!
MARVIN (hissing) This'll ruin us both!
LIZZY (hissing) Only you! I'm the hostage, remember!
Very Well, Mr James, Mr Burbage is here at my side and
corroborates whatyou say. We understand you wish to
(mumbling to someone) you wish to cancel the Macbeth
production-you want the public refunded for the bookings on
that show andyou wiush a Hamlet production to be scheduled
and announced, and the booking to start as soon as possible, and
you will release Miss Lizzy Turndale on hearing that the show has
been fully booked for the first three nights. Is that correct sir?
MARVIN (hissing) Inever said all that!
LIZZY:
It's typical Nigel. He's always helpful in emergencies. Tell him
yes, shithead!
MARVIN (into the mike) Yes it's correct!
Have you been injured Miss Turndale? Do you mind Miss


Turndale talking to us, Mr James?
MARVIN (into the mike) Keep it brief!
LIZZY (into the mike) I'm more in shock! There's a little blood.
Blood Miss Turndale?
LIZZY:
He tried to knife me in the throat!
MARVIN (hissing) You fucking---!
LIZZY (hissing back) Stop being Macbeth! Liftyour chin up! Look like a
man! (Into the mike) He says you must alert the principal
radio and television stations and press agencies at once. He
won't release me until he hears a news broadcast has gone out on
this matter!
I believe news has already gone out Mr James. If it's publicity
you need you can trust the media to provide more than is healthy
for anyone, particularly you. Let me assure you Mr James you
don't have to murder anyone for extra publicity. You've already
made your point. On the contrary, if you injure this woman, not
to say kill her, you will spend the rest of your life in prison.
Think it over Mr James. Ifyou release this young woman now
and come out of your dressing room behind her with your hands in
the air there is a strong possibility that you will receive no more
than a few months in prison or a fine for what, with Miss
Turndale's permission, will be classed as an elaborate hoax. Isit
a hoax MrJames?
MARVIN opens his mouth to say yes but
LIZZY screams again.
H.N. (VO, cont.) All right Mr Jamesyou've made your point. I'm in contact
with the Home Office and they'll be giving their decision about
your terms in a few moments. Meanwhile Mr James keep very
calm because I'm sure you don'twant anything to happen would
hurt your reputation permanently and put you behind prison bars
until the day you die. Don't risk it Mr James! Release the young
woman. Come out with your hands in the air and who knows,
perhaps no charges will be preferred against you, provided of
course that Miss Turndale is found to have only light injuries.


LIZZY screams again.
H.N. (V O, cont.) OK Mr James just wait for the Home Secretary's answer
calmly.
More police sirens.
MARVIN:
Oh my God... (Trying to grab the mike) I'm going to tell him
your screams are fake!
LIZZY (resisting him) My screams are convincing! They chill to the bone!
Do you think Nigel Burbage believed you whenyou were said you
were taking me hostage? Of course he didn't! He hasn't
believed a word of yours in twenty years! It was my screams that
saved the day, my screams!
THE HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR breaks in
again on the intercom.
MrJames there've already been a number of special news
broadcasts. Two television crews are setting up outside this
theatre and will give hourly coverage of what has become known
as the Vic siege. We're told that CNN are running the story with
clips fromyour Coward season on Broadway. Mr Burbage tells
me that the Macbeth production has been cancelled. He has
announced your new Hamlet but SO far the media hasn't taken
this up. But he's confident that all this publicity will ensure early
booking, the courts permitting of course. Thus all you asked for
and more has been conceded---
LIZZY screams.
MARVIN (hissing) But they're giving me what Iwant dammit!
LIZZY:
Fuck what you want! I've got some terms too!
MARVIN (grabbing the mikefrom under her in a surprise move) She
keeps on screaming, blast her eyes!
Ifyou don'twant the lady to scream just take your hands off her
MrJames! Are you all right Miss Turndale?
LIZZY (seizing the mike) He's---he's hurting me (writhing and gurgling)!


H.N. (VO, urgently) Ib begyou Mr James think your position over! If at the end
of five minutes--we're going to give you five minutes---if you
walk out with your hands above your head no charges will be
preferred against you unless of course Miss Turndale is injured
more than superficially and she wishes to prosecute. There's
only one proviso, thaty you submit to a medical checkup at St
Thomas's hospital, including a psychiatric examination.
MARVIN (grabbing the mike) She's the one for psychiatry!
No doubt she is Mr James if you've been trying to strangle her.
Now come to your senses, man, you've a great career ahead of
you, don't send it up in smoke!
LIZZY (grabbing the mike back) He says he doesn't believe you're real
police!
Thank you for clearing that up Miss Turndale. Mr James, if you
don't believe we're police just take a peep out of your window and
you'll see at least a hundred of us down here. Will you do that?
Please do that Mr James.
Together MARVIN and LIZZY steal to the
window in the inner room. When they have
glanced below they stare at each other with
chastened astonishment. They return to the
dressing room as H.N.'s voice comes over
again.
Have you taken a look Mr Marvin?
MARVIN (running to the mike on the floor) Yes I have!
Areyou satisfied that the metropolitan police force is here in
some strength?
MARVIN (into the mike) YesIam.
Very well Mr James. We shall give you five minutes to make up
your mind. After that, if you don't come out peacefully, we shall
have to resort to less friendly methods. I'm afraid this may mean
risking Miss Turndale's life but you will both appreciate that we
can hardly tie up SO many policemen indefinitely. The Irish
Republican Army is threatening to renew its bomb attacks and if


the past is anything to go by they take advantage of any abnormal
situation of this kind, where the police force is concentrated in
one spot. Helpyour country Mr James! Don'tfacilitate the
murder of innocent men and women!
LIZZY (grabbing the mike) He wants to know what these less friendly methods
are.
Well Miss Turndale they means for starters he'll be charged with
assault and battery, kidnapping, resisting arrest and attempted
murder. I needn'ttell you what the penalty is for that lot but I
can say that if convicted Mr James will never see inside a theatre
again.
MARVIN:
Oh my god!
Once again, Mr James, come to your senses. We are giving you
five minutes.
The intercom abruptly switches out.
MARVIN (grabbing her hair) What the hell are you doing this for?
LIZZY (pushing him away SO that he falls onto the settee into a half-lying
position) That's just what I'm going to explain.
Ophelia---what about it?
MARVIN:
You think anybody's going to believe I took you hostage because I
want) you as Ophelia?
LIZZY:
Listen, in a short time there won't be a household in England
hasn't heard of Lizzy Turndale even if they've never heard of you.
Foryears I've been sweating it out in provincial rep with Nigel
Burbage looking on with a smirk. Whenever I said let me meet
Marvin James he said you were too busy but today I clinched it
didn'tI? Iwalked out of the house and here I am! I said to
myself whatever Marvin James wants to do with me I do---andyou
took me hostage didn'tyou?
MARVIN:
How is it he knew you were coming?
LIZZY:
I told him! Don't think I was after anyfamous person! Iwas
after you---my obsession and daydream since Iwas fourteen, bad
and passé as I knew you to be even then!


MARVIN:
Oh my god!
LIZZY:
That's another of your nicknames.
MARVIN:
What is?
LIZZY:
Oh my god. They say Oh My God's threatening to do a one-man
show called 'On the Boards'.
MARVIN:
On the b---! I discussed it once, in New York, with Merrick---no
one else!
LIZZY:
There isn't much I don't know about you, dammit---another one
of your nicknames, Dammit. You're going to end on the rocks
and not on the boards unless you listen to me. You've got five
minutes in which to do it!
MARVIN:
Oh my god!
LIZZY:
All these years, I'm twenty eight now (he registers mouthing
disbelief), you've figured in my daydreams, my masturbations!
Ithink I saw every London production you were in, and several of
the Brighton flops. (As he is about to protest) Ihad to go
secretly because mother would have been furious had she known.
MARVIN:
'And her mother came too'
LIZZY:
You'll see later just how true that is. But back to business.
When that man comes on the intercom again you're going to tell
him you want me as your Ophelia and, another thing, my name
goes next to yours above the play title.
MARVIN (his mettle up) Ophelia my arse! You can get any actor in the world
to put his hand up your skirt without picking on me! Ophelia
isn't a hotpants, little lady, just as Hamlet isn'ta pair of legs! I'm
sick and tired of the word love on the lips of women whose hearts
are made of ice cubes! (Striding about dramatically while
she watches him with some curiosity) Why for God's sake
was I given sO much charisma? Why the magnetic personality,
the eyes that turn heads with a glance, the smile that while it
hasn't exactly launched a thousand ships has flooded a thousand
hulls with moist thoughts! I never had a leading lady who didn't
fall in love with me! Inever knew in all my life a single girl who


didn't buckle at the knees on touching my hand! (Closing in on
her) My mother told me all about your damnéd breed! YesI
too had a mother! And a finer actress never crossed a stage!
She warned me early what seething cauldrons of manipulation
you cunt-people are, using our natural terror of the mother to
instal a new reign for yourselves! Why else do you think Hamlet
told her 'If thou wilt marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well
enough what monsters you make of them'? I pleaded with
mama, for God's sake inhibit my charisma I said, the girls are
going to give me trouble, they'll hang round the stage doors,
solicit my agents, sleep with my managers to get me for life! Why
insist mama that my eyes should be hypnotic, my lips beyond
reproach, my walk, my stance, my gaze, even my way of thinking
and choice of words SO far beyond ordinary capacities that into
whatever drawing room I set foot they will turn towards me as one
creature and ask each other with importuning nudges Who is
A dead silence after a speech that seems to
stun even him.
LIZZY:
You see, you really can act when you want to.
MARVIN:
LIZZY:
If you'd played like that in May Buds all might have been well.
Of course I realise you were supposed to be a ham actor in it but
even ham actors have natural feelings sometimes. (Gazing at
him with some puzzlement) When you were throttling me a
little while back it was a stage throttle. And when you were
playing with my tits it felt like I was reading a book about it. So
the first didn't scare me and the second didn't turn me on.
MARVIN:
Would you have wished me to use a real knife? Or make love to
you hardly knowing your name?
LIZZY:
Why not?
MARVIN:
Why not?'
LIZZY:
And why shouldn't Ophelia be a hotpants? That was a very
successful scene! Anyway you've got two minutes or less to
decide on your future, Marvin James. If you don't come up with
the right answer it's curtains for you and your stage career. Has


the penny not dropped? (Underlining it vehemently) It isn't
only Ophelia I'm after, it's a new production of Hamlet on my
terms! Do you get it? No more talking heads. No more
striding round the stage in that fucking drag I know you're going
to bring out, swishing your dress in all our noses and letting the
audience see the good side of yourf face and never the bad, which
is the most of it. No wonder Nigel Burbage always directs 'round'
you! As he always says, when you're in a play the centre's always
missing!
MARVIN (drunk with insults no w) Oh bugger what Nigel Burbage always
says. It's a pity you don't look into yourself instead of me.
You're trying to get into my pants and you're using Ophelia as a
ploy. But don't be SO sure you'd like it once you got there! A lot
of ladies have had their little fannies burned, they remain in
agony for the rest of their lives, hoping for a repeat and never
getting it! Two suicides, untold nervous breakdowns, the close of
at least five promising stage careers! Why deliberately invite a
situation in which you retire to a low-rent suburb for the next
sixty years with photos and memories to live on? Ohladmit
you're quite intelligent! You can talk like a character out of
George Bernard Shaw but, Miss Turnoff, this won't end in an
upper class drawing room in a gale of laughter but Wandsworth
prison for me and Wormwood Scrubs for you! Because you're
colluding in the kidnap, which I'm going to tell them right now
(trying to grab ther mike from between her legs)!
She manages to retain it by hitting him in the
balls with it.
LIZZY (as he yells with pain) I'm going to marry you too!
MARVIN (falling back) Marry me? Nobody's ever succeeded in doing that!
LIZZY:
Why else do you think we were flung together this morning? Why
else should I be magnetised to this room? It hurts me to hear you
spoken of as too old for Lear--
MARVIN:
LIZZY:
Don'tyou see what a wonderful story we're cooking up between
us? World famous actor marries his own hostage! Tries to cut
her throat then suddenly sees her as his leading lady? They fall
inlove during the siege! Surrounded by the police! And they


play together for the rest of their lives like Lunt and Fontann!
(Approaching him as he draws away) Darling, I saw the
potential the moment that phoney dagger touched my neck---I
thought this is all too ham, no one's going to believe him---I'm
going to have to scream, it'll bring half of Scotland Yard round!
You needed a woman to push you into it, Marvin, a Lady
Macbeth!
MARVIN:
I'd rather die than be a king in your fucking arms!
LIZZY:
You liar, you'd give your right arm to be a knight, let alone a king,
everybody in the business knows it! You go green with envy every
time a fag gets hit on the shoulder with that sword! (Imitating
his highly indivudal pronunciation of English) Why no
heteros? What's unknightable about a normal sexual impulse?
There is a violent hammering on the door.
It looks as if the door might cave in. It
trembles on his hinges.
H.N.'s voice breaks in over the intercom, in
some alarm.
There is an enormous explosion.
Simultaneously the lights BLACK OUT.
Screams in the distance. Shattering glass.
People running.
The hammering on the door has ceased.
LIZZY (herscreams genuine this time) Marvin! Marvin!
Ambulance sirens.


