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THE VIKTORIA THEATRE SIEGE
A Play
Three Parts
MAURICE ROWDON


CHARACTERS
MARVIN JAMES
LIZZY TURNDALE
THE SCENE is in MARVIN JAMES'S
dressing room at the Viktoria
Theatre, Strand, London.
THE TIME is the present.


THE SCENE opens on the dressing
room of MARVIN JAMES at the
Viktoria Theatre in the Strand.
This is no ordinary dressing
room, being equipped like a
stage, with a rake and a soph-
isticated lighting and sound
system.
Dowstage actor's right there is
a dressing table with the convent-
ional mirror framed with naked
light bulbs, except that there
is no glass in this mirror, only
the frame, so that, when MARVIN
is seated making himself up, we
see him through it.
On the dressing table are two
WIGS, one grey (for MACBETH)
and the other a deep blue-black
(for HAMLET). They are on
frames.
To actor's right of the dressing
table there is a further table
containing an elaborate console
for the lights and sound, together
with a phone, a loose radio
microphone and a pile of play-
scripts.


Besides controlling the lights
and the sound, the console also
controls an intercom system
linking this spoiled man to
every part of the theatre.
For the purpose of speaking to
others in the offices or front-
of-house or onstage he uses the
radio microphone.
The chair at the dressing table
is a soft leather swivel chair
coloured burgundy.
At roughly centre-stage there is
a SETTEE partly covered with
playscripts. There is also
a thick blanket.
The settee
is amply supplied with cushions.
The entrance to the dressing room
is on actor's left. This 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.
Actor's right of this opening
there are SCREENS behind which
MARVIN can undress. Immediately
in front of these screens is a
DUMB WAITER.
Downstage and to the right of
this dumb waiter, against the
wall, there is a CUPBOARD.
There appears to be no window
in the dressing room itself.
When the action begins we hear
hammering and voices from the
stage, brought to us by THE
SPEAKERS (two for stereophonic
balance).
The door is pushed slowly open
by a cane.
The cane is followed by a
yellow-gloved hand and an


elegantly cut sleeve, then
by MARVIN JAMES, a handsome
man in (to say the least) his
late middle age. He is dressed
urbanely in a striped suit, with
a trilby hat set at a rakish
angle, in the Jack Buchanan
style of the Thirties.
The cane he is holding turns
out to have a silver knob.
MARVIN walks to the light-and-
sound console and deftly pushes
a button with his stick to cut
off the stage noises.
pushes another button and we
hear the theme music from MAY
DAY DARLINGS, one of his musical
shows. This music is of the
evocative type usually heard from
synthesising composers like Jarre.
Everything about MARVIN is suave
and controlled without being
contrived or self-conscious.
It is the fruit of a lifetime
of performance in both public
and private life.
He deposits his stick in a rack
for that purpose, then sits down
at the dressing table. He
puts on the light of the naked
bulbs round the frame. A copy
of THE TIMES lies ready for him
on the table.
He opens it and
then begins the remarkable
operation of scanning the paper
from end to end in order to
spot a mention of himself.
His head and eyes dart about
diagonally, taking in every
column with expertise and dismiss-
ing it. The operation is over in
a few seconds.
Having found
nothing, he screws the paper
into a ball with a surprisingly
savage movement and throws it
into an empty wastepaper basket.
This finished, he rises and takes
off his gloves and hat, and
deposits them on a shelf of the


dumb waiter.
He then removes
his jacket and waistcoat, and
hangs them carefully.
He goes behind the screen and
takes off his shirt, throwing
it over the screen.
He emerges in a light smock
for making up. This smock
resembles a doublet. He takes
his shirt from the screen and
hangs it on the dumb waiter.
His movements are precise,
with a somnambulistic spontaneity
as if repeated every day.
He once more seats himself at
the dressing table. This time
he begins adjusting the lights
by playing with dials of the
console. He watches the flies,
waiting for each area of lights
to come up.
His next movement affords him
great satisfaction: it is to
press. the button which puts him in
the amber glow of a spotlight.
He gazes at himself in the
mirror with the detachment of
the experienced actor. He
opens the pot of cold cream
and begins rapidly creaming
his face.
When he is lathered up the phone
at his side rings. He takes no
notice.
It stops ringing.
He dries off the cream and puts
a foundation on. Then he begins
pencilling in wrinkles.
But he
leaves this in order to try on
the Macbeth wig. He gazes at
himself, wincing.
The phone rings again, this time
without stop. He nonchalantly
cotinues fitting the wig. Then
he returns to the pencil.


To avoid having his work
interrupted he quickly tips
the phone off its cradle with
his right elbow. He goes on
making up.
A voice gratingly and indistinct-
ly talks from the phone while he
continues work.
He gives
particular attention to the area
round his eyes, and has clearly
decided on a Henry Irving view
of Macbeth as sardonic and evil.
He dries his hands, picks up the
phone, switches off the music.
MARVIN: Listen, if you're that johhny who wanted a pair of
my socks last night you can bloody-well sweat in
your own!
What an idea, collecting great actors'
socks!
How did you get my number anyway?
(Pausing)
What?
Well why didn't you say so in the first place?
(Pausing)
When were you anything else than worried?
And when were box office receipts anything else but
down?
(Pausing) 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.
I once filled the
Henry Miller theatre with Present Laughter, you seem
to forget.
(Pausing) It had nothing to do with
your direction! A Coward play directs itself.
They were touting tickets at three times the price.
We'll be lucky to fill the front row with The Play.
It makes me sick, doing The Play. He's such a
miserable old bugger.
Murdering people in their
beds and getting on his wife's nerves and having
nightmares at the dinner table.
And all that
brief candle talk.
I'd like to tell him where
to stuff it.
Anyway what are the takings?
(Pausing)
Oh my god! I shan't go on!
(Pausing)
What's that? I'm upset because The Times didn't
mention me this morning?
I've told you repeatedly
I don't give a damn about The Times, I don't even
read it (with a bland glance at the wastepaper
basket).
As for you, you're sore because you
can't direct and the public has tumbled to it at
last.
I shall never forget the time I stood
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 indeed! I was obliterated!
Nobody could see the top of my head, let alone
hear me speak!
You don't call that blocking, do
you? That's blundering!
(Pause)
I see.
You're too distraught to listen.
And you've heard


it all before.
(Pausing) Your who? Your
ex-wife? I didn't even know you'd been married.
(Pausing)
She's what? Well of course she left
you, you got a divorce, didn't you?
(Pausing)
You went back together? Three times? Twice
you remarried her?
(Pausing) And what's the
state of play at the moment?
(Pausing)
She
ran out of the house---?
LIZZY TURNDALE enters left,
a cup of coffee in her hand.
She is a bright, attractive
young woman with wide, piercing,
black eyes. She is in a one-
piece dress, sexually provocative.
She stands there uncertainly,
glancing about the dressing
room in an inquisitive, even
insatiable manner.
MARVIN (cont.) To what? Come here? What the devil
for? Because she's in love with me? Oh for god's
sake man they all say that! Anyway, I'm not
responsible for your domestic skirmishing. As far
as I'm concerned, you've cooked your goose this
morning---Yyou've lost your lady and your leading
man in one fell swoop! I am certainly not going
to play to a 55% house. But I'll tell you what I
am going to do. I'm going to play Hamlet!
LIZZY almost drops the coffee
with surprise.
He slams the phone down and
only now seems to realise what
he has just said. He leans
back in his chair, gazing before
him in a dream.
MARVIN (to himself, mumbling)
Ha! Are you honest?
LIZZY (taking this to be addressed to her) Me?
MARVIN (jumping out of his skin) Who the---?
He stares at her, then at the
cup of coffee. He then rises
and courteously takes the cup
from her, deposits it on his
dressing table.