ACT TWO
The scene opens on a BLACKOUT. We
gradually discern dim street lights at the
window of the far room.
The LIGHTS suddenly come up.
MARVIN and LIZZY are asleep on the
settee. LIZZY is more or less on top of him.
Her panties are on the floor with her shoes.
A few seconds later they stir. Blinking
awake they are surprised to find themselves
where they are, and with whom they are, and
at what degree of proximity.
LIZZY's clothes are disordered. He is
dishevelled.
They slump back into sleep.
H.N. (VO, considerably politer than before, almost unctious) Mr James.
Miss Turndale.
They fail to wake.
H.N. (VO, cont.) Are you there Mr James? Miss Turndale?
MARVIN stirs. He kisses LIZZY lightly on
the cheek.
MARVIN (mumbling) What happened for christsake?
LIZZY (her eyes still closed) I'm probably pregnant. That's what happened.
MARVIN:
I'm asking him not you.


Mr James, Miss Turndale, the light cables have just been
repaired. Couldyou report back thatyour lighting system is
working? And the sound of course? Are you hearing me?
MARVIN fumbles for the mike under
LIZZY.
LIZZY (eyes still closed) Christ, not again! Doyou want my blood as well?
MARVIN:
I'm looking for the fucking mike!
He finds it. LIZZY sighs with pleasure, still
mostly asleep.
MARVIN (cont., into the mike) Yes we've got the lights. What happened?
Three people were killed in the explosion Mr James.
MARVIN:
Three people! (Roughly nudging LIZZY, then to her,
hissing:) Three people were killed. (Into the mike) Where
for God'ssake?
She leans up.
It was an IRA bomb Mr Marvin---it blew up half the foyer!
MARVIN:
Oh my God!
There were seven of them dressed as policemen Mr Marvin. I did
warn you Mr James that the IRA might take advantage of the
situation, though I didn't expect them to be that brash.
MARVIN:
Yes,you did warn me dammit!
After the bomb went off, in the confusion, the IRA men entered
the foyer and took possession of it. They're still there Mr. James.
They're at the foot of your staircase.
MARVIN:
Oh my God!
LIZZY (hissing) Stop saying that!
I'm afraid we are now their hostages Mr James. All of us.


MARVIN:
Oh my---(he is gagged by her hand)!
That is, we're barricaded in on the auditorium side of the foyer
while they're barricaded in on the other side, in the foyer itself,
against both us and the police outside. Do you get the picture?
MARVIN:
Well of course I get the picture!
We are thus in control of the auditorium, the stage and the
dressing rooms, while they occupy the foyer and, of course, being
Irish, the foyer bar. They have radio-controlled bombs and are
threatening to blow up your staircase by blasting their way
through to the back of the stage, which alas we don't wholly
control, which is why a few of them have got through to your
staircase, which they will blow up if they don't get their demands.
MARVIN:
Well, give them what they want man!
I'm afraid, Mr James, that's out of our hands, since we too are
hostages, though divided from our captors by a wall and two ros of
seats which we pushed against the foyer doors, we broke them up
into twos and threes--
MARVIN:
Yes, yes, I don't need to know your guerilla arrangements, what
the fuck is going to happen to me?
LIZZY (hissing) Us!
I'm afraid that depends on the hostage negotiator, who of course
isn't me any more, he's dealing with them by voice from the
street. They want twenty-one men serving life-sentences in
Northern Ireland released and the good thing is that they are
prepared to negotiate on the exact number. So I find myself Mr
James in the odd position of being a hostage negotiator while at
the same time a hostage.
MARVIN makes an insipid smile to LIZZY.
H.N. (VO, cont.) By the way the Resistance, as they prefer to be called, would
like to say that they are especially sorry to see your life sacrificed
as they rememberyour memorable performance as Othello at the
Gate theatre in Dublin.
MARVIN:
Oh my---(again he is swiftly gagged by LIZZY)!


I'm afraid you do bear a heavy responsibility Mr James for
attracting the IRA to this theatre, thus incurring the death of
three innocent members of the front of house staff. We have
armed police with us here but unfortunately they are hostages
too. However the police surrounding the building, on the outside
of the foyer entrance doors, are free. We've been ordered not to
enter your room, Mr James---ordered by the Irish Resistance.
There is an understandable fear on their side that the only exit to
the street still unguarded is the one leading from your suite to the
stage door, which is why they have a few men there.
LIZZY (horrified, hissing) They're OUT THERE?
MARVIN (hissing) Waiting to blow up the staircase! (To H.N.) Is the stage
door in their hands?
I'm afraid SO Mr James.
MARVIN:
Oh my god.
They overran the corridor on one side of the stalls and managed
to get to the stage door that way, through the pass door. They're
all in radio communication with each other but of course are
fearful of talking because we can monitor every word. When we
realised what was going on we occupied the stage, thus protecting
ourselves and to some extentyou.
MARVIN:
But my exit goes down to the stage door too dammit!
Right again Mr James. In this sense you and Miss Turndale are
more their hostages than we are, since we can at least fight for it,
cut them off SO to speak.
MARVIN:
So to speak my arse! Fancy letting a bunch of phoney policemen
through!
They were awfully convincing, I'm afraid. By the way, there is a
possibility that the ones at the foot of your staircase, at the stage
door, will try to negotiate with me through you or, worse, kill or
torture one or both of you in an attempt to twist the Home
Secretary's arm. Is your door locked Mr James, I mean really
well?


MARVIN:
Of course it is, I Ilocked it against you!
Not that it'll give you much protection. But I'm forgetting. You
can defend yourself very adequately. You have an arms cache.
MARVIN:
That's boloney! This idiot Turnstile made it all up! Even her
screams were fake (as LIZZY struggles to get hold of the
mike, landing them both on the floor amid bedclothes)!
Thenyou're unarmed sir?
MARVIN (clinging to the mike) Well of course I am! The only thing I ever
fired in my life was a stage gun and that scared my balls off! The
things can backfire and scorch your wristyou know!
What was Miss Turndale's motive in lying in this way do you
think?
MARVIN (they are fighting for the mike now) Publicity! She wants to play
Ophelia to my Hamlet. She couldn't even play Hamlet's skull!
She lands him a blow in his belly which
forbids further speech but he manages to
retain hold of the mike, with a determination
she would have admired at any other time.
Well sir it's lucky for you both that I didn't know this before. I
mean, I told the IRA thatyou had an arms cache in there which
would make them green with envy. So Miss Turndale's lie has
turned out useful, perhaps to us all.
MARVIN (to the mike) It'll be the first time--(struggle)--shhe's ever proved
useful in a theatre!
Well I must return to my negotiations at the back of the stalls Mr
James. It might take till morning--
MARVIN:
Why, what's the time?
It'sjust past midnight. Perhaps we should synchronise our
watches Mr James? Let me give ten seconds to one minute past
midnight. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, , five, four, three, two, it's
precisely one minute after midnight Mr James.


MARVIN (to himself) Oh fuck off!
In the meantime Mr James keep as calm as possible. At least
you're no longer a kidnapper, not in the immediate technical
sense, having been taken hostage by the IRA. Was that ever your
serious intention, Mr James, to kidnap someone?
MARVIN:
Of course it wasn't (dodging everywhere from LIZZY). Oh
the idea came into my head, the dramatic idea you might say.
(Getting under the dressing table) But this woman
Turnabout took it seriously! I must say she did her screams
pretty well, for RADA anyway, I mean even you took them
seriously didn'tyou?
Let me say this Mr James. If Miss Turndale can assure us that
she hasn't been injured or molested, then, if we all come out of
this alive, no charges will be preferred againstyou.
MARVIN (hissing from under the table at LIZZY) Why the hell don'tyou
say something?
LIZZY (hissing back) I've got nothing to say!
Well Mr James we must all be brave and patient and pray to God
that peace enters the hearts of our captors.
LIZZY (hissing) Say Amen!
MARVIN:
Balls!
The intercom cuts out.
MARVIN (cont., from under the table) I thought the IRA was finished.
Wasn't there something about a ceasefire to get the President re-
elected? An actor was telling me about it at Sardi's.
LIZZY:
Perhaps.
MARVIN:
What do you mean, perhaps? Don'tyou read the newspapers?
(Shaking his head and sighing) Isuppose the talks must have
broken down, or they just decided to re-exist, just like that!
He crawls out from under the table.


MARVIN (cont.) Trust a damned little rep actress to get me blown up by the
IRA! The Home Office won't give them their conditions.
Release twenty one prisoners? The Home Office? It takes them
two years to file a report! So blow us up is what they'll do.
(Going close to her) But if we walk out of this alive, Miss
Turnpike, I shall file charges against you.
LIZZY:
I haveyour baby inside. I mean you not only fucked me, you
fucked me as if you'd never had a woman. I know young men who
would have been hospitalised after less than what you did. It was
like one of those plays which instead of ending develop ever more
facets of plot, making one yearn for the refreshments bar while
still rivetted to one's seat.
MARVIN (coldly) I dare say you're quite a reliable judge of performance.
LIZZY:
Butyou didn't excite me!
MARVIN:
I didn't notice your attention wandering!
LIZZY:
Oh, I get hot at the sound of a zip.
She begins making up nonchalantly.
MARVIN (gazing at her) You're acting pretty cool.
LIZZY:
There isn'tan Irishman in the world would blow up a theatre,
least of all with a famous actor in it. A palace, a cabinet office,
yes, but not a theatre. Have you got a loo here?
MARVIN:
As a matter of fact I've been thinking, you hold it pretty well.
He indicates the inner room.
She takes her shoes and panty hose with her.
MARVIN (cont.) Don't mistake the door, otherwise you'll findyourself with the
Irish resistance. Then your false bravado'll fall to pieces.
We hear LIZZY open the lavatory door.
MARVIN paces up and down in thought.
MARVIN (cont., to himself) The son of the greatest comedienne of her


He is interrupted by the sound of LIZZY
peeing. He stares at the arch with irritation.
We hear the john flush. LIZZY returns.
MARVIN (cont., to LIZZY) I always find that women can be divided into two
categories, those who leave the door of the john open and those
well-bred enough not to. I've just realised, by the way, who you
remind me of.
LIZZY:
Who?
MARVIN:
My mother. She used to leave the john door open. And she
didn'twash her hands afterwards either.
LIZZY:
Soap's bad for the skin.
MARVIN:
That's what she said.
LIZZY:
Irun my fingers through the water. Perfectly adequate.
MARVIN:
She talked to her lovers like you talk to me. To soften them up in
case they played opposite her. She played opposite some of the
greatest men--
LIZZY (sneering) Yes I know, and she screwed all of them. 'Dame Helen
James plays offstage games'. 'Down comes the curtain, up goes
her skirt, One thing's certain, he'll get his little squirt."
MARVIN:
You perfectly horrible creature!
LIZZY:
'First the play, then the lay, Helen James will have her way.'
Helen's on the hunt, with her outsize--
MARVIN (clutching her throat) This is my mother!
LIZZY:
'She plays little tricks with gentlemen's--
With his hand over her mouth he begins
shaking her.
LIZZY:
You're hurting me!