Suddenly he seizes hold of
her. She is about to scream
but he puts his hand over her
mouth.
Her eyes stare in fear.
MARVIN (cont.) Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou
be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent
honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things
that it were better my mother had not borne me.
Iam very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more
offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put
them in, imagination to give them shape, or time
to act them out. What should such fellows as I
do crawling between heaven and earth? We are
arrant knaves---! (Breaking from her) No,
dammit! It just won't do!
He returns to his dressing
table sulkily, and resumes
his making up. But now he
tears off his wig, and begins
creaming out the 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 great
satisfaction.
He removes it
again.
At first LIZZY stands gazing
at him with astonishment.
Then
the astonishment gives way to
steady curiosity, and she sits
quietly down on the settee.
He suddenly turns to her--
expecting to find her in her
former place, surprised to find
her on the settee.
MARVIN: Whose idea was that, bringing me coffee? Not
our director's by any chance? Not Nigel Burbage's?
How ridiculous to assume the name of an Elizabethan
actor-manager. (He sips his coffee)
You've put
sugar in.
(Resuming his makeup) Never put sugar
in Marvin James's coffee. Put it in his tea. Not
his coffee.
They know it at the Savoy and every
major hotel in the West End but in the theatre where
he's been resident star for fifteen years news is
apparently slow to travel.
(Without looking in
her direction) Who are you? Wheedled your way
into the job to get my autograph or something?


Are you after my socks? Chap at the stagedoor
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 makeup)
Not after Elizal What's your name anyway?
LIZZY:
Lizzy Turndale.
A stunned silence. He turns
slowly to look at her.
MARVIN: But no one's called Lizzy Turndale.
It's impossible.
And you've made a bad thing worse by abbreviating
the Elizabeth, don't you see that? However, it's
the 'turn' in Turndale I dislike most. Turning
down, turning away, turning up, turning round,
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'
why, that'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's just directed you in
Macbeth.
MARVIN (jumping up in wild panic) What did you say?
Oh my god!
He drags her up from the settee
and begins pulling her roughly
towards 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 quick.
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't go on.
(Grabbing the
phone)
Oh my god. We'll have to do Brighton
first, oh my god (dialling), I told him we'd never
be able to open cold like this! Nigel? This
woman, God knows who picked her up for the kitchen,
she came in here and named the Play.
(Pausing)
Yes!
She actually named it! She'll be whistling
next, the stupid bitch! I did the usual, I sent
her outside but it's a bad omen Nigel and together
with your news of a poor house I don't think we
can go on, anyway I've never thought that opening
cold was a good idea on the Play, I think we'd
better open at Brighton---
(Pausing) What?
Oh stop talking about your bloody ex-wife man!
This is theatre and---
(Pausing) 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 then leans back in his chair
and takes a leisurely sip of
coffee.
He rises and walks to the door,
which he locks. He takes the
key out and begins playing with
it, then puts it in his pocket.
He makes his way towards her.
MARVIN (cont.)
So you're an actress. You knew precisely
what you were doing!
(His face an inch from hers)
You're Nigel Burbage's ex-wife, aren't you? (As
she is about to speak) It's no use you lying, he's
just told me! You came here on the pretext of
bringing me my morning coffee and your real intention
was to put a bad spell on our production, thus
ruining your ex-husband and--- (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't want to play in it.
MARVIN (rather taken aback)
That's perfectly true.


LIZZY: You want to do Hamlet.
MARVIN;
That's true too!
Suddenly she puts two fingers
in her mouth and does a deafening
whistle.
MARVIN (gripping her round her throat in horror) No,
He begins shaking her.
She screams so loud that he
loosens his grip at once.
MARVIN, (staggered by. the noise)
Where were you?
LIZZY (nursing her throat) We were talking about Hamlet---
MARVIN: No I mean what drama school.
LIZZY (weakly)
Oh, RADA.
MARVIN: I thought that scream was pretty good...
He sits there pondering,
stroking his chin.
MARVIN (cont.)
Got it!
He jumps up and dashes through
the arch into the inner room.
He disappears for a moment.
LIZZY cranes round anxiously.
We hear him turn the key in a
lock.
He returns, playing with a
second key.
MARVIN (cont.)
Both doors locked.
LIZZY: He said that too. He said you were half mad.
MARVIN: But you disregarded him didn't you? And now
you pay the price. But not quite as you think,
Miss Turndale.
Those two doors are locked,
not as you think, in order to keep you here,
though in part that is my plan, but to keep others
out.
(Going to his dressing table again) I'm
going to take you hostage. And you will see me
even yet as Hamlet.


He continues making up as
the youthful Hamlet. He
puts the blue-black wig on
his head with careful, even
reverential movements.
MARVIN (cont.) They denied it to me as a young man.
They ridiculed the idea when, in my early forties,
I was still so to speak eligible. They said I
was too fat 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 to play it, the same is true
of Hamlet, Miss Turndale. 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. You will witness one of the most
remarkable stage transformations of all time,
and the knighted old men are going to writhe with
envy.
LIZZY: All you do is talk.
That's what Nigel said.
MARVIN: You don't see me removing Macbeth and replacing
him with Hamlet before your eyes? You don't hear
me saying Macbeth shamelessly, and thus joining
with you in the bad spell you put upon that
production? You have given me courage, my girl!
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. Now the
screaming will begin. And you will provide the
screams.
LIZZY:
Those endless speeches. He mentioned those too.
MARVIN: Clever Nigel. But this time he's going to listen
to every word.
(With sudden earnestness)
I hope
he's still in love with you?
LIZZY:
Oh yes! He only divorces me in order to get me
again. He knows I only run after men who can do
without me, like you. By divorcing me he's trying
to show me he can do without me.
MARVIN: But of course he can't.
LIZZY: Oh no.
MARVIN (rubbing his hands)
Excellent!
So he will hear
those screams with a measure of concern!


Turning to the console at his
side he adjusts the lights to
a more Hamlet-like setting.
He dials a number on the phone.
MARVIN: Nigel.
(Very quietly)
I have your ex-wife here.
Listen carefully.
MARVIN beckons LIZZY towards him.
She approaches him at the dressing
table.
Suddenly he seizes her
and manages to grip her so that
his arm is locked round her neck
from behind.
MARVIN (at the phone) I intend either to strangle her or
plunge a dagger into her neck. I haven't decided
which. You may take this as a joke. But I warn
you that she may be found dead.
If I were you I'd
remember your own words, Marvin James is a madman.
He tightens the grip on her
neck and she screams frantically.
MARVIN (cont.) Did you hear? Did you recognise the
voice? But we can do better than that.
He puts the phone on the table
and releases her, leaving her
staggering about clutching her
throat.
He goes to the cupboard upstage
right and pulls it open dramatic-
ally.
She watches him with
horror as he pulls out a dagger.
She grabs the phone.
LIZZY: Nigel, Nigel! He really has gone mad! He's---!
MARVIN approaches her menacingly
with the dagger. He grabs her
again.
She struggles and tries to bite
him.
He suddenly plunges the dagger
into her neck.
Blood gushes forthe


She screams blue murder at
this. The blood runs down
her dress.
MARVIN calmly takes the phone
again, having thrown the dagger
into the wastepaper basket.
MARVIN: All I did was draw a little blood, Nigel. I
promise not to kill her yet. Hadn't you better
notify the police? But first let me get your
ex-wife seat ted. I mean, I need to kill her
later, which requires her to be alive now.
He helps the sobbing, quivering
LIZZY to the settee. Blood is
still soaking into her dress.
She is realising slowly that the
dagger was a stage-dagger with
a spring action, and the blood
ketchup. He returns to the phone.
MARVIN (cont.) Luckily I avoided the jugular. This is
where a little knowledge of pathology counts,
Nigel. Now these are my demands. First, the
Final Dress and the first night of the Play will
not take place. You will inform not only the
police but the media about this. You will tell
them that your ex-wife, who left you not an hour
ago, is being held hostage by a maddened Marvin
James in his dressing room at the Viktoria Theatre.
Any attempt to batter down his door will produce
an entirely dead Lizzy Turndale in a split second.
How the hell did she get that name, by the way?
It wasn't your idea was it? (Pausing) Her real
name? (Turning to LIZZY) Didn't you tell me
Stokes?
LIZZY (trying to speak but unable to) !
MARVIN: She's understandably distraught, Nigel, having
lost several pints of good blood. Amazing how
much of it we have, isn't it? And its brightness,
due I think to the presence of oxyhemoglobins or
did I get my lesson wrong? But, to return to
business, you will announce today, this morning,
a Hamlet prduction with me in the title role,
at this theatre,
(Pausing)
Oh for god's sake
man, I can simulate youth any time of the day.
It all depends on your legs. Mine are in mint
condition.
He puts the phone down without
waiting for a reply.


LIZZY has in the meantime
gone to the cupboard and is
staring at its contents with
open mouth.
MARVIN (cont.) I must say that last scream was even
better than the first one.
LIZZY: I wasn't acting this time.
MARVIN (approaching her) You never do otherwise than
act, my dear.
(Taking her affectionately
round the waist) I suppose you're wondering
what all this is?
LIZZY: Yes I am.
MARVIN: It's my little museum of stage-daggers. Several
date back to 1701. Indeed 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 of Macbeth in
(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't you slip behind
that screen and put one of my dressing gowns on?
(Drawing her behind the screen) You'll find a
washbasin, why don't you wash out that ketchup,
it doesn't stain?
She follows his directions
helplessly.
We hear her washing the dress.
MARVIN: That's Clarissa's dress from May Day Darlings
isn't it?
LIZZY (off) Yes!
MARVIN: Was that to flatter me?
LIZZY (off) I thought it might give you pleasure.
MARVIN: Where did you find it?
LIZZY (off) At Berman's. They wanted fifty pounds
a day for it.
MARVIN: Did you give it to them?


LIZZY (off)
Nigel did.
MARVIN (sitting at his dressing table and gazing before
him with pleasure)
I suppose it's sort of
historical isn't it? To buy it you'd probably
have to pay thousands.
I suppose your ex-husband
has a lot of wonderful anecdotes about me? For
instance how I exhausted three leading ladies
during the Broadway run of May Day Darlings.
Just didn't have my stamina you see.
LIZZY (off) He said you were very unpredictable.
MARVIN (with satisfaction)
Witness our present situation.
LIZZY (off) He said you're always dropping your lines
and are never letter-word-perfect even by the
end of a run. And you have half your speeches
pinned to the back of the furniture.
MARVIN (trying to retain his composure)
Really!
LIZZY (off)
He said it was his productions people came
to see, not your performances.
LIZZY (off) And the general public---
MARVIN: The general public?
LIZZY (off)
They think you're old hat.
LIZZY (off) A museum piece.
MARVIN: A mus---!
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
more of an effigy than an actor.
LIZZY (off)
People say you must have been marvellous
in your heyday.
MARVIN: 'Heyday'!
LIZZY (off)
Because in those days you could be really
ham and get away with it.


MARVIN (rising, aghast) Ham!
LIZZY (off)
What's wrong?
MARVIN: With ham? What's wrong with ham? I shall
throttle you just for the pleasure of it!
LIZZY (off) The critics say among themselves that
unfortunately Nigel has to build his productions
round you because any intelligence in the
direction would make too great a contrast to
your acting.
Words fail MARVIN JAMES,
perhaps for the first time
in his life.
LIZZY (cont., off) And now the public won't even come
and see a fascinating museum piece. Witness
their failure to book Macbeth.
MARVIN (bursting out) I filled 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
sound-and-1ighting system by means of which he
can simulate a theatrical performance in perfect
privacy?
(Dashing to the console and in desper-
ation, as if trying to convince himself, changing
the lights, dimming and introducing momentary
strobe effects) Do you see that? From the
moonlit mood we pass in a moment to the golden
autumnal! It cost thousands, thousands!
(Almost crying)
LIZZY (off) Did you know how you got your nickname?
LIZZY:
'Hamlegs'. My legs are in mint condition!
This is too much for him.
With a great roar he goes
behind the screen and drags
her back by the hair.
She is now dressed in one
of his superb gold dressing
gowns. It demonstrates
her cleavage even better than
the dress.
MARVIN: You're a critic aren't you? A fucking reporter?
(Shaking her) Are you a damned feminist---
a lesbian---a radical---you're a friend of


Vanessa Redgrave's!
LIZZY (flinging him off with amazing strength so that
he reels away) Nigel always said you couldn't
take criticism! That's your downfall he said!
That's exactly why you became 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! And the worse you get
the more the managers want you! 'Old Marvin',
they say, 'Old Marvin's like a nostalgia record,
we'd better exploit him while we can, it may be
his last year'! But Hamlet's more than legs!
The phone rings.
MARVIN (cont., picking the phone up with a furious
gesture. and bellowing into it) What is it?
(Turning back to LIZZY and waving the phone at
her) This has saved your life!
(At the phone
again, but very quietly now) Oh, really?
(To LIZZY, with sarcastic charm)
It's Mr Nigel
Burbage himself.
(At the phone again) No,
Mr Burbage, I repeat 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 fat arse over 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,
on my intercom system. You will not negotiate
with me through the door because, being an actor,
I need my voice.
He slams phone down, unplugs it.
LIZZY (before he can start up again)
Another thing he
said was that all your acting is Talking Heads
stuff. Don't you realise that The Old Chap
as you call him is full of the heat of the flesh?
Look at the way you played that scene when I
came in!
You could just as well have been a
radio announcer. You just stalk and talk!
(Putting her face close to his precisely as he
did to her) You remember what Hamlet said?
'Suit the action'---action, action, Marvin!--
'suit the action to the word, the word to the
action'! But all you do is moon around the
stage trying to mask other people. No wonder
box office receipts are down to fifteen percent
capacity!


MARVIN: Fifteen---?
LIZZY: Fifteen percent! You don't think Nigel would
dare to give you the real figure do you?
MARVIN (holding his head and groaning)
Fifteen percent!
LIZZY:
Let's go through that scene you just turned into
a recital.
He allows himself to be led
like a dummy to centre stage.
LIZZY: Take it from I did love thee once.
MARVIN: What?
LIZZY: Isn't that your line? I did love thee once.
MARVIN: Ah!
LIZZY: Well say it!
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: I loved 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.
She then
takes his hand and puts it
down the slit in her dressing
gown, inducing him to fondle
her breasts.
MARVIN: Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
LIZZY: Now pull me down to the floor.


She draws him down with her.
Then she draws one of his hands
up her leg, under the gown.
LIZZY (cont.)
OK, go on!
We hear police sirens in the
distance.
LIZZY (cont.)
Go on!
MARVIN: I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could
accuse me of such things that it were better my
The sound of rushing steps
along the corridor outside.
MARVIN (cont.)
---itwere 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!
Are you OK?
Talk to me Lizzy!
Is it true he's holding you
hostage? Lizzy!
They listen, astonished.
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
Once more she screams.
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 (shouting towards the door)
I've given you your
directions Burbage!
If the police---!
BURBAGE (VO) I can't hear you Marvin!
Use the intercom!
LIZZY jumps up and gets the
radio microphone from the table.
She thrusts it into MARVIN's
hand. He is still seated on
the floor.
MARVIN (into the mike)
If the police aren't here in a
jiffy she dies by strangulation!
Though she
could quite easily die of terror 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!
LIZZY (shouting frantically into the mike) He's trying
to strangle 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 shotgun, a 9mm Walther pistol, an AR-7
survival rifle, about three .22 calibre pistols,
a .30.06 rifle with telescopic sights!
MARVIN (hissing)
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 (pulling the mike away from her)
Are you
trying to get me in gaol for life dammit?
What are you talking about, guns?
LIZZY: That was from a part I did in rep.
(Seizing
the mike again) He wants you to leave the
corridor free, Nigel, he doesn't want you hammering
on the door!
Steps on distant staircases.
BURBAGE (VO) OK, Lizzy, I'm going to the end of the
corridor now, the police have just arrived,
keep calm Marvin, we love you Marvin, we
believe in you Marvin!
LIZZY (to MARVIN)
That's so that we can talk without
them overhearing us. Because you and I have
got lots to talk about.
MARVIN (with menace)
I'll say!
(Trying to scamble to
his feet)
I'm going to tell them the truth!
LIZZY (pushing him back) Oh no you don't, you chicken-
The intercom cuts in with the
urbane voice of the HOSTAGE
NEGOTIATOR.
HN (VO)
Good morning Mr James!
Have you a problem?
Police are now surrounding this theatre and
I'm your Hostage Negotiator. Now 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.
LIZZY (hissing)
Tell them, 'I've stated my terms to
Nigel Burbage, he knows perfectly well what
they are".
As he does nothing she
screams again.
HN (VO) Now then Mr Marvin, let's talk about this
calmly, are you OK Miss Turndale?
MARVIN (into the mike)
I've made my demands, Nigel
Burbage knows what they are!
LIZZY (hissing)
Good!