MARVIN:
Hurtingyou? You're as strong as an ox!
H.N. breaks in quietly over the intercom.
Are you there Mr. James? I've been in conversation with both the
Home Office and the Resistance and I'm relieved to say we've
won an hour's respite. During that time none of us will move
from our present quarters and negotiations can proceed in a more
methodical way than was possible when threats of assault were
being exchanged. So the police outside have withdrawn from the
immediate vicinity of the theatre to a mobile canteen, except for
two groups, one guarding the main doors of the theatre and the
other outside the stage door. These are now assisted by troops.
From your window you will see neither. Doyou have provisions
Mr James?
MARVIN looks round for the mike and
LIZZY is already holding it out for him.
MARVIN (into the mike) A few tins of baked beans, a ham, some cheese
biscuits, milk and coffee and tea and there's some booze, also
caviar.
Well supplied if I may say SO Mr James.
LIZZY and MARVIN make sour faces at
each other.
H.N. (VO, cont.) The breathing space will give the resistance time to
reconsider the Home Office's terms, which offer reduced
sentences and/or prison transfers. On the other hand there have
been three deaths and these chaps are going to be held for
murder and this imparts a certain recklessness to their approach
which is hardly good news for you and us here, particularly for
you. I'll be in touch again soon.
H.N. cuts out.
LIZZY:
Could I have a glass of milk?
MARVIN:
Since things are looking up I'll get it for you (making for the
inner room).


We hear him opening the fridge.
LIZZY:
I suppose I ought to make you coffee.
MARVIN (off) I can imagine what you mean by coffee. I used to make coffee
for my mother on tour. That'show I knew you were a fake when
you came into this room with a cup of coffee in your hand.
People bring Marvin James tea but never coffee (reappearing
with a glass of milk).
He hands her the milk.
LIZZY (sipping) So you play me along.
MARVIN:
I was intrigued by those large eyes. They reminded me of
someone.
LIZZY:
Your mother.
MARVIN:
Someone else.
He sits at his dressing table and sips the
coffee she brought him when she first
entered, and which he didn'tfinish.
LIZZY (staring at him) That wasn't any good even when it started!
He shrugs this off.
MARVIN:
Listen to me. Here's what I propose. If we leave here safe and
sound I shall give you an income for life and provide for the kid,
supposing you're pregnant, which since you say you are you
almost certainly aren't. But there's to be nothing more intimate
than that between us, do you hear?
LIZZY:
Not even a weekly visit to see the child?
MARVIN:
No phonecalls saying the money hasn't arrived this month and the
little chap has been having a bad time with his teeth--
LIZZY (tenderly) It's going to be a boy?
MARVIN:
It usually is where the woman's an OX and the man sensitive, it's a
genetic reaction. Anyway I don'tintend to allow the greatest


dependency syndrome ever devised by female oxen to develop.
LIZZY:
You love me don'tyou?
MARVIN:
That's precisely why I'm getting all this straight now, to prepare
you for the letdown. The very fact that I could make love to you
three times in a row at my age is my cue to pull out much quicker
than even Iwould normally do. You see, Miss Turnover, I was my
mother's domestic slave and you've got mother written all over
your empty face. From the age of ten I served her breakfast in
bed. Ilooked after the sheets, a whole drama in itself
considering the number of men she brought home. Do you know,
LIZZY (rapture) You called me Lizzy!
MARVIN:
Whenyou were insulting my mother just now I felt a quickening
of emotion--compounded I think of both hatred and sexual
excitement. When she saw me in my first speaking part at the age
of fifteen she walked straight out of the theatre and left a
message with her agent to tell me Istank. She said later that the
only character I could play was my own, which was a bad one. But
I made it, I think for that reason. My first hit was The Cherry
Orchard, where having a world of my own seemed to fit the bill.
The rest was a series of flukes and some good casting. Then
Nigel Burbage came along and was wise or foolish enough to see
me as a classical actor. (Gazing at her) When you and I made
love your noises were hers. Iinwardly returned to the primal
scene while in your arms. You know about Freud and the primal
scene, that model for all the love we ever make. I heard once
again the sounds of my mother's lovemaking. They dominated
my life. IfI married you I'd never act again, my old fears would
grip me. All my childhood I trembled. Every time my mother
bent down to kiss me goodnight it was like saying good bye. Her
perfume, the powder on her neck, the way she had of bunching
her lips a little when she kissed me, the same way you have, these
things were the touch and smell of fear for me. That's why I came
three times when I was making love to you. Iwas in the primal
scene, with my mother. Coming and fearing are very close to
each other for me. The smell of blood and the smell of come
aren'tso distant from each other. My mother always seemed on
the point of abandoning me. Always a new tour or dinner out or
late rehearsals or a plane to catch. Sometimes Iwent with her
but mostly Istayed, in the hands of a governess who used to


2uah4
masturbate under the covers when she thought I was asleep. She
always uséd'my fear as her disciplinary weapon---'If you don't do
this your mother'll never come back.' And now I need that fear
like a drug. You can see me trembling now maybe but I'm in my
seventh heaven. IfImarried you I'd be trembling night and day.
LIZZY (quietly) Isn't this from a show?
MARVIN:
What?
LIZZY:
The long speech from A Man Called Shrink? Nigel produced it
thirteen years ago.
MARVIN (unconcerned) What about it? The sentiments happen to fit.
That's why I accepted the script. Why else should I accept a
script?
LIZZY (with great mildness) You're not a man,you're an it. You're not a
monster. You're a stage thing. Your mother must have fucked
a theatre to getyou.
He is sipping his coffee but suddenly rejects
it with disgust.
MARVIN:
You're right! One simply shouldn't drink day-old coffee.
(Jumping up) I have an idea.
He hurries to the inner room.
MARVIN (cont., off) My balls literally ached when I walked off after that
speech. It was the longest fucking speech ever written. I tried it
as an extended exit line---you know, half of me going out and the
other half drifting back. It always looks bloody silly.
We hear the pop of a champagne cork.
MARVIN (cont., off) Healthy sound, what? Burbage said that's no good at all.
You can'tl keep bobbing in and out like that. Even the RSC
doesn't do it any more. Keep seated, he said. Then it'll come
from inside.
LIZZY (gloomily) That's good news at any rate.
He reappeares with two glasses of


champagne.
MARVIN:
What is?
LIZZY:
That Nigel thinks you're
an inside.
Unleon
got
MARVIN
her
sugl
(handing
a glass) Save your wit for the IRA. (As they - touch
glasses) Here's to survival.
They drink.
LIZZY:
I don't even believe you're HelenJames's son. Your mother
worked on the railways. She used to announce the trains. Iread
it in one of your programme notes.
MARVIN:
That was for a dramatisation of Emile Zola's Bête Humaine.
We had to have a hookup with the railways SO we putit out that
my mother was Britain's first train driver. Another time we were
doing a show on Dr Barnardo's homes, not the musical but a play
which came to nothing. I got thousands of letters suggesting ways
of finding my mother. The PR idiot put it out that Iwas an
orphan and Helen James only adopted me and Iyearned for my
real mum. The mail got SO heavy we had to make a statement, SO
we put: it out that my mum had been found. We got Tilly
Armitage to paint in a few wrinkles and put a shawl round her and
we passed her off as my mother who lived in Barnstable and had
been widowed in the war and lived like a recluse out of remorse
for having given me up for adoption but the war had been on and
she'd been forced to work in a munitions factory and had thought
it best for me to be--
LIZZY:
Another long speech---watch it! When he's nervous he talks, and
mostly lies. That's another thing they say.
MARVIN (as he goes back to the inner room for a refill) Anyway, you know
how good Tilly Armitage is on character, she pulled it off like a
dream.
LIZZY:
So who do my eyes remind you of, if not your ghastly mother?
MARVIN (off) Tilly Armitage as a matter of fact. My leading lady!
LIZZY:
Well of course I remind you of her. I'm her daughter!


MARVIN returns very slowly.
MARVIN:
What did you say?
LIZZY:
Tilly Armitage is my mother.
MARVIN (staring at her) The big eyes! Shining black grapes! If a writer
could get black shining grapes into a speech she grabbed the play!
Why didn'tyou say SO before? I'd have kicked you out long ago!
(Vehemently) She sent you here, didn't she, you little bitch?
LIZZY:
Sent me here? She bars your name! That's why I had to see
your shows in secret.
MARVIN (really to himself) You're the spitten image!
LIZZY:
She used to tell the front of house people if you see Lizzy kick her
out.
MARVIN:
Ithought something fishy was going on. OK, it's the last time I
touch you! Jesus, sleeping with Tilly Armitage's daughter! She'd
kill me!
LIZZY (calmly) And me.
MARVIN:
You'd better keep your mouth shut dammit. And don't tell your
bloody husband. He only has to think and it's all over London in
an hour. Of course I should have seen it! Those unmistakeable
vineyard eyes! h H u
HULL
daynin,
dwy cup ,
LIZZY:
Why don'tyou sit down and shut up? You're not convincing.
You know she wants to kill you anyway.
MARVIN:
Of course I know. They're the most famous offstage lines in the
trade-- Marvin James killed my career, he hogged all the light,
kept his best profile to the audience at the expense of mine, he
masked my best business! I turned him into a star and after that
the audience hardly noticed me! (Imitating her gravelly
baritone) Ifeel totally unseeeeeeen.
LIZZY:
It's true though isn't it?
MARVIN (furiously) Well of course it's true! This is a tough business!


Mani: whr gr al
nus
B2E:
KLuyy:
LIZZY:
I'm amazed you never made it with her sexually, Nigel Burbage
reckoned you had fifty-four actresses in the coufse of fifteen
productions--
He suddenly remembers something.
MARVIN:
But of course! That's her husband's name isn'tit? Stokes!
You're Jean Stokes! It's that pot-bellied stockbroker with the
bald patch---!
LIZZY (in her enormous voice) Just you leave daddy out of it!
MARVIN (leering) I'd love to. And his daughter as well. Your mother started
just like you did by the way.
LIZZY:
How was that?
MARVIN:
She wanted to get there SO badly she was prepared to forfeit the
happiness of any male she had her eye on. Don'tforget Stokes
was one of the most generous of the City angels and that he had a
proportionate say in the casting of the women---in general angels
aren'tinterested in the men. You see, I know all about you.
You saw early on when you married Nigel Burbage that it was
better never to let the heart get in the way of a possible contract.
You who have no ethics saw that the best way to do this and still
look like a human being was to play roles in which the heart
predominated! In Lizzy Turntable née Stokes we have a woman
who is eminently woman, in bed woman, in tears woman, in
screams woman but in fact is a player of roles SO adept that even
when she plays them badly we say to ourselves it's because she has
a heart, her heart insists SO much that it takes her off her
technique poor thing! Tilly Armitage all over! The fact is you're
both too bloody lazy to learn a technique!
LIZZY (perfectly tranquil) But it works doesn'tit? You say SO yourself.
MARVIN:
Precisely! What a technique is there, my friend, in the absence
of technique! Even when you're making love I can't tell where
your brain is---just like Tilly Armitage---all her lovers say
it---being in Tilly's arms is like wandering round a fine old
country mansion where the table's setfor a banquet and the fires
are all alight but there's no host. The fact is that what she has
ticking in her thoracic area is a cardio-calculator linked to
casting agencies, producers and television networks. (Drilling


it into her) If those IRA men came in now you'd deflate like a
beach mattress, whereas I'd give them the performance of my
life! That's the difference between me and the Armitage
family---I'm a stage beast, I was dandled on knees in dressing
rooms before I could utter my first syllables. The only life I know
is in the company of that sweating, morose, unkind and yet gentle
monster, the theatre audience. And that's why I invariably have
them at my feet, even the critics who pan my performances.
They only go to the theatre a few evenings a week but I live it, I
inhabit its darknesses and know how to weave my spells and in the
end my enemies fallbefore them.
LIZZY:
'My enemies succumb'a are the words. And mummy says 'Oh Retisol l
cone to bed andshut up'. She's sitting more or less where I'm
sitting. You're à bit further downstage, with your good side to
the audience.
MARVIN:
And just like your motheryou're---infuriating to the point
of---reducing one
(Sitting down with greatfatigue at the
dressing table).
LIZZY:
To sincerity? Wouldn't that be something! You know,you're
probably right that I'm not really an actress. I actually try to be
sincere, OKI I rarely succeed but I do enjoy sincere company.
There are sincere people. Real people.
one
MARVIN:
I didn't say you weren't an actress. You're just a bad actress.
All you can do is act, sincerely, and act badly---if sincerely.
Whereas my sincerity's perfect. It's rehearsed to the finest
detail of hypocrisy, and it convinces everybody.
LIZZY:
Just the same, that was the garden speech in May Bugs, and only a
madman talks prepared lines as conversation.
MARVIN:
If I ever spoke the truth she said you're doing a speech from some
show. (Furious) The names are different! I never said Tilly
or Miss Turntable in a play!
LIZZY:
Well of course! You adapt.
He looks at her helplessly for a moment.
MARVIN:
Id could never touch that woman. When she said what about a
drinky after the show I ran for a cab. Iimagine Stokes is


wretchedly unhappy. Isee him at Whites from time to time.
LIZZY:
Is that your club? Your club should be the Garrick if you're an
actor.
MARVIN:
I don't do obvious things. Sincerethings.
He sits forlornly.
LIZZY (watching him) You don't do intelligent things either.
MARVIN (hardly audible) Tilly Armitage again... My mother!
LIZZY:
Otherwise you'd have seen long ago that you needed this siege not
for Hamlet but to keep you in a job!
MARVIN (still on his lonely theme) Do you wonder at the success of
feminism? We males quail at the sound of mother's rasping
tongue!
hum,
LIZZY:
For years now Nigel's been renting this place out to other
productions, it was dark for nine whole months nottwe-years-age!
I, m Lexe do ben
lus
si uow /
MARVIN:
ugy's
Isometmes-needed a rest dammit!
LIZZY:
No one can break through to you! You were offered an off-off-
off Broadway venue last month---off-off-off Broadway, you the
star!
MARVIN:
Times are hard dammit!
LIZZY:
And the Macbeth you were going to play to a ninety-five percent
absent audience was a studio Macbeth, broken down to a two
hander, you and Tilly! Because Nigel can't afford you any more
and you drag him downhill withyou---he'll have to sell up soon!
MARVIN:
All he has to sell is me! The theatre isn't his.
LIZZY:
The trust decided to sell within the year unless something
dramatic happens--
MARVIN:
Isn't this dramatic? After this we're eiother dead or playing
Hamlet.


LIZZY:
But you're still seeing it in little personal terms. A few hours ago
this siege was a small event in London's theatreland but with
three people killed and the IRA in on it don'tyou see you have
the attention of the world?
MARVIN (with one of his great sighs) Lizzy, I've said it often
enough--whatever I do I do in spite of myself. He can't act, my
mother said. But did she ever get a theatre of her own?
LIZZY gives up.
MARVIN (cont.) I had to act. Theatre was all I knew. Ihad to cultivate the
ways of a great actor without being one, for no actor ever is a
great actor. There are good moments and bad moments. You
see, they used to hold their breath at my first entrance-- -and
disregard the rest of the play. Funnily enough, that's still
theatre.
LIZZY (staring at him) Are you crying?
MARVIN:
As I said before, that's something I could never do. My mother
said shake your shoulders and hide yourf face, it's as near as you'll
ever get.
LIZZY:
Did you know the trust was thinking of turning this dressing room
into a studio theatre? You could seat about a hundred in here if
you broke down that wall.
He has no reply.
LIZZY (cont., watching him) At a loss for words.
She goes on an impulse and sits on his lap.
LIZZY:
I never opened to a man in my life like to you. You went SO deep
I thought Iwould faint. That's why I came to you today, a woman
can see ahead.
MARVIN (wriggling uncomfortably) Stop talking like my mother.
LIZZY:
Why didn't she e seduce you?
MARVIN (with a leer) She had Stokes.


LIZZY (laughing) What are you talking about? That's Tilly Armitage!
MARVIN:
What's the difference? (Suddenly, gripping her) Which
makesyou not her daughter at all! Twenty eight years ago she
didn't even know Stokes!
LIZZY (kissing him) Whenyou're inside it's like having a rich totem in there,
quivering and trembling---as if all your imagination was there!
MARVIN:
My imagination's here (indicating his head)!
She smiles and kisses him again dreamily.
LIZZY:
I always wanted to fuck my father.
MARVIN:
Thank you very much.
LIZZY:
No I mean when you said his pot belly I felt excited. It doesn't
matter his not being my real father.
MARVIN:
You mean that flatulent gasping accountant took you over as a
bastard?
LIZZY:
He's a good man and you're not. (Nestling her head in his
chest) I don't care if they kill us, I don't care any more.
He gazes before him.
MARVIN:
When I was a child everything was SO charming. People called
each other darling andyou went to Brighton for the weekend on
the Flying Fornicator. Ifyou went by caryou wore gauntlet
gloves and flaps over your ears and you might do five miles
without seeing another vehicle. There were white and yellow
butterflies, and buttercups in the fields, and the beach at
Littlehampton was SO clean it gleamed like salt at low tide.
Shaftesbury Avenue had a couple of Shakespeare productions at
least---commercial ones, mind, not subsidised. There were two
or was it three evening papers and when you opened themyou
read say an article by Eevelyn Waugh or a poem by Ezra Pound
and it was stuff that didn't insult you. You could pop round to
the Piccadilly hotel or Odenino's for a cup of tea and you got
fresh toast and gentleman's relish and cup cakes and some
dancing if you felt like it. The world hummed with pleasure in
those days, you heard it when you woke in the morning but now


you hear planes on the descent to London airport.
LIZZY:
But wasn't there an awful lot of unemployment?
They laugh, squeeze each other with delight.
MARVIN:
It's actually Wasn't there an awful lot of hunger marches?".
LIZZY:
I saw it at least four times.
MARVIN (looking at her with admiration) You really did see just about
every show of mine!
LIZZY:
When she let me.
MARVIN:
But surely she wouldn't rob you of a chance to see her!
LIZZY:
She knew Iwanted you. You were the only man for me (stroking
hisface). This is the first time in all my life I've felt safe, and
we're under a sentence of death.
MARVIN:
You make the most sincere statement sound phoney.
LIZZY:
Why is that?
MARVIN:
Well, you only have one feeling really and that's to landyourself a
big part in a big show and your name above the title and your
phone ringing all day and agents fighting for you and new parts
coming up you can pick and choose from like a rich woman over
her jewellery. Anything else, sex for instance, is counterfeit.
So is the truth, for you. Hence you always sound phoney.
LIZZY:
What feelings other than ambitious ones do you have? I mean
your love-making's thrilling but it's thrilling like a show is
thrilling. So?
MARVIN:
Don'tyou see Ophelia was a liar just like you? She only comes
out insipid because people play her truthful and good. I mean
her verses are the bawdiest the Old Chap ever wrote:
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.


Then up he rose and donned his clo'es
And dupped the chamber door
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
TOGETHER: By Gos and by Saint Charity
Alack and fie for shame!
Young men will do'tif they come to't,
By cock, they are to blame!
It delights them.
LIZZY:
Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me
You promised me to wed'.
MARVIN;
'So would I'a done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.'
LIZZY:
Is that what you feel?
MARVIN:
What?
LIZZY:
That because you fucked me you have no further interest in me?
MARVIN:
Inever had any further interest in you.
They laugh.
LIZZY:
Ispent hours pushing my clit up against his belly when I was
thirteen or fourteen. Arthur Stokes, chartered accountant,
doesn't get anything but figures but how Iwanted that man!
MARVIN:
The poor man ached for Tilly, not you.
LIZZY:
She never got in before three in the morning and her shows were
usually down by eleven. She could easily have told him pick me
up at the theatre but she never did because her real name was
Duchesse de Sade.
MARVIN:
That's what I called her.
LIZZY (sweetly) Iknow. He used to sit drinking whisky and watching the box
and I knew he was good for a cuddle after the third or fourth
drink. One evening when I was sixteen he went to bed early and I


started tickling him and he pulled me into bed with him, I'djust
had a bath and only had a dressing gown on and he started to put
it in, I nearly fainted and would you believe it the front door
opens and in she comes, she's never been home that early before
or since, he was half in and I swear he was just about to come and
she's suddenly standing there over the bed screaming Leave my
child alone!' and tearing all the bedclothes off to get a better
look. Then she puts her arms round me and takes me off to my
room and she rocks me in her arms, the silly cow, and keeps
saying Poor darling! Poor darling!". She didn't give a damn
about me sleeping with him, she just wanted to keep us both out
of the deepest thrill of our lives. I've never forgiven her for that.
MARVIN:
For doing what any mother would?
LIZZY:
She didn't let him out until dawn.
MARVIN:
Out?
LIZZY:
She let him come inside! He must still be dreaming about that
one night, first me, then her, it extended until dawn and then he
fell into the happiest sleep of his life, I could hear him snoring.
She makes a sort of shocked gasp, you know, when she comes.
Almost a protest, a refusal. As if she's in bed for reasonably
polite conversation and then this thrusting begins and she can't
account forit and makes that gasp as if he's taking a fearful
liberty, but she allows it out of a kind of inability to quite
understand.
He looks away.
LIZZY (cont.) Am I making you jealous?
MARVIN:
Not on your Nelly, I was thinking of what Freud said in A Man
Called Shrink-- -a lover's always second best for a woman because
he isn't her father. (He shrugs) I've been SO close to Tilly in
stage embraces, stage marriages that we never--
LIZZY:
You see, she let him have it the whole night only to kill his desire
for me. It was pure jealousy, she was just scared of any sex
happening that she wasn't having. It had nothing to do with me
being her daughter. She drugs all her men like that. Drugs
them! Not with her body because she hasn't got much of one, her
strength lies between her legs, she weaves a spell there and


they're her prisoners for life. That efficient organ is such a
tunnel of sweets and ecstasies Ifeel she must have rehearsed its
performances as meticulously as she does all her stage business.
So quiet, SO secretive without being furtive!
MARVIN:
You have a special eloquence when you talk about Tilly.
TILLY:
Imarried Nigel to get free of her. Iwas living in her pleasures.
MARVIN:
Captive of both wife and daughter, poor Arthur Stokes!
TILLY:
When we were asleep I could feel those IRA men downstairs
yearning for a woman in their dreams! Danger does that. Do
you remember that world holocaust play---?
MARVIN:
I'll say! I lost twenty thousand on it.
TILLY:
Where the woman goes round offering herself to the men just
before some battle. The last coitus! That was what it was like
between you and me! And it's always going to be like that!
We'll neverl look at anybody else (clutching his hand and
biting it), let's draw blood like the gypsies and marry now,
whether they kill us or not!
She continues biting him until he jumps up
yelling and nursing his hand.
MARVIN:
What the fuck are you doing? You nearly bit my finger off!
LIZZY (uninfluenced) Let's at least enjoy our last moments darling! All my
childhood Iyearned for you and now they want to snatch you away
from me! You melted in with the golden afternoon light and the
tea table with its gleaming white cloth and all the good things, the
raisin cake and the fire crackers and icing with the little
terracotta hobgoblins (taking off her panty hose) and the
chrysanthemums in a bowl and the hum of voices I knew and the
dark vivid colours of my comics and the sound of the street
outside! How can one open one's legs to an outsider? It is a
boy! I can feel him (as she pursues MARVIN), he's kicking!
MARVIN:
I'll kick you if you don't get out of my way (jumping around to
avoid her)! AND STOP QUOTING THAT BLOODY WORLD
HOLOCAUST PLAY! (Dodging her) told,you, I lost a mint
oni it. It was Nigel Burbage'sfault. He said I get a hundred


world holocaust plays a week and I've got to do one just to show
the silly buggers they don'twork. Now listen to me---(gripping
her wrists firmly so that she can't move and pushing her on
to the settee) Pully yourself together! You've got your lines
mixed up. You've moved on to that bloody Royal Court disaster,
Incest!
He backs away from her as she shivers and
comes back to herself, gazing at the floor.
Everything is hushed. He looks at her in a
gingerly way, as if about to announce
something.
MARVIN (cont.) You see, Lizzy, I did have your mother.
She looks up at him blearily.
MARVIN (cont.) It was long before Arthur Stokes. When I thought she was
human.
LIZZY:
How long ago?
MARVIN:
Twenty eightyears ago. We did it night and day for a week and
she didn'ttake any precautions.
A long pause during which she sighs,
involuntarily picks up her panty hose, then
throws it back on the floor again.
LIZZY:
I always half knew it, wanted it SO deeply!
MARVIN:
I'm not saying it's the case, nothing was proved, she was having
others of course but it's possible, just possible-
LIZZY:
In other words it's definite.
MARVIN:
It could be, yes.
She pulls her panty hose back on and puts on
her shoes.
LIZZY:
I'm going to find out.