MARVIN (hissing)
This'll ruin us both!
LIZZY (hissing back) Only you! I'm the hostage,
remember!
HN (vo) Very well, Mr James, Mr Burbage is here at
my side and corroborates what you 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 and you wish 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)
It's much more than I said.
LIZZY (hissing back)
That's Nigel, he's always helpful
in an emergency! Tell him yes!
MARVIN (into the mike)
Yes it's correct!
HN (VO) Have you been injured Miss Turndale? Do you
mind Miss Turndale talking to us Mr James?
MARVIN: Well, keep it brief!
LIZZY (into the mike)
I'm more in shock!
There's a
little blood.
HN (VO) Blood Miss Turndale?
LIZZY: He tried to knife me in the throat!
MARVIN (hissing)
You fucking---!
LIZZY (hissing back)
Stop being Macbeth!
Lift your
chin up! Look like a man!
(Into the mike)
He says you must alert the principal radio
stations and television networks and press
agencies at once. He won't release me until
he hears a news broadcast has gone out on the
matter!
HN (Vo) 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.
Let me assure you, Mr James, you don't have to
murder anyone for some extra publicity. You've
already made your point. On the contrary, if
you injure this woman, not to say kill her,
you will spend much of your life in prison.


Think it over Mr James!
If you 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. Is it a hoax Mr James?
MARVIN is about to reply
but LIZZY screams again.
HN (Vo) All right, Mr James, you've made your point.
I'm in contact with the Home Office and they'll
be giving me their decision about your terms in
a few moments. Meanwhile Mr James keep very
calm because I'm sure you don't want anything
to happen that might not only hurt your reputation
permanently but 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 brought against you!
LIZZY screams again.
HN (Vo) OK, Mr James, just wait for the Home Scretary's
answer calmly.
More police sirens outside.
MARVIN: Oh my god...
(Trying to grab the mike from her)
I'm going to tell him your screams are fake!
LIZZY: They won't believe you! Because my screams
are convincing! Do you think Nigel Burbage
believed you when you said you were taking me
hostage? Of course he didn't! He hasn't
believed a word of yours in twenty years, so
why should he start now? It was my screams
that saved the day, my screams!
The HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR breaks
in again over the intercom.
HN (VO) Mr James, there've already been a number of
special news broadcasts. Two television crews
are setting up cameras outside this theatre with
the intention of giving hourly news coverage of
what has become known as the Viktoria Theatre
Siege.
You couldn't wish for more, Mr James.
We're told that NBC news are covering the story
for American television. Mr Burbage tells me
that the Macbeth production has already been
cancelled.
He has also announced a Hamlet


production with you in the title role but
so far the media hasn't taken this up. However,
he's confident that all this publicity will
ensure early booking. Thus all you asked for
Mr James and more has been conceded--
LIZZY screams.
MARVIN (hissing at her) But they're giving me what
I want dammit!
She screams again.
MARVIN (grabbing the mike with determination)
She
keeps on screaming, blast her eyes!
HN (VO) If you don't want the lady to scream just take
your hands off her Mr James!
Are you alright
Miss Turndale?
LIZZY (gasping into the mike, which she has torn from
MARVIN's grasp) He's---he's---hurting me!
HN (VO) I beg you 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
of your dressing room with your hands above your
head no charges will be preferred against you,
unless of course Miss Turndale wishes it.
There's only one proviso, that you submit to
a medical checkup at St George's Hospital,
including a psychiatric examination.
MARVIN (grabbing the mike)
She's the one who needs
attention!
HN (VO) No doubt she is Mr James if you've been trying
to strangie her.
Now come to your senses,
man, you've a great career behind and in front
of you, don't send it up in smoke!
LIZZY (grabbing the mike) He says he doesn't believe
you're real police!
MARVIN: !!
HN (VO) 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 there. 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 somewhat
chastened astonishment.
MARVIN (hissing at her as they return to the main room)
There, see what you've done!
HN (VO) Have you taken a look Mr James?
MARVIN (taking the mike)
Yes I have!
HN (VO) Are you satisfied that the metropolitan police
force is here in some strength?
MARVIN (into the mike)
Yes I am.
HN (VO) Very well Mr James. We shall give you five
minutes to make up your mind in. 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 concen-
trated in one spot.
Help your country Mr
James!
Don't facilitate the murder of innocent
men and women!
LIZZY (at the mike) He wants to know what these less
friendly methods are.
HN (VO) Well Miss Turndale, they mean for starters he'll
be charged with assault and battery, kidnapping,
resisting arrest and attempted murder. I needn't
tell you what the penalty is for that lot but I
can with confidence say that if convicted Mr
James will never see the inside of a theatre again.
MARVIN: Oh my god!
HN (VO) Once again, Mr James, come to your senses.
We are giving you five minutes.
The intercom abruptly switches
out.
MARVIN (grabbing her) What the hell are you doing
this for?
LIZZY (pushing him off so that he falls on to the settee
into a half-lying position) That's just what


I'm going to explain! Now there was one thing
he missed out and that was me playing Ophelia in
the Hamlet production.
MARVIN: What?
LIZZY: Now it's your turn to say what! The fact is
Marvin I didn't mention the matter to the Hostage
Negotiator because I wanted to talk to you first
about my motives in entering this siege.
MARVIN: Oh yes!
LIZZY: It's that I too need publicity, and much more
than you do because I'm not famous already.
One sure way of getting publicity is to hook on
to somebody famous and either star with them
or cause a lot of trouble.
I'm doing both.
MARVIN: Very honest of you!
LIZZY:
In a short time there won't be a household in
the western world hasn't heard of Lizzy Turndale
even if they haven't heard of you. For years
I've been sweating it out in provincial reps
while that idiot Nigel Burbage told me I wasn't
good enough for the West End. Oh he always
dangled the carrot but it was for a small part
next week or next season or next year and if
I said let me meet Marvin James he said you
were too busy or he was too busy or you weren't
getting on with each other. But today I clinched
it. I walked out of the house and said I'm
going to see him now!
MARVIN: And here you are,
LIZZY: But don't think I was after any famous person.
I was after you---my obsession and perpetual
daydream since I was fourteen years of age!
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
do a one-man show on his life in the theatre
called'on the Boards'-
LIZZY: There isn't much I don't know about you is
there, dammit---another one of your nicknames,


Dammit. Now you're going to end on the rocks
and not on the boards unless you listen to me.
You've got about three minutes in which to do so!
MARVIN: Oh my god...
LIZZY: All these years, I'm twenty-eight now, you've
figured in my daydreams, my masturbations! I
think I saw every London production you were in,
and several of the Brighton flops.
(As he is
opening his mouth to protest) I had to go
secretly because mother would have been furious
if she'd known.
MARVIN: That's right, there's always a mother somewhere!
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 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't a pair of legs! I'm sick and tired of
that word love on the lips of women whose hearts
are made of ice-cubes!
(Striding about dramatic-
ally 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
their heads with a glance, the smile that while
it hasn't launched a thousand ships has turned
a thousand silly heads! I never had a leading
lady who didn't fall in love with me! I never
knew in all my life a single girl who didn't
swoon to touch my hand!
(Closing in on her)
My mother told me all about your damned breed!
Yes I too had as mother, and a finer actress than
you'll ever be! She warned me early what seething
caldrons of manipulation you people are! 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
my mother, for god's sake don't give me so much
charisma I said, the girls are going to give me
trouble all my life, they'll hang about my dressing
rooms, solicit my agents, my managers! Why
insist mother that my eyes should be hypnotic,
my lips beyond reproach, my walk, my stance,
my expression, even my way of thinking and choice
of words so far beyond ordinary capacities that
into whatever drawing room I set foot theyturn


towards me as one creature and ask each other
with importuning nudges 'Who is that?'.
LIZZY: You see, you really can act when you want to.
MARVIN: !!
LIZZY: If you'd played like that in May Day Darlings,
naturalistically, you'd have done much better.
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) You don't seem to know what a
real feeling is. When you were throttling me
a while back it was a stage throttle. And when
you were playing with my tits it was stage play.
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 played as a hotpants?
She didn't mind Hamlet lying in her lap right in
front of other people, and making a pun on her
cunt. Are you telling me she loved him? It
was her father who organised that love affair.
The rest was her silly daydreams about marrying
a prince. Which is typical of a hot pants.
Anyway you've got about two minutes 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 then? (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 sable cloak,
SW ishing it in people's noses and letting the
audience see the 'good' side of your face and
never the 'bad'. No wonder Nigel Burbage always
directs 'round' you!
'Twentieth century product-
ions with a nineteenth century lead,' as he
always says!
MARVIN: 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


just using Hamlet as a ploy. But don't be
sure you'd like it once you got inside! A
lot of ladies have had their little fannies
burned---remained in agony for the rest of their
lives! Two suicides---untold nervous breakdowns-:
the close of at least five promising stage careers!
You'd cut your veins in less than a fortnight.
Oh I admit you're quite intelligent! You can
talk like a character out of Bernard Shaw but
this isn't a Shaw comedy, Miss Turntable, it
won't end in an upper-class drawing room amid
a gale of laughter but in Wandsworth Prison for
me and Wormwood Scrubs for you!
LIZZY:
I'm going to marry you too!
MARVIN (falling back) Marry me? Nobody's ever succeeded
in doing that!
LIZZY:1 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: Too old for---!!
LIZZY: And to see you doing different things in
different plays but in such a way that it always
looks like the same production!
Don't you see
what a wonderful story we're making between us?
World famous actor marries his own hostage!
They fall in love in the first moments of the
siege!
And they play together for the rest of
their lives, like Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontann!
I saw the potential the moment you plunged that
phoney dagger in my neck---I thought this is all
too ham, no one's going to believe him---but with
my cooperation, my convincing screams, he'll have
half of Scotland Yard round the theatre in twenty
minutes and that's the case!
Why do you think
you always hated playing Macbeth?
Because you
identified with him!
Because you saw yourself
as a king but couldn't do the dirty deed to make
it possible! Now this is the dirty deed, what
we're doing here.
And you need a woman to push
you into it---a Lady Macbeth---that's me!
MARVIN: I'd rather die than be a knight let alone a king!
LIZZY: You fucking liar, you'd give your right hand to
be a knight, everybody in the business knows that!
You go green with envy every time Sir John or
Sir Lawrence or Sir Michael are mentioned! As for


being a king---!
There is suddenly a violent
hammering on the door.
It looks as if the door might
break down. It trembles on
its hinges.
The HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR's voice
breaks in over the intercom,
in some alarm.
There is an enormous EXPLOSION.
Simultaneously the LIGHTS BLACK
OUT.
Screams in the distance.
Shatter-
ing glass. People running.
The hammering on the door has
ceased.
LIZZY (her screams genuine this time)
Marvin!
Marvin!
Ambulance sirens.


The scene opens on a BLACKOUT.
The LIGHTS suddenly come up.
MARVIN and LIZZY are asleep
on the settee.
LIZZY is more
or less lying on top of him.
Her panties are lying on the
floor with her shoes.
A few seconds after the lights
come up MARVIN and LIZZY stir.
Blinking awake, they are surprised
to find themselves where they are,
and with whom they are, and at
what proximity.
LIZZY's clothes are disordered.
He is dishevelled.
They slump back into sleep.
The voice of the HOSTAGE
NEGOTIATOR comes over the inter-
com.
HN (VO) (considerably politer than before, almost unctuous)
Mr James. Miss Turndale.
They fail to wake.


HN (Vo) 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.
HN (VO) Mr James, Miss Turndale, the light cables have
just been repaired. Could you report back
that your lighting system is working again?
And the sound of course? Are you hearing me?
MARVIN fumbles around for the
radio microphone. He finds it
underneath him.
MARVIN (talking into the mike)
Yes we've got the lights.
What happened?
HN (VO) Three people were killed in the explosion Mr
James.
MARVIN: Three people!
LIZZY starts awake.
MARVIN (cont.)
But what happened for god's sake?
HN (VO) It was an IRA bomb Mr James, just outside the
theatre---they blew up half the foyer!
MARVIN: Oh my god!
HN (Vo) There were seven of them dressed as policemen
Mr James. They were helping to hold back the
crowds drawn by---er-- --yourself and Miss Turndale.
I did warn you Mr James that the IRA might take
advantage of the situation.
MARVIN: You did dammit!
HN (VO) After the bomb went off, in the confusion, the
IRA men entered the foyer of the theatre and took
possession of it. They're still there Mr James.
MARVIN: : What? They're in this theatre?
HN (Vo) I'm afraid we are now their hostages Mr James.
All of us.


MARVIN (to LIZZY) Do you hear that?
HN (VO) That is, we are barricaded in on the auditorium side
of the foyer doors, they are barricaded in on
the other side. We are thus in control of the
auditorium, the stage and the dressing rooms,
while they occupy the foyer and the foyer bar.
They have radio-controlled bombs and are threaten-
ing to blow up this theatre with themselves, and
of course all of us, in it, if they don't get
their demands.
MARVIN: Which are?
HN (VO) That twenty-one IRA men at present serving life-
sentences in Northern Ireland be released within
the next twenty-four hours. They're prepared
to negotiate, and I find myself in the rather odd
position of being a hostage negotiator while at
the same time being a hostage. But I was in the
excellent position of already having a direct line
to the Home Secretary to handle your case. By the
way, Mr James, the guerillas, as they prefer to be
called, wish to say that they would be especially
sorry to see your life sacrificed, as they've all
seen performances of yours at the Gate theatre in
Dublin.
MARVIN: Nice of them dammit!
HN (vo) 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 people.
We have armed police on this side, at every door
leading into the auditorium, and of course at the
foyer doors, which are our contact-points with
the guerillas. We've been ordered not to enter
your room, Mr James. 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.
LIZZY (horrified)
Where's that?
MARVIN (indicating the inner room)
Through there!
the HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR, through the mike)
Is the
stage door in their hands then?
HN (VO) I'm afraid so, Mr James.
MARVIN: Oh my god.
HN (VO) They overran the corridor running down the side of
the stalls and managed to get to the stage door
that way, through the pass door to the stage.