MARVIN:
Find out what?
LIZZY:
Ifyou're my daddy! You are my daddy aren'tyou?
MARVIN:
How the hell do I know?
LIZZY:
That's why I'm going to ask her! She's downstairs rehearsing!
She walks towards the exit door. He gapes at
her.
MARVIN:
The IRA's down there too.
LIZZY:
Exactly.
She walks to the door.
LIZZY (cont.) And Iwouldn't try and stop me if I were you.
MARVIN:
Idon'tintend to.
LIZZY (walking on) Don'tworry, the last thing they'll want to do to a woman is
kill her, daddy. You see this (opening her blouse and
showing him her breasts), daddy?
He does nothing.
She has gone.
We hear her footsteps echoing down the
staircase.
Suddenly there is a burst of machine-gun fire.
MARVIN (rushing to the exit) Viktoria! Viktoria!
Blackout.


ACT THREE
The lights are set dim.
MARVIN and LIZZY are once more lying
asleep on the settee. As before, she is more
or less on top of him.
MARVIN's head is thrown back in extreme
exhaustion. His mouth is wide open. They
lie motionless, in a dead sleep.
We discern hushed movement in the area of
the inner room.
Without a sound A HOODED FIGURE
enters from the staircase and pauses to take
in his surroundings.
He sees MARVIN and LIZZY and remains a
few feet away, gazing at them. He stands
there for some time.
He tiptoes to the settee. When he reaches it
he stops, turning his gaze from MARVIN to
LIZZY and back again. He moves closer to
MARVIN.
He bends down and peers deeply into
MARVIN'sface, SO that he almost touches
him. He remains like this, peering at
MARVIN, motionless.
MARVIN, stirred from his sleep by this
proximity, blinks slightly, makes a movement.
He starts and seems for a moment to see
THE HOODED FIGURE. He lets out a
sleep-muffled cry of horror, the silent scream
of nightmare.


Perceiving this THE HOODED FIGURE
withdraws, but slowly, still gazing at
MARVIN, who seems to be following his
movements with the utmost fear.
THE HOODED FIGURE disappears behind
the arch.
MARVIN (shaking LIZZY awake) Did you see that? (As she stirs
helplessly) Did you see?
LIZZY (suddenly awake and sitting up, hitting his face in doing so) See
what?
MARVIN:
Oh my God we must have left the door open!
LIZZY (catching his terror) Who was it?
MARVIN:
A man! A hooded man!
LIZZY (throwing herself back) Oh fuck off!
MARVIN:
He was here, here! Well get up dammit and shut the door!
Instead she hides her head under the blanket.
MARVIN (cont.) Where's that mike?
He pulls it from under her the mike and
frantically switches it to on.
MARVIN (into the mike) Hullo! Hullo! Are you there?
LIZZY (still hidden) Well of course I'm here (pulling the blanket away
from her face in exasperation)!
Silence.
MARVIN:
Oh my God they've buggered off and left us with the IRA!
He desperately glances round at the inner
room. H.N.'s voice breaks in quietly.
Are you calling us Mr James?


MARVIN (into the mike) One of them just came in! Hood over his head!
One of the Resistance sir?
MARVIN:
Who else?
With a hood on? Was he in a policeman's uniform Mr James?
MARVIN:
Iwas asleep, how the hell should I know?
And how did he effect his entry Mr James?
MARVIN:
He just walked in! We must have left the door open!
Have you closed it Mr James?
MARVIN:
Notyet. (Hissing at LIZZY) Shut the fucking door!
LIZZY (hissing back) And get myself shot?
Shouldn'tyou do that right away Mr James?
MARVIN manages to throw LIZZY off and
stumble towards the arch, still holding the
mike.
MARVIN (into the mike) I'm doing it now.
He approaches the doorway in gingerly
fashion, craning round, on tiptoe.
LIZZY (hissing) You flabby yellow-livered wanker!
MARVIN :
Ssssssh!
He takes the plunge and with a grotesque run
kicks the door closed, locks it once and
rushes back to the settee and throws himself
back on it.
MARVIN (into the mike) I've done it!
What possessed you to open the door in the first place Mr James?


MARVIN:
Miss Turnstile ran out. Couldn't stand the strain. She came
back pretty quick when the bullets started flying!
There was an unaccountable burst of machine gunfire at around
MARVIN:
They fired up the stairs. She prefers life as a hostage.
We didn't callyou, thinkingyou might be asleep.
MARVIN:
We took a sleeping pill.
Hence the open door.
MARVIN:
Exactly.
The negotiations are breaking down, Mr James. At the moment
they're trying to strike a bargain over your lives.
MARVIN:
Oh my God!
LIZZY hides her head again.
They will kill you both if they don't get safe passage back to
Ireland. But of course sir the Home Secretary can hardly consent
to that.
MARVIN:
Aren't they threatening you as well?
We humble policemen aren't the news value you are Mr James.
It's a war of attrition sir. But I think we're wearing them down.
Since there are SO few of them they can only sleep fitfully. Might
Isuggest you and Miss Turndale quarrel less audibly? Please
remember thatyou have both been trained in voice projection.
Your voices are even reaching us over the IRA intercom.
MARVIN (to LIZZY, hissing) It's that bloody fog horn of yours!
Are you a catholic sir?
MARVIN:
And Miss Turndale?


LIZZY (hissing with withering scorn) What, Tilly Armitage's daughter? I'm
not even baptised.
MARVIN (into the mike) Agnostic.
Wouldyou nevertheless join us in a prayerfrom one here who's a
C. of E. minister?
MARVIN:
Isuppose SO.
C.ofE. MAN: Let our minds dwell not on saving this life but on the glories of
the next, SO that should the moment come we shall be inwardly
prepared and readily accept the sacrifice we have been called
upon to make for ends which, in our earthly mantle, we cannot
properly understand, in the name of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Ghost.
ALL:
Amen.
MARVIN is thoroughly mournful after this,
his chin in his chest.
LIZZY (appearing again) That's the death knell. My granma used to say
about clergymen if it's a catholic expect a glass of whisky but a
protestant is curtains.
MARVIN:
Stuff your granma.
LIZZY (jumping up-- -and in the act pushing him off the settee) I'm going
to make some coffee. (On her way to the inner room) We
need a plan! (Off) Allyou've got is this instant stuff! You're a
born faker!
MARVIN:
The IRA'll pick that up. (Wandering over to the inner room)
What the hell are you doing? That's for constipation! The
coffee's in a jar marked jasmine tea!
Something made of glass smashes.
MARVIN (cont.) Oh my God!
LIZZY (screaming, off) STOP SA YING THAT! Can'tyou see I've burned
myself?


MARVIN (entering the inner room, off) You don't leave the gas on while you
talk and then light it!
He leads her back into the dressing room
with his arm round her.
MARVIN (cont.) Just like your mother. Can't even fix an egg.
LIZZY (hiding her head in his chest) I don'twant to die!
MARVIN:
So what about this plan?
LIZZY (abruptly ceasing to cry) That man came in here to see Marvin James!
With his own eyes! Don'tyou see what magicyou have for people
as long as they don't know you personally?
MARVIN:
You're trembling. Why don'tyou sit down?
He deposits her on the settee.
MARVIN (cont.) So you wish to use me?
LIZZY:
Yes! Ineedn't tell you that the great Garrick made his first hit as
Richard 111 by playing it without rant or declamation or those big
artificial gestures that were fashionable at the time.
A silence. He stares at her.
MARVIN:
That's Tilly's mad scene.
LIZZY:
Critics of the time tell us he had an easy and familiar yet forceful
style. You know that in 1746 he and the actor Quin, who played
in the old flamboyant style, had a competition to see which of
them the audience preferred.
MARVIN (touching her) Your hands are ice cold. Wake up! Wake up!
(Slapping her cheeks slightly).
LIZZY:
Garrick's natural style won. 53years later another great actor
called Kemble made his debut, also as Richard 111. He returned
to the old high deportment but not to the ranting.
MARVIN (past his patience) Yes Iknow--


TOGETHER: He had a solemn cadence but made rather long stately pauses,
while his action was extremely expressive. Now may I ask you a
question?
MARVIN:
I think I prefer coffee.
TOGETHER: Which of those three do you prefer?
MARVIN:
They all bore the shit out of me. And SO do you. (Turning his
back on her) You're an alternative to the IRA but only just.
LIZZY:
Kemble?
MARVIN:
Frighten me out of my wits! Just like your mother. She feigned
dead once. Two minutes was being called, you've never seen
such a bloody commotion in all your life! They held the curtain
and they carried her onstage. Play dead to a full house!' the
ASM said and dropped her on the floor and ordered the tabs up.
She was on her feetin a jiffy, the artful bitch!
LIZZY (still trembling violently) Kemble?
MARVIN:
Let me get some milk first. (He returns to the kitchen, off)
Kemble no, too romantic.
LIZZY:
So it's Garrick?
MARVIN (off) Garrick had my sort of magnetism. Had them in the palm of his
hand (appearing again with a glass of milk and sipping
from it).
LIZZY;
So you see how you live at cross purposes, how you esteem
Garrick and act like Quin--
TOGETHER; And in the end succeed only in being Kemble.
LIZZY:
Don'tyou see you must now graduate to Henry Irving--
TOGETHER: By adding hypnotism?
MARVIN:
As a matter of fact, you're marginally more bonkers than she is.
LIZZY:
With your magic you can beguile, persuade, flatter, convince!


Go downstairs and use it! I'ddo it if I had your fifty years of
experience!
MARVIN:
Fifty?
LIZZY:
Allyour life you've twisted directors and managers and leading
ladies--
TOGETHER: --and casting agencies round your fickle finger.
LIZZY:
Go and twist the IRA!
He sits at the dressing table and studies
himself at the mirror.
MARVIN:
What would I tell them?
LIZZY:
Hullo, I believe you're all Dubliners. I did a dramatisation of
The Dubliners a while back.'
He stares at her.
MARVIN:
I didn't. That was Samuel Beckett. He wanted to write a one-
man show for me as a hand. I said what about my mouth and he
said that'll be invisible, all I want is your hand, I told him to piss
off.
LIZZY:
Tell them that.
MARVIN:
What?
LIZZY:
About Samuel Beckett.
MARVIN:
It isn't true (as he begins to make up). Anyway, I must have
real lines. Ican't talk like a person.
He takes a packet of letters tied round with
ribbon from a drawer.
MARVIN (cont., throwing them at her) Here! Let's rehearse from I have
remembrances of yours.'
LIZZY (trembling violently) I'm not doing that Ophelia scene! (Screaming)
ICAN'T! ICAN'T!


He suddenly jumps up with enormous
ferocity and seizes her by the throat.
MARVIN (cont.) You're acting along with me! Now pull yourself together!
They like to see a nice pair of tits! (As she hesitates) Go in the
kitchen and wait for your cue!
She picks up the packet of letters and start to
go reluctantly. He sets the lights. She turns,
watching him.
LIZZY:
We're performing here?
MARVIN:
Since the buggers aren't paying the least they can do is walk up
the stairs.
LIZZY:
You meanyou're afraid to walk down them.
MARVIN:
Get out!
She leaves. He finalises the lights and
prepares his position, his best side towards
the door.
MARVIN (cont. playing Hamlet) Softyou now! The fair Ophelia (gazing
toward the kitchen area)!
No LIZZY.
MARVIN (cont.) Softyou now! The fair---! What the fuck are you doing?
LIZZY comes in with her eyes popping out of
her head. She has taken the ribbon off the
packet of letters.
LIZZY:
These letters are from my mother!
MARVIN (dashingforward) How dare you---!
She jumps aside, clinging to the letters.
LIZZY (reading from a letter) She tried to burn the house down yesterday.?
Who's she?