So some of them are at the stagedoor, some
in the foyer. They're in radio communication
with each other but are fearful about talking
because we can monitor every word. Luckily the
dressing rooms in this theatre are above the
stage, and the access to the stage from them
down a flight of stairs. When we realised what
was going on we occupied the stage and the audit-
orium, thus protecting ourselves and the backstage
staff and, to some extent, you.
MARVIN: But my exit goes down to the stagedoor dammit!
HN (VO) Right again sir. In this sense you and Miss
Turndale are more their hostages than we are.
MARVIN: Charming!
HN (Vo) And there is the point that, being out of touch
with the foyer guerillas, the stagedoor guerillas
may endeavour 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 other door locked Mr James?
MARVIN: Yes, I locked it against you.
HN (vo) Good. Not that it'll give you much protection.
But I'm forgetting. You can defend yourselves
very adequately. You have an arms cache in there.
MARVIN: That's boloney! This idiot Turndale was making
it up! Even her screams were counterfeit! (To
LIZZY, vehemently)
You see what a mess you've got
us all into?
HN (VO) Then you're unarmed sir?
MARVIN: Of course I am! The only thing I've ever fired
is a stage gun and I'm terrified of that! The
blasted things can backfire and scorch one's wrist.
HN (vo) Exactly sir! What was Miss Turndale's motive in
lying about this, do you think?
MARVIN: Publicity!
She wants to play Ophelia to my Hamlet.
She wants the world to know her name. These are
valid objectives in a young actress but usually
they're earned on a stage, acting. Not so in her
case.
HN (VO) Well, sir, it's lucky for you both that I didn't
know this before! I mean, I told the IRA that
you had an arms cache in there which would make
them green with envy. So I don't think they'll


be raiding you up the backstairs without some
forethought.
MARVIN: Thank god for small mercies.
HN (VO) Indeed sir. Well, I'll have to resume my
negotiations. I expect to be down there quite
some time, Mr James. It might take till morning,
even longer. In case there's a deadline we have
to meet, an ultimatum, could we synchronise our
watches Mr James? The time is 11.15---in the
evening of course.
MARVIN: Good god---that late!
HN (VO) We're coming up to 11.16. I shall give you ten
seconds. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five,
four, three, two, it's 11.16 Mr James.
MARVIN (not bothering, and out of earshot to the mike)
Oh fuck off.
HN (VO) In the meantime Mr James keep as calm as possible.
At least you're technically no longer a kidnapper.
Was that ever your serious intention, sir, to
kidnap anyone?
MARVIN: Of course it wasn't!
Oh the idea came into my
head, the dramatic idea you might say. But this
woman took it seriously. I must say she did the
screams pretty well! I mean you took them serious-
ly didn't you?
HN (VO) Let me say this Mr James. If Miss Turndale can
assure us that she hasn't been injured or in any
way molested then, supposing we all come out of
this alive, no charges will be preferred against
you.
MARVIN (hissing, to LIZZY)
Why the devil don't you say
something?
LIZZY (hissing back)
Because I've got nothing to say!
HN (Vo) 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 (flinging her off and striding about the room)
Trust a damned little rep actress to get me
into the crisis of my life! Let me tell you
one thing! The Home Office won't give them
their conditions. Release twenty-one prisoners--
impossible!
So they'11 blow us up. But if
they don't, believe me, the minute we walk out
of this building I'm going to file charges
against you.
LIZZY: I have your baby inside.
That's a good defence.
I mean you not only fucked me, you fucked as if
you'd never had a woman before, I know quite a
number of young men who'd have been hospitalised
after that.
MARVIN (coldly)
I dare you say you do know a number
of young men.
LIZZY:
But you didn't excite me! You've spent so much
of your life being Marvin James that the other
person, the one I'm after, is hardly there.
MARVIN: I must say I didn't notice any lack of excitement
on your side!
LIZZY: Oh that's nothing, I get hot at the sound of a zip.
She begins nonchalantly making
MARVIN (staring at her) You're acting pretty cool!
LIZZY: Oh they won't blow us up. There isn't an Irish-
man in the world would blow up a theatre, least
of all with a famous actor in it. A palace,
a government, even a church, but not a theatre.
Have you got a loo here?
MARVIN (indicating the inner room)
In there.
She gets up and takes her shoes
and panties with her.
MARVIN(cont.) Don't mistake the door, otherwise you'll
find yourself among the guerillas. Then your
false bravado'll fall to pieces.


We hear LIZZY open the lavatory
door.
MARVIN paces up and down agitatedly.
MARVIN (to himself) The son of the greatest comedienne
of her time---
He is interrupted by the sound
of LIZZY peeing. He stares
with irritation towards the
arch.
MARVIN: ---my god, she behaves---I
He continues to stand there,
staring.
We hear the lavatory flush.
LIZZY returns to the dressing
room.
MARVIN (glaring at her)
I've just realised who you remind
me of.
LIZZY:
Who?
MARVIN: My mother.
LIZZY:
Oh no!
MARVIN: She used to leave the lavatory door open too.
And she didn't wash her hands either.
LIZZY: Soap's bad for the skin---
MARVIN: Just what she said.
LIZZY:
I run my fingers under the water.
Perfectly
adequate.
MARVIN: She talked to her men like you talk to me.
Pulled them down professionally.
She had some
of the greatest men of the theatre-
LIZZY (sneering, as she continues making up) Yes I know,
and she screwed every one of them.
'Dame Helen
James plays offstage games', 'Down comes the
curtain, up comes her skirti-
MARVIN: How dare---!
LIZZY:
'First the play, then the lay, Helen James will
have her way'!
'Helen's on the hunt, with her


He grabs her.
MARVIN: You vulgar creature!
LIZZY:
'Helen James, she has no shames', 'She plays
little tricks with gentlemen's---"
He claps his hand over her
mouth and begins shaking her.
LIZZY (cont., bursting into tears) Don't hold me like
that!
You're hurting!
MARVIN (relaxing his hold) Hurting you? Me? You're
as strong as an OX woman!
LIZZY (hugging his chest)
They'll kill us Marvin!
They'll kill us!
The HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR breaks
in quietly over the intercom.
HN (VO)
Are you there Mr James? I've been in conversation
with both the Home Office and the guerillas and I'm
relieved to say that we've won an hour's respite.
During that time none of us will move from our
present quarters so that negotiations can proceed
in a more methodical manner than was possible
while threats of assault were being exchanged.
Accordingly the police outside have been withdrawn
from the immediate vicinity of the theatre,
except for two groups, one outside the main doors
of the theatre and the other at the stagedoor.
These are assisted by troops. From your window
you will see neither.
However, this shouldn't
mislead you into thinking that we are now unguarded.
Do you have provisions Mr James?
MARVIN looks round for the
radio microphone and LIZZY
is already holding it out
to him.
MARVIN (into the mike) A few tins of baked beans, a ham,
biscuits, milk and coffee and tea and there's some
boose.
HN (Vo) Well supplied for a siege, if I may say so, Mr
James.
LIZZY and MARVIN make a sour
face at each other at this
HN (VO) (cont.) The breathing space will give the


guerillas time to reconsider their actions.
The Home Office is offering reduced sentences
and/or prison transferrals. But I'm afraid
there's no way of overlooking the fact that
three people were killed today, and these chaps
will be up for murder.
They know this and so
there's a suicidal recklessness in their approach
which is hardly good news for you and me. Never-
theless the outlook is a little more hopeful than
before.
I'll be in touch again soon.
The HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR cuts out.
LIZZY (drying her eyes)
You said you have some milk?
MARVIN (going to the inner room) I'll get you some.
We hear him opening the fridge.
LIZZY: I suppose I ought to be making you coffee.
MARVIN (off) I never allow other people to make my
coffee. I made coffee for my mother on her
tours. That's how I knew you were a fake when
you first came in.
LIZZY:
How?
MARVIN (reappearing with a glass of milk)
Because you
brought me coffee. No one who belonged here
would do that.
He hands her the milk.
LIZZY (sipping)
So you played me along.
MARVIN: I was intrigued by those eyes. They remind me
of someone.
LIZZY: Your mother!
MARVIN: No.
Someone else.
He sits at his dressing table
and sips the coffee she brought
him earlier.
LIZZY (staring at him) I thought you only drink the
coffee you make yourself? That wasn't any good
even when I bought it!
He shrugs this off.