MARVIN:
Iwouldn't press the enquiry if I were you. You've been hurt
once, this time it'll be worse! Worse than me sleeping with your
motherfor a week!
LIZZY (resolute) Who's she?
He walks away.
MARVIN:
My daughter. Ithink. Her name's Viktoria with a K.
LIZZY:
That's the name you shouted down the stairs!
MARVIN:
My daughter by your mum. There, I told you not to walk into the
fire.
She sits down under the weight of the shock.
LIZZY (completely out of it) You meanyou're not my daddy? That I
haven't committed incest? That I don'th have the child of incest within me?
MARVIN:
I'm talking about Viktoria, not you. After all, we named this
theatre after her. Iwanted it spelt with a K but Tilly said no,
spell it like the old Vic, it has more impact.
She watches him.
LIZZY:
So I'm Arthur Stokes's daughter after all? I don't mind being
his daughter (herface crinkling up with tears), Ilove him,
but Ijust want to know!
MARVIN:
Read some more, burn your hands more.
LIZZY (reading unwillingly through her tears but also excited) She's a
criminal like you'. (Looks at him) She said she'll come to
your first night and start screaming when you say out out brief
candle. She says you can putyour bloody candle where the
monkey put the nuts. She says you snuffed her candle all right.
And she says she loves you.' (Looks at him) She'd much
rather see you than me. That'sy your dirty work too isn'tit?
Undermining and pulling down, counting me for nothing,
upstaging me as you've always done! By the way, Viktoria says
she put a real knife in your daggers cupboard last night---


LIZZY looks round at the daggers cupboard.
LIZZY (cont.) If that's true you could have killed me two days ago! That could
have been my blood, not ketchup. Is there a real knife in that
cupboard?
MARVIN:
Oh Viktoria's full of nonsense.
LIZZY (thinking) Wait a minute. You and Tilly did a play called The Name's
Viktoria. That was with a K wasn'tit? You're SO bloody mad,
She relapses into quiet crying.
MARVIN:
The letters might give you a clue.
LIZZY (controlling herself and reading on) She says you won't be able to
tell the difference between that knife and the other ones---!
MARVIN:
Nor willI.
LIZZY (screaming as she throws down the letters) It's the play! These are
letters from the play! My mother couldn't learn her lines and she
had these notes in her handbag! The critics said what a
wonderful effect she got always looking down at her handbag--
such demureness, such pathos!
MARVIN (with afeckless shrug) Well,you know---critics.
LIZZY:
You pair of fucking frauds! (Suddenly screaming out) WHO
AM I? IS THERE ONE OR TWO OF ME? AMIVIKTORIA
AS WELL OR NOT VIKTORIA AT ALL?
MARVIN (shifting about) I don't know.
LIZZY (hysterically) Idid tell mum you could stuff your bloody candle! But
(herface crinkling up again) the monkey and his nuts aren't
MARVIN:
You see, you are Viktoria in the sense that Tilly and I talk about
you both as Viktoria. Sometimes. I mean we use the same
name for convenience. I meanIdon't know if you're mine but I
know she is.


LIZZY:
Yetyou say she's me! The madman says that Lizzy is Viktoira,
Viktoria Lizzy! Or I might be Viktoria! TELL ME MY NAME
YOU SHIT! I don't know who I am! Doesn't that move you to
pity? Please God tell me who I am! I don't know if I'm Lizzy or
Viktoria or even anybody at all! Tell me I'm somebody you shit!
MARVIN gets hold of her.
MARVIN:
Calm yourself--- Viktoria!
LIZZY:
TELL ME ONCE AND FOR ALL YOU SHIT AM I BEARING
YOUR GRANDSON? HAVEIGOT YOUR GRANDSON
INSIDE ME?
He seems to be thinking this over.
LIZZY (cont.) Tell me! (Crying desperately) Do you want to know
something about yourself? You're not bonkers, you should be in
care, male nurses should be looking after you, your walls should
be padded.
MARVIN:
In the twenty-eight years since Viktoria's birth not a soul has
discovered, as far as I know, that she isn't Arthur Stokes's
daughter.
LIZZY:
Nofeelings, no heart!
MARVIN:
The other day I was in a little tea room and Viktoria came in. I
happened to be with Joyce Bellamy, you know the girl who played
Clarissa in May Bugs. Viktoria came in clutching her belly, oh it
was some absurd little drama she was enacting---
LIZZY:
Appendicitis!
MARVIN:
And Joyce whispered to me venomously---
LIZZY (screaming) This is the Viktoria play!!
MARVIN:
She venomously whispered, Look at that, she's holding her belly
because you've got) your fist up her!
LIZZY:
And SO you have! You have!


MARVIN:
May I put in a good word for myself?
TOGETHER: Betrayal was the horror of my childhood, it was in my mother's
goodnight kiss, her surreptitious return in the early hours with yet
another fellow.
MARVIN:
The bed springs would clang--
TOGETHER: --like bells from hell! At dawn, sleepless, I would rise and go to
the door of her bedroom and do you know what I would do---
LIZZY (breaking off) Oh my God (her head in her hands)! We're going to
be shot...
MARVIN (continuing the speech and now trembling too) Iwould stand
there and try to smell him, smell the kind of man he was! My
stomach was sickened for life.
TOGETHER: Do you wonder I couldn'tlet my daughter go, even to the point of
acknowledging her? Won'tyou see that she's the only creature in
my life not bold enough to do without me and thus betray me?
A long silence.
LIZZY:
All right. I got the message. You're not going downstairs.
You're not going to perform for the IRA even up here. YOU'RE
JUST SHIT SCARED SO SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!
He stares vacantly before him.
H.N. breaks in over the intercom.
Mr James?
Neither of them stirs. Then with his eyes on
LIZZY he takes up the mike.
MARVIN (into the mike) Yes?
I'm afraid we must give up hope.
LIZZY:
There, what did I say?
The Resistance won'taccept the Home Secretary's conditions. I


can't tell what might happen. If the Home Secretary doesn't
recant within ten minutes the fuse will be fired. I'm sorry Mr
James. Miss Turndale, this is particularly tragic in your case
because you are the more innocent party. Prayers are being
offered throughout the nation and the United States. Standing
two minute silences are being planned at some Broadway
theatres. The managing committee of Equity in Dublin has
issued a special appeal to the IRA to spare us. We did our best
Mr James. We must die bravely.
MARVIN (to himself) Oh fuck off.
LIZZY shivers.
The intercom switches out.
They have nothing to say.
An ambulance siren is heard. And then
police sirens.
LIZZY (cont., bursting into tears and rushing to him) Oh daddy we're
going to die!
He holds her in silence, then leads her to the
window.
MARVIN:
Oh, I've played many last scenes my dear. (As they gaze out of
the window) Look how normal everything is---buses, I can see a
woman leading her dog.
LIZZY (shaking her head) I don't want to look!
MARVIN:
That dress of yours should be dry by now! Try it on! The one
from May Buds.
LIZZY (through her tears, shivering) Iplayed it in rep---York, Coventry,
Liverpool. And a parish hall in Torquay, off season.
MARVIN:
Do you remember Dallying with a Maiden? (Bustling about)
I've a tape of the whole number. And the lighting programme! I
can synch it in a jiffy! (singing) Whan an old man dallies with a
maiden--


He fixes the console.
MARVIN (singing, to encourage her) When an old man dallies with a
maiden--
LIZZY joins in croakingly.
TOGETHER: He dances with death, he dances with death!
With a glance at him for reassurance she runs
behind the screen to change into her original
dress.
He runs to the door to the door and unlocks
it, flings it open. He goes out and stands,
off, at the top of the staircase, shouting down
hysterically.
MARVIN (cont.,off) Guerillas! Guerillas! Feel free to climb the stairs!
Have no fear of my arms arsenal! The safety catches are on, the
bullets have been removed! Come and see the dance that rocked
Broadway! Hear the music that haunted a generation! If we
must die let us do SO on a note of joy!
He hurries back on and goes to the console,
where he sets the lighting programme. He
presses two buttons simultaneously and the
overture to May Buds begins. With childish
wonder he watches the lights as they come
MARVIN (cont., mouthing to the rhythm)
When an old man dallies with a maiden
He dances with death, he dances with death.
He puts on a trilby hat at a rakish angle and
glances at himself in the dressing table
mirror, humming. He is urbane and
debonair. He puts on a jacket.
LIZZY makes a sweeping entrance through
the arch in her dress.
The lights come up gold for her entrance and


the gold spreads to enclose the set in a
bustling, cheerful light that exactly reflects
MARVIN'S man about town appearance.
The cue for their dance comes. They meet
centre, behind the settee, and he takes her
hand. She does the first steps, he remaining
still to watch them with paternal interest.
He mimes charmed approval.
He joins her steps until they are dancing
together with great precision. This carefree
music arouses the. kind of elation we
associate with a successful musical in which
the hit numbers seem to have been written in
our minds before we hear them, SO
spontaneous and natural do they seem.
The lights add amber and silver to the gold.
The dance at one point has elements of Jack
Buchanan's soft-tap style. Then it goes into
hard aerobic choreography, which proves too
much for MARVIN. He begins to falter,
reel, yet strangely he keeps his rhythm and is
part of the dance. His face takes on a
vacant, then a frightened look. This is part
of the routine. They now break from each
other's rhythms and the lights change to
darker and more threatening combinations.
As the dance proceeds THE HOODED MAN
returns. We see him more clearly now. He
has a knitted mask that covers his head and
all but his eyes and lips. Otherwise he has a
conventional suit on. He watches them from
the doorway and then slips, well upstage, to
the archway. He continues watching them,
ready to conceal himself.
LIZZY dances round MARVIN as he falters,
her steps jagged in their beat. There is a
disturbing deep twanging in the music.
He almostfalls. The dance macabre begins.


It is a helpless, jerky thing. She is powerful,
flushed, strong. A certain deathly joy comes
over his movements too. This is a mad joy,
as if his movements were being worked from
another source. His look is inspired, deathly
wan, hers is coolly triumphant. The lights
become deep purple, brighten to silver and
then they begin to dim almost to blackout.
As they do SO we perceive that LIZZY's dress
has a phosphorescent design of the Reaper
and his Scythe, while MARVIN'sj jacket has a
Skull and Crossbones. These luminous
designs hover together in the darkness.
The music stops. MARVIN goes to the
console and kills the lighting programme.
They stare at each other, panting.
THE HOODED MAN is hidden behind the
arch.
MARVIN goes to the open door once more
and out onto the landing.
MARVIN (cont., returning) Nobody. (Listening) I think I hear footsteps.
(Shouting down the stairs again) Guerrillas! Friends! Pray
come and take your seats--- (To LIZZY) We'll have to run it
again.
LIZZY:
They'll never come up here! Doyou want to know why?
He disregards her and she makes a furious
dash to where he is standing.
LIZZY (cont., close to hisface) They're laughing out loud! You're a freak
and a fraud! You've ruined our lives---daddy's and Tilly's and
mine and Nigel's! Doyou think they want to see a played-out
wreck with an inch of make-up on his face?
She tears the cupboard door open and seizes
the first knife she can find.
He wrestles with her. He tries to run to the
exit but he stumbles and she plunges the


knife into his back.
He staggers, stands still, then falls, the knife
still sticking in his back. He lies face down,
motionless.
As this happens THE HOODED MAN
appears again from behind the arch. He is
still in his mask. He stands there with a
helpless hand extended.
LIZZY is horrified. She tries to stir
MARVIN but he doesn'tmove.
Whimpering, she runs off---and out down the
staircase.
THE HOODED MAN gazes at MARVIN's
still form. He tears off his mask. He goes to
MARVIN, turns him SO that he can see his
eyes, takes his pulse.
THE HOODED MAN (hoarse withfear) Mr James.
When he speaks we realise he is H.N.
MARVIN is immobile.
THE HOODED MAN stands again, aghast.
He looks here and there. He doesn'tk know
what to do. He bends down to MARVIN
again.
THE HOODED MAN (desperately shaking MARVIN) Mr James! Mr
James!
Still no movement.
THE HOODED MAN (cont., shouting this time) MR JAMES!
There is a long pause as THE HOODED
MAN is finally convinced that MARVIN is
dead.
MARVIN raises his head cautiously, then


lets it fall again.
THE HOODED MAN is astonished,
delighted, bewildered.
LIZZY appears on the scene again.
LIZZY (to H.N.) Who are you?
My name's Cowell.
LIZZY:
That bugger's spoofing.
She goes and gives MARVIN a light kick.
MARVIN (still immobile) How do you know?
LIZZY:
Itasted the blood. It's ketchup again.
MARVIN sits up slowly and with effort. He
takes off his jacket with the knife still
sticking to it and throws it aside. He rubs his
face with exhaustion.
MARVIN (looking up at THE HOODED MAN) Well, who areyou?
THE HOODED MAN: I'm your hostage negotiator.
MARVIN:
You're not one of the Irishmen posing?
THE HOODED MAN: No. My name's Cowell. Can'tyou recognise my voice?
MARVIN:
Ilook after my own voice not other people's. So we're finished?
COWELL:
Not exactly Mr James.
LIZZY:
The foyer isn't wrecked at all! People are buying tickets for
something or other. It's sunny and crisp outside. (To
COWELL) How do you account for the absence of the IRA?
COWELL:
Might we sit down and talk this over?
LIZZY (staring at him) You're Nigel's counsellor, the shrink, aren'tyou?