MARVIN (with decision) Lizzy, we've been given a
reprieve, at least for an hour, and I want you
to listen to me. Here's what I propose.
we leave here safe and sound I shall give you
an income for life to look after 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? No phonecalls saying
how the money hasn't arrived this month and how
he's been having a bad time teething lately but
otherwise he's a bonny bonny boy. I don't intend
to enter the biggest dependency syndrome of my life,
thank you. 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 I would normally
do. You see, I was my mother's domestic slave.
From the age of ten or eleven I took her breakfast
in bed. I did most of the cooking, I looked
after the sheets, which was a whole drama in itself,
considering the number of men she brought home.
When you were insulting her just now I felt a
strange quickening of emotion---compounded I think
of both hatred and sexual excitement. As I say,
she talked just like you. Whent she saw me in my
first speaking part at the age of fifteen she walked
out of the theatre in the middle and left a message
with her agent to tell me I stank.
She said later
that the only person I could play was myself and I
didn't even do that well. But I made it. My
first hit was in The Cherry Orchard, where having
a world of my own seemed to fit the bill. The rest
of my career was a series of flukes, and some good
casting. Nigel Burbage was fool enough to think
I'd make a good classical actor.
(Gazing at her)
When you and I made love your noises were the same
as hers. I returned to the primal scene while in
your arms. You know about Freud and the primal
scene. I used to hear all my mother's lovemaking.
It dominated my life.
If I married you I'd never
act again, my old fears would come back and 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. I was 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't so 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 I went with her
but mostly I stayed, in the hands of a governess.
The governess always used my fear as her disciplinary
weapon.
'If you don't do this your mother'11 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. If I married you I'd be trembling
night and day.
She gazes at him in silence.
LIZZY (quietly)
Isn't that from a show?
MARVIN: What?
LIZZY: Isn't it a speech from A Man Called Shrink?
Nigel produced it about four years ago!
MARVIN (unconcerned)
What about it? The sentiments
happen to fit the case. That's why I accepted
the script. Why else should I accept a script?
LIZZY: You're not a man, you're an IT. You're not even
a monster. You're a THING, a STAGE THING. Your
mother must have fucked a theatre to get you!
He is sipping his coffee but
suddenly puts it down with
disgust.
MARVIN (jumping up) You're right! One simply shouldn't
be drinking this stuff---even under sentence of
death! I have an idea!
He hurries to the inner room.
MARVIN (cont., off)
That speech always wore me out.
LDZZY:
What speech?
MARVIN (off)
The one from A Man Called Shrink. It
must be the longest fucking speech in the history
of the theatre. I tried it as an extended exit
line---you know, I kept half going out and coming
back in again.
We hear the pop of a champagne
cork.
MARVIN (cont.) Healthy sound, what? Burbage said that's
no good at all. You can't keep bobbing in and
out like that. Keep seated, he said. Then
it'll come from inside.


LIZZY (gloomily)
That's good news at any rate.
He reappears with two glasses
of champagne.
MARVIN: What is?
LIZZY: That you've got an inside.
MARVIN (handing her a glass)
Have some bubbly and save
your wit for the IRA.
(As they touch glasses)
Here's to survival.


They drink.
LIZZY (her gloom unabated)
I don't even believe you're
Helen James's son. Your mother worked on the
railways. I read it in one of your programme
notes.
MARVIN: Oh that was for a dramatisation of Zola's La
Bête Humaine. We had to have a hookup with the
railways so we put it out that my mother was
Britain's first woman train driver.
Another
time we were doing a show on Dr Barnado'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 I was an orphan myself and Helen James had
only adopted me and like the man in the play I
was searching for my mother. Finally the mail
got so heavy we had to make a statement, so we
put it out that my mother had been found. We
got Tilly Armitage to paint a few wrinkles round
her eyes and passed her off as my mother who
lived in Barnstable and had been widowed in the
last 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: Oh for christsake don't let's have another
long speech! That's another thing they say
about you. When he's nervous he talks, and
mostly lies.
He drinks off his champagne
and goes to the inner room
for a refill.
LIZZY(cont.)
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 (dashing back into the room without his champagne)
What?! You're her---!s! (Staring at her)
god---! Why the devil---? Why didn't you
say so before? I'd have kicked you out long ago!
(Vehemently, putting his face right in hers)
She sent you here, didn't she, you little bitch?
LIZZY: Sent me? Her? She barred all mention of your


name when I was a kid!
That's why I had to
see your shows in secret.
MARVIN (studying her closely)
My god you're the spitten
image!
LIZZY:
She told all the front-of-house people---if you
see Lizzy kick her out. Like you want to kick me
out now!
MARVIN (pacing about) I thought there was something fishy! I
mean a girl doesn't walk into a man's dressing
room just like that, except in plays. OK (round-
ing on her) that's the last time I touch you!
Oh my god, sleeping with Tilly Armitage's daught-
er---she'd kill me! !
LIZZY (calmly)
And me.
MARVIN: You'd better keep your mouth shut dammit! The
IRA's saved you, otherwise you'd have been out
of here already!
Of course (studying her again
at close quarters) I should have seen it! Those
unmistakeable eyes!
LIZZY (quietly) Why don't you just sit down and shut up?
You're not convincing. You know she hates you
anyway.
She wants to kill you anyway.
MARVIN: Of course I know it!
It's the most famous line
of this century---Marvin James killed my career,
acted me off the stage, he hogged all the light,
shouted me down, masked me. In return I gave
him all I had. After twenty years I found I'd
turned him into a star and myself into a nonentity
the audiences hardly notice.
(Imitating his
leading lady's gravelly baritone)
'I feel
totally unseeeeen'.
LIZZY: It's true though isn't it?
MARVIN (furiously)
Well of course it's true! I'm an
actor, woman!
LIZZY: I'm amazed you never made it with her. Nigel
Burbage reckoned you had fifty-four actresses
in the course of fifteen productions--:
MARVIN: Don't you dare raise his name again or you'll
be out of that window head first!
But of course!
That's her husband's name isn't it---Stokes? You
told me your name was Jean Stokes. It's that pot-
bellied stockbroker with the bald patch---!


LIZZY (in her enormous voice)
Just you leave my father
out of this!
MARVIN (leeringly)
I'd love to! And his daughter as
well!
She started just like you did by the
way.
LIZZY: Who did?
MARVIN: Tilly Armitage!
She was so determined to get
there she was prepared to bribe, intimidate,
fuck and even marry her way to it! Don't forget
that Stokes is one of the principal angels in
the City!
She can turn on the waterworks at will
just like you---you don't think I took your
pathetic stage snivelling a few minutes ago
seriously do you? I mean RADA can't have gone
down all that much since my day!
Behind his back, as he paces
up and down, she imitates his
gestures.
MARVIN (cont.) You saw early on, when you married Nigel
Burbage for the first time, that it was better
to do away with the heart once and for all,
rather than have it nagging at you night and
day as it does with me! You who have no ethics
saw early that the best way to do away with that
organ was to play roles in which it seemed to
predominate! You see, I know all about you--
because I know Tilly Armitage! Now in Lizzy
Turndale née Stokes we have a woman who is
preeminently woman, in bed woman, in tears 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, the heart insists so much
that it takes away from her technique, poor thing!
Tilly Armitage all over!
Is it true? Is it?
LIZZY: Of course it's true!
It works doesn't it?
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 the hell your brain
is---just like Tilly Armitage---all her lovers
said the same---they said when we fuck Tilly it's
like wandering round a grand old country mansion
where the table's set for a banquet and the fires
are all alight but there's no host.
The fact
is. that what she has ticking in her breast isn't
so much a heart as what I once called a cardio-
calculator linked to casting agencies, top producers
and television networks!
(Drilling it into her)
If those IRA men came in now you'd deflate like


a beach mattress, you'd do anything to save
your skin, you'd perjure yourself to hell, you'd
deny ever having known me if necessary, you'd walk
over my corpse without a tremor if the way led to
your freedom! Oh there'd be plenty of waterworks
in later years---over poor Marvin, great Marvin,
it'd become your stock party ploy, at least with
any up-and-coming directors within hearing distance!
But there's one difference between me and you,
between me and Tilly Armitage. You're both
technicians, and 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
terms of that sweating, morose, unkind and yet
gentle monster, the theatre audience. And this
is why I invariably have them at my feet, even
the clever ones who call me ham and pan my perform-
ances in the press, because they go to the theatre
at most five times a week, whereas I'm always here,
night and day!
She sips her champagne quietly.
LIZZY: And mummy says oh come to bed and shut up. She's
sitting, more or less like I am now.
Perhaps
you've gone potty and just repeat speeches and
aren't fit to perform any more.
MARVIN (with a great sigh)
And just like your mother
you're infuriating.
(Sitting down with great
fatigue at the dressing table)
LIZZY: Just the same, most of that was the Act 11 speech
from May Day Darlings.
MARVIN: If I ever spoke the truth she said you're quoting
a speech from a former show!
(Accusingly) The
names are different!
LIZZY: Well of course! You adapt the speeches. I'm
not saying you don't do that.
MARVIN: I could never touch that woman.
When she said
what about a drinky after the show I ran for a cab.
I imagine Stokes is wretchedly unhappy. I see 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.