COWELL:
Not shrink. Transaction analyst. I also do neurolinguistic
programming.
This baffles them.
MARVIN:
Most intriguing. But we have a little matter of life and death
here. Which is it?
COWELL:
None of us is in any danger Mr James.
MARVIN gets himself to his feet and walks
over to the window and gazes out, exuding
relief, while LIZZY collapses into a chair.
MARVIN turns slowly and regards COWELL
for a few moments, calm and dispassionate.
MARVIN:
COWELL:
The name's Cowell.
MARVIN (turning it unpleasantly on his tongue) Cowell. You like
champagne?
COWELL:
Oh yes, I like champagne.
MARVIN goes to the kitchen.
LIZZY:
Where are the police?
COWELL:
They're no longer here.
We hear a champagne cork fly, off.
LIZZY:
And the IRA?
COWELL:
I'm surprised you aren't aware that the IRA declared a
permanent ceasefire long ago.
MARVIN enters with a tray bearing three
glasses containing bubbly. With deliberate
unction he bends before COWELL, offering
him a glass, which COWELL takes.


MARVIN (with a leer) And what about you, my dear Turncoat?
LIZZY (taking the champagne) He says the IRA went out of business.
MARVIN:
That's not the point. (To COWELL) Were the IRA here at all,
perhaps a splinter group?
COWELL:
Not in any shape or form, no.
MARVIN:
It was a hoax then.
COWELL:
It wasn't all a hoax.
MARVIN (to LIZZY) This is your husband's work. I can smell him!
COWELL:
I'm afraid it was largely my devising.
MARVIN:
At Nigel Burbage's invitation.
COWELL:
His urgent invitation, virtually on his knees. And to save your
skin, Mr James. Solely for that. Miss Turndale was safe from a
police charge butyou---they wanted you as firmly inside for as
many years as the judge could be persuaded to give you.
MARVIN:
Is there still a police charge?
COWELL:
It depends on you.
MARVIN (not believing him) To victory (raising his glass)!
They drink.
COWELL:
You declared Miss Turndale your hostage-
MARVIN:
I arranged that with Nigel Burbage!
LIZZY:
You did what?
MARVIN:
But I didn't ask him to organise the IRA!
COWELL:
Don'tyou see how foolish that arrangement was? You can't buy
publicity that cheap, you know. Don'tyou agree Miss Turndale?
LIZZY:
For Christ's sake stop calling me Miss Turndale. Either Mrs


Burbage or Lizzy.
COWELL (sipping his champagne) It seems I'm not very popular here.
LIZZY (to MARVIN) You sewed it all up with Nigel beforehand did you?
MARVIN (to COWELL) The police were fake as well I imagine?
COWELL:
Not at all. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Your plan with
Nigel was to tip the police off wasn'tit? And have it go out on
television? Well it did go out. And the police were tipped off.
By me. At Nigel's tearful request.
LIZZY:
He told m e he was only going to tell The Sun.
MARVIN (swinging on her) You scheming bitch! I might have known you two
were in it together. No wonder you screamed! You wanted it all
for real didn'tyou? Well you got it! A police charge that might
put me inside for the rest of my life!
COWELL:
If it's any comfort, Miss Turndale will face a charge too.
LIZZY:
What charge?
COWELL:
Collusion.
She shrugs.
MARVIN:
And what about all those bloody police sirens?
COWELL:
Sound effects. From the BBC actually. The other stuff was from
theatre stock. You've got everything from 1920s Bugattis to
clop-addy-clops in this place.
MARVIN (with a leer) I know the tapes, thank you.
COWELL:
Surprised you didn't recognise them in that case.
MARVIN:
The explosion and the machine gun bullets were new material I
hadn't heard before. (To LIZZY) Itold Nigel, T said machine
gun bullets don't thump, people are going to think it's a ghost
story.
LIZZY (exhausted) Oh shut up.


COWELL:
You see, Mr James, everything went wrong because Nigel was
convinced by Lizzy's screaming. He said II know Lizzy's scream
and this is for real. That's why I contacted the police.
MARVIN (to LIZZY) I told you not to go over the top!
COWELL (also to LIZZY) I must agree you didn't help the situation, Lizzy. But
you had your secondary gains to consider didn'tyou? We call
them secondary gains in the counselling business. You were
determined to become Mr. James's leading lady. Yousaid SO
yourself. We have it all on tape.
MARVIN:
You have it on tape?
COWELL:
Yes.
LIZZY:
What---all our conversations?
COWELL:
Yes.
LIZZY:
All that gasping and groaning on the settee as well?
COWELL:
Three copies.
MARVIN:
Mr Cowpad, don'tyou think you had better tell us in your own
words exactly what happened?
COWELL:
By all means. Nigel pushed a lot of speeches under my nose and
said read these on the intercom. I said This is too obvious,
Nigel, they'll never believe the IRA have broken the ceasefire'
but no he said 'all these two people read is The Stage and
Variety, on the box all they look at are the Oscar awards'.
A pause of truth occurs.
MARVIN:
But where does the fact that you're a hypnotist come into all this?
In mean you suddenly turn up at the theatre and started reading
speeches. Were you hypnotising us?
COWELL:
I'm a transaction analyst. I don't put people to sleep, I wake
them up!
MARVIN:
But I saw policemen from that window!


COWELL:
We hired a repertory company to to speak.
MARVIN:
A repertory company sO to speak? You either hired them or you
didn't.
COWELL:
Partly we did and partly we didn't. As I said before, police were
here. At the beginning. There was a lot of press interest. You
got what you wanted. You're both very much on the map now.
LIZZY:
Are we really?
She and MARVIN smile at each other.
COWELL:
You had to be frightened. The police demanded it. They were
very good about it.
MARVIN:
About me dying of fear?
COWELL:
They agreed to reduce the charges against you if we could bring it
all to a peaceful and hoax-like conclusion which the public could
laugh about afterwards. You'll be upf for obstruction-you know,
wasting police time. Their original charges, if they press them,
will get) you life.
MARVIN:
That's more spoofing is it?
COWELL:
It's dreadfully for real. If you care to look through that open
door you'll see a policeman standing there.
MARVIN walks upstage, looks and quickly
returns.
MARVIN:
Oh my God.
LIZZY:
Is saw police cars on the street! You couldn't have hired them!
COWELL:
Your eyes invented them I'm afraid. It happens in emergencies.
Just as your acting makes people see things that aren't, SO you saw
police cars that weren't.
LIZZY (to MARVIN) Nigel wanted me to go to this jerk for counselling.
COWELL:
And you said no, he'll analyse my talent away.


LIZZY:
Your name's Jocelyn isn'tit?
COWELL:
Yes.
MARVIN:
I was never awed by shrinks. Ialways showed them what bad
actors they were. For instance, (to COWELL) half your
gestures are unnecessary. They don't go with the pitch of your
voice.
COWELL (drinking again, then to MARVIN) Which brings me to why I
accepted
a role in all this.
MARVIN:
Why did you?
COWELL:
Iwas convinced that a great human drama was being played out
up here. I mean, your powers of invention, Mr James, your love
of surprise, your quite remarkable ingenuity in devising entirely
false situations! I was spellbound and I couldn't allow you to be
arrested as a public danger, to perform in a prison theatrical
society for the rest of your life! CouldI?
MARVIN (with a long-sujfering glance at LIZZY) Apparently not.
COWELL:
I mean, performing life! And living the performance! I've
never known anything like it. I mean, here was Nigel showing me
the scripts as you were performing them but not performing them
exactly, with marvellous ingenuity you were adapting them to the
living situation as you went along!
MARVIN and LIZZY stare at each other
gloomily.
COWELL (cont.) Imean I couldn't believe it! (Jumping up and pacing
round) I mean, the very idea of people expressing themselves by
means of lines they might have learned years, decades before!
MARVIN:
She did it too.
COWELL:
Irealised with a jolt---the kind of jolt that changes one's whole
career---I mean I looked back on the thousands of hours I've
listened to people's woes and I suddenly saw that not one single
original word had been spoken, not one word that could truly be
described as of their O wn devising!


MARVIN and LIZZY simply stare at him
after this outburst, of which they appear not
to understand nothing.
COWELL (suddenly turning on them) Not very impressed eh? Well here's
the meat of the matter. This place, the Vic on the Strand, is now
a bingo hall.
MARVIN:
A bingo---! (Jumping up) What the fuck are you saying?
COWELL:
It thought that would rouse you.
MARVIN:
Rouse me? This is my theatre, not Nigel Burbage's, much less
yours!
LIZZY (going to MARVIN's dressing table) I'll talk to that bugger!
She grabs the phone. But COWELL
snatches it out of her hand.
COWELL:
Stop blustering! (To MARVIN) And sit down.
He strides across to MARVIN and pushed
him down on the settee.
COWELL (cont.) Now listen to me. It's bingo or a life sentence. That is, it's
going to be bingo anyway, whether you go out of this theatre today
a celebrated actor or in handcuffs. Take it or leave it!
MARVIN:
Itake it.
COWELL:
Thank you, Mr. James. The fact is Nigel hasn't a penny left and
there isn't a man in the City who's going to finance this make-
believe one day more.
MARVIN (with a glance at LIZZY for corroboration) Have you ever met a
rich
man who wasn'tin dire straits?
LIZZY:
He can't afford a new pair of shoes.
MARVIN:
Just leave this to me and the hypnotist!
COWELL:
Of course there have been some wonderfully successful shows in


this house but they've rarely been yours. If he'd rented this place
to other producers all would have been well but he was always in
awe of you, Mr James, he worshippedyou too much!
MARVIN (to LIZZY) I always told him you're AC DC and it's time you came
out.
COWELL:
'It's Marvin James's theatre'. That's what everybody said about
it. And over the years this description killed it. There is no
longer an audience for theatrical temperament Mr James.
MARVIN:
Really? How sad!
COWELL:
You could try walking out of one of your own performances but
it's been over-played and in any case when an actor walks out
there has to be an audience.
MARVIN (to LIZZY) I find this quite hypnotic, don'tyou?
COWELL:
And let me correctyou about Lizzy. She played a very crucial
role in all this. It was she who told you---we can replay you the
tapes---thatyou can't turn Shakespeare on his head for ever.
LIZZY:
Ify you mean he's going to be pensioned off you'll never keep him
off a stage, he'll start busking.
COWELL:
That was never in our minds. After a three-hour verbal fight with
the police I got them to agree to a plan of mine that will
keep both you and Mr James fully occupied on the stage
downstairs, though not in front of theatrical audiences.
MARVIN:
Bingo ones?
COWELL:
We mean to keep this theatre open by hook or by crook. It won't
go dark for an hour. We'll be using it more than it has ever been
used before. I have hundreds of clients, Mr James. Iearn a
great deal of money and my practice is expanding beyond
practical limits. The human race is losing its nerve at a fantastic
rate! When the nervous system collapses Mr James people no
longer know who they are! No guidance comes from within!
You have old scripts! They only have their dreams! am
speaking, Mr James, of shopgirls, pharmacists, wine tasters!
They don'tfit their roles any more! They don't know how to live
them! Don'tyou see that when we can't live our roles any more
as waiters or hotel receptionists or dentists' assistants we can't be


happy?
MARVIN and LIZZY have begun to look at
him with alarm.
COWELL (cont.) The shop proprietor tells the shopgirl 'Don'tstand there and
mope. When you talk to a customer look as if you're alive! Put
a bit of charm into it, a bit of interest and enthusiasm!"
MARVIN and LIZZY look round for the
shopgirl.
COWELL:
But the shop girl doesn't have any charm. As for interest, she
only has interest in her woes and despairs, her hopes and dreams!
As for enthusiasm, she thinks that's ridiculous! What is she to
do, Mr Marvin?
MARVIN makes a slight bow to indicate that
the ball is in COWELL's court.
COWELL(cont.) She must play a role! Lines have to be learned. Business
has to be rehearsed. If Miss Shopgirl is to adopt charm without
having any she must learn it pace by pace, expression by
expression! She must learn which side to turn to the audience,
how not to be masked by other shopgirls! And when she notices
audience response---why, her life changes---she too can
magnetise, influence! You will show my patients-who will now
be your patients too---how to play the role we call life!
He flings himself down on a chair, aware of
having achieved no audience response
whatever.
COWELL (cont., running out of steam) Truthfully I have never witnessed a
more expert recital of roles, running the whole gamut of human
emotions, as you have given us in the last two or three days!
A long pause.
MARVIN (clearing his throat) Mr Towel---
COWELL:
The name is Cowell.
MARVIN:
What isityou're proposing? That we perform while bingo


numbers are being called? Orv willy your patients file in like the
prisoners in Fidelio, moaning to themselves and dragging their
chains and singing a hymn to the light?
COWELL:
I confess, Mr James, I allowed my enthusiasm to overrun the plan.
This theatre is bankrupt. It outrages me! Yes! My sense of
outrage inspired me to come up with this plan for a daily and
above all paying audience! An audience I can muster at any
time! In my business we call it a workshop, an intensive. I
already give several a year. They last from a week to a month.
The fee far exceeds what people pay for a seat in a theatre, Mr
James.
MARVIN:
Most encouraging! But my dear Mr Trowell you are failing to
explain where the bingo people come in or, rather more
hopefully, go out!
COWELL:
Bingo will take place in the evenings, Mr James. Your
performances will take place in the day. You and Lizzy will fight,
flirt and fantasise precisely as you've been doing over the
intercom---I may say to our delight and fascination below!
MARVIN (icily) We do our best.
COWELL:
You will say your lines---from dozens, hundreds of shows---just as
you've been doing! From time to time you will speak to the
audience directly---to the guaranteed 85% capacity audience, Mr
James! There will be two performances a day, a morning and an
afternoon one--
MARVIN:
In never perform in the morning!
COWELL:
But to a guaranteed audience Mr James?
LIZZY (to COWELL) Are you sure this isn't one of Nigel's moronic schemes?
How do we know you're not one of the rep actors he SO to speak
hired?
MARVIN:
Exactly! Your speeches were bloody good. A bit rough and
ready but then you may be out of the RSC stable, isn't that so? Is
it so?
COWELL calmly takes out his wallet.


COWELL:
Nigel said you'd better take your passport along, they'll think
you're fake, they think everybody is.
He rises and shows the passport to them.
COWELL (cont.) Note the occupation.
MARVIN (reading) "Psychiatrist'.
LIZZY:
We use prop passports all the time. (TOMARVIN) There was
that immigration play.
MARVIN:
Just what I was thinking. So, Mr Bowel---
COWELL (a contained outburst through tight teeth) This is going to be
your community service. You have no choice. The police say
you've got to do some community service and it took me five
hours of solid talk to get them to agree to this plan---
MARVIN:
You said three hours before.
COWELL:
Three hours, five hours---! and if you think I'm going to go back
to that bloody negotiating table I can tell you this theatre can
become a public lavatory as far as I'm concerned!
MARVIN:
There's no need to lety your feelings run away with you.
COWELL:
Feelings my arse!
LIZZY:
Why should I do community service?
COWELL (still shrill) You were no more being murdered than I was! Look at
this way (trying again as he once more paces the floor),
many of our audiences will consist of children. Ishall be
lecturing from a rostrum to one side of the proscenium arch.
You will be called upon, both of you, to perform the emotional
transactions that keep us all distraught and wild with anxiety and
awake in our beds until the day we die. You will act parents,
loving parents and warring parents, you will act children, grown-
up children and grandfathers and dominating people and yielding
people and you will show, with that dazzling sense of the need for
changes of mood and information which both of you have
demonstrated for almost seventy-two non-stop hours! (His
enthusiasm gathering again) Do you realise what a


revolution this brought about in my own professional life? I
always dreamed of being able to enact the roles which people love
to play and which bring them SO much sorrow and, sometimes, a
little joy! Mr James--Lizzy-we are all friends here, joined by
our great love of this theatre and our need to keep it alive. You
can give us snatches of Macb---!
MARVIN (screaming) DONTSAYIT! (As COWELLStarts to speak
again) Stop!
COWELL:
What on earth---?
LIZZY (with growling menace) Never speak that name in a theatre.
COWELL:
What name?
MARVIN:
The name you named.
LIZZY (quickly, as COW ELL opens his mouth to speak again) Just don't
talk about any Shakespeare characters.
MARVIN:
So where were you?
COWELL:
Iwas talking about the marvellous therapeutic--
MARVIN:
No, what drama school, man, drop the bloody hypnotist stuff!
COWELL:
Drama---? (He descends into a chair again, deflated) I'm
a transaction analyst, also a neruolinguistic programmer, I've
never acted in my life.
MARVIN (to LIZZY) What we could do is have him standing at this rostrum of
his doing a kind of master of ceremonies side act, you know like
the old-style music hall.
LIZZY gazes at COWELL appraisingly.
LIZZY:
I think if he could just act himself that's uncanny enough. (To
COWELL) Ifyou think you can upstage Marvin James you're
mistaken. He hogs all the light, all the best angles, all the vocal
projection points, I mean there's not an actor today can even
exist on the same stage as Marvin. That's why they suddenly
have big film contracts when he asks them to audition for him.


COWELL (wan) So we're going to fall back into playing parts are we? and
making up the future? and planning things that won't happen?
That's fine by me butjust be apprised that this is now a bingo
hall. In a week from now they start pouring in. Take it or leave
He rises.
MARVIN (alarmed) You're not going?
He goes to COWELL, takes his arm.
MARVIN:
Now come, my dear Mr Vowel,you mustn't mind us rehearsing
you a little. We're theatrical beasts and there is little to
commend us, Ifear, apartfrom our performances.
COWELL (with a smile) Doyou know you have a charm that would topple the
walls of Jericho? I notice it in my most manipulative patients.
Offstage I can well imagine you're an empty husk. Which is why
he built you this enormously expensive wanker's palace (looking
round). He recognised, you see, how deeply autisticyou are.
Doyou know the word 'autistic'?
They stare at each other.
COWELL:
Autistic children are those who feel a deep and frightening lack
of security. They frequently invent little imaginary systems that
replace the security their mothers and fathers and schools were
unable to give them. They do drawings of themselves sitting in
vehicles that look rather like rooms, only they have a driver's seat
and a steering wheel. It is safer driving through life inside this
room than confronting it with just your frightened heart. Doyou
understand me, Mr James?
MARVIN (to LIZZY) Is he being arch, do you think?
COWELL:
I've often thought of writing to Bruno Bettelheim, probably the
world's top authority on autism, that every man jack of us is
autistic, we would all like a protective system round us and they
usually get it in the form of a job, a profession, a home, and the
more autistic we are the more money or fame we crave, the more
security! You see, Mr Marvin, autism is the basis of the mania
for success.


MARVIN:
But, dear Mr Jowl---
COWELL (with suddenfury) If I may interject my name after a dozen or SO of
your blasted distortions--the name is (yelling) Cowell,
Cowell, Cowell!
MARVIN (taking COWELL's arm again) But my dear Mr Cow Well you are
getting angry at the very moment when you begin to talk my
language. You've hit upon why audiences come and see me--
LIZZY:
Why they used to come and see me.
MARVIN:
Because the stage is a home! For a moment we observe a home
that won't collapse before our eyes as our real homes do! Homes
which a word from the spouse can turn into a smoking ruin and all
imagination is dead for the space of an hour, a day, a lifetime!
LIZZY (to COWELL) This is a bloody awful one-man show that died a first
night death on Broadway.
COWELL with a sigh moves away from
MARVIN.
COWELL (still quivering) Just one last word about this wanker's palace. You
may keep it, even for an occasional studio performance, but ifyou
don't sign this contract (taking a contract out of his pocket)
here and now you'll be out of it by this evening and the receivers
move in.
LIZZY:
Sign it.
MARVIN seizes the document.
COWELL:
Sign here. You Lizzy sign here.
He takes out a pen.
COWELL (cont.) We suggest that Lizzy takes that area (indicating the area
beyond the arch) as her dressing room, SO as to afford you both
a little privacy from each other'si inventions.
MARVIN:
It's the worst part of the bargain, being saddled with her (as he
takes the pen and they move towards the dressing table for
the - signature). One has to do more than scream, you know.


COWELL:
As a matter of fact, Lizzy, there is the little matter of your
pregnancy that is going to stick in the works. We'll have to call in
an understudy and there's a clause here to that effect.
LIZZY:
What pregnancy? I'm on the pill.
COWELL (shaking his head) What was all that about this man being the
grandfather of his own child?
MARVIN looks at LIZZY, puzzled.
LIZZY:
He means about Viktoria. (To COWELL) He's been trying to
claim Tilly Armitage's children for thirty years. Everybody
knows he's impotent.
MARVIN:
Right, I'm not signing that fucking thing, not with you in it!
COWELL puts the document under his nose.
COWELL (shouting) Doyou see that police officer out there? Doyou want me
to call him in? Sign it, SIGN!
This has no effect on MARVIN. LIZZY
goes to him and takes his arm.
LIZZY:
Sign it. We can give Sunday performances for the Profession.
(To COWELL) He'll sign.
MARVIN signs.
LIZZY (cont., to COWELL) You think it's the money he's after but Sunday
performances got him. You see, Sundays are the only time the
Profession can come in and see a show and he loves to make them
green with envy. He's never been after success. He'sa born
autist, you see.
COWELL hands the pen to her with long-
suffering pursed-lip forbearance. She signs.
COWELL:
I must hurry back to my consulting rooms. (On his way out)
Nigel will be overjoyed, he's been listening to us. It's recorded,
too, SO there's no chance of either of you backing out. (As he
leaves) Well, police officer, I think it's the all clear.


MARVIN and LIZZY watch him leave.
MARVIN:
That bloody police officer's fake.
LIZZY:
As a matter of fact a cop never holds himself like that. He's got
the rehearsal slouch.
MARVIN:
And he's taken off his hat. No bobby would do that.
LIZZY:
It isn't Nigel made up is it?
MARVIN:
There's something awful about the shoulders. Doyou know what
Imean---the way they combine with the spineless neck?
LIZZY:
I do.
MARVIN:
I hope he gets that on tape.
He starts taking off his makeup.
LIZZY:
Fancy saying autist for artist!
MARVIN:
I thought of saying listen old chap try dancing but plays are full
of words!
LIZZY:
What was all that about artists driving around in rooms?
MARVIN:
That's the kind of acting material you get these days. Imean
autists! Just listen to it! Ifelt like saying you have to use your
ears, notjustyour mouth! (Imitating COWELL) Cezanne
was an autist! Picasso was an autist!
They fall about laughing.
LIZZY:
And we're perfauming autists!
MARVIN:
Imean that man's a CRIPPLE! He shouldn't be allowed to carry
a banner! Or hold a train! I mean, if you can't pronounce
words how can you even act badly? (As he gets into his
outdoor clothes) Actually I was thinking while he was talking
all that bilge, I'll do The Old Chap straight. That'll shake'em.
LIZZY:
Not in original costume?


MARVIN:
In original costume! It's the only avant garde thing left. We'll
show the kids how you make up, what it feels like to put a doublet
and hose on--
TOGETHER: We'll teach them how to stand and breathe and project! We'll
turn a nation of slouches into men and women!
MARVIN (as he sets his hat at an angle and takes up his stick) To lunch my
TOGETHER: And bubbly! I'll get that bloody peerage yet!
They leave, as the May Buds music comes up.