He looks forlorn.
LIZZY (watching him)
You don't do intelligent things.
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 save
your life! to keep you off the streets and in
a job!
MARVIN: I have a job thank you!
LIZZY: For years now Nigel's been renting this place
out to other productions, it was dark for nine
whole months two years ago!
MARVIN: I sometimes needed a rest dammit!
LIZZY: No one can break through to you!
You were
offered an off-Broadway venue last month weren't
you?---off-Broadway!
You, the star!
MARVIN: Times are hard dammit!
LIZZY: And the Macbeth you were going to dress for was
a studio Macbeth, broken down to a two-hander--
you and Lady M!
Because you can't afford the
cast, the sets, the lights! And you're dragging
Nigel downhill with you---he'll have to sell up
soon!
MARVIN: He has nothing to sell! The theatre isn't his!
LIZZY : But the board trusts him. And last week they
decided to sell within the year unless something
dramatic happans---
MARVIN: Isn't this dramatic?
LIZZY: But even now you only see it in little personal
terms---how poor Marvin James is being held by
the IRA. You don't see the meaning at all,
you don't see what there is to use in the situation.
A few hours ago this siege was a small event in
London's theatreland, hardly the kind of story to
get daily, much less world, coverage. But with
three people killed, and the IRA involved, don't


you see you have the attention of the whole
wide world!
MARVIN: And if they should remove the earth from under
our feet?
LIZZY:
It's a risk. But not even a big one. The IRA
can't afford the unpopularity involved in blowing
up a West End theatre with dozens of people in it!
One could hardly describe us as a military target!
But you should be telling me this, not vice versa!
Instead, you sit there like a piece of sodden sea-
weed.
MARVIN (nodding, then with one of his great sighs) Lizzy,
I've said it often enough: whatever I did, I did
in spite of myself. He can't act, my mother said.
LIZZY shakes her head, gives up.
MARVIN (cont.)
But I had to act. Theatre was all I knew.
I had to cultivate the ways, shall we say, of a
great actor, without being one. And in doing so,
I, in a certain way, became one. I began to
generate excitement in my audiences. They held
their breaths for my first entrance---and disregarded
the rest of the play.
LIZZY (staring at him) Are you crying?
MARVIN: That's something I could never do. My mother
used to say, shake your shoulders and hide your
face, it's as near as you'll ever get.
LIZZY: Did you know they were thinking of turning this
room into a studio theatre and calling it Viktoria
Two? It could seat between fifty and a hundred.
If you broke down that wall (indicating the rear
wall). You're not of an age to start all over
again Marvin...
He has no response.
LIZZY (cont.)
Lost for words.
He nods.
She goes on an impulse and
sits on his lap.
LIZZY (cont.) We shouldn't die quarrelling.
MARVIN: Is this quarrelling?
LIZZY: I never opened to a man in my life before you.


You went so deep I thought I would faint.
That's why I came to you today. A woman can
seé ahead. I know I'm like her. Maybe even
our bodies are similar!
MARVIN (wriggling uncomfortably) You think so?
LIZZY: Why didn't she seduce you---as I did?
MARVIN (a leer)
Because she had Stokes.
LIZZY: She acted with you for ten years before she
even met him!
MARVIN: That's right dammit, so she did!
Which makes
you not his daughter at all! Twenty-eight years
ago she didn't even know him!
LIZZY (kissing him) When you're inside me it's like
having a rich totem in there---quivering and
tremblingi---as if all your imagination was
down there!
MARVIN: In my pants!
She laughs and kisses him
again dreamily.
LIZZY: I always wanted to fuck my father.
MARVIN: Oh my god!
LIZZY: When you said his pot belly just now I got
excited. It doesn't matter his not being my
real father.
MARVIN: That flatulent, gasping accountant.
LIZZY: He's a good man and you're not.
(Nestling her
head on his chest) I don't care if they kill
us, I don't care any more.
MARVIN: Maybe I don't either.
(With another sigh)
When I was a child everything was so charming.
In the theatre people called each other darling
and meant it and you went to Brighton for the
weekend on a train called The Flying Fornicator.
If you went down by car you wore gauntlet gloves
and flaps over your ears against the wind, and
you might do five miles of road without seeing
another vehicle. There were white and yellow
butterflies, and buttercups in the fields, and
the beach at Little hampton was so clean it gleamed
at low tide like salt.
Shaftesbury Avenue
usually had a couple of Shakespeare productions


running, commercial ones, mind, not state
subsidised affairs.
There were two evening
papers and when you opened them you read such
authors as Evelyn Waugh and Ezra Pound and it
was stuff that didn't insult you. You could
pop round to the Piaccdilly 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 after 1941 you didn't
hear it any more.
LIZZY: Wasn't there a lot of unemployment?
They both laugh, squeeze
each other with delight.
MARVIN: You knew it was the next line!
LIZZY: I saw itl
MARVIN (contemplating her intimately)
You really did
see just about everything...
And she wanted
to keep you out of the theatre? even rob you
of the chance of seeing her?
LIZZY: She knew I wanted you even as a child. You
were the only man for me (stroking his face).
This is the first time I've felt safe and secure
all my life.
MARVIN (with a half-smile)
You make everything sound
so damned phoney!
LIZZY: Why is that? When I'm sincere it doesn't come
off!
MARVIN (a shrug)
How can you act if you're sincere?
I mean, you only have one feeling really. You
want a big part in a big show and your name above
the title and you want to be at the top of your
agent's list and have your phone ringing every
morning with bright new offers from which you
can pick like a rich woman picking at grapes.
That's what you want. Anything else is counter-
feit!
LIZZY: That's what they say about you. What do you
feel?


MARVIN: I'm the last person to ask!
LIZZY (laughing) That's silly! You must be human in
some respect!
MARVIN: Only when I'm playing.
LIZZY:
All the men I've ever known have taken me to mean
yes when I say it. You're the only one who sees
I mean no. And men think I'm so attentive, such
a listening person, but you know I never listen
to anybody.
MARVIN: Don't you see that Ophelia was a liar just like
you? She only comes out insipid because people
play her as truthful and good.
LIZZY (enthusiastically) That's just what I'm saying!
I think Hamlet fucked her. He released her
animal self.
She didn't go mad. She feigned
madness like Hamlet did. Their animal selves
couldn't stand the court, the Doublethink.
MARVIN (nodding with interest)
Certainly her verses
are the bawdiest the Old Chap ever wrote, in a
lifetime of bawdy language:
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.
MARVIN
and :
By Gos and by Saint Charity
LIZZY
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do't if they come to't,
By Cock, they are to blame!
This 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.T
LIZZY:
Is that what you feel?
MARVIN: What?
LIZZY:
That because you fucked me you have no further


interest in me?
MARVIN: I never had any further interest in you!
They laugh.
LIZZY: I spent hours pushing my clit up against his belly
when I was 13 or 14.
MARVIN: Against whose belly?
LIZZY: Dad's! Little he cared! Arthur Stokes, chartered
accountant, doesn't get anything but figures, but
how I wanted that man! And much more than my
mother did.
MARVIN: Really?
LIZZY: I swear she had other men, I mean she never got
home before three in the morning and her show was
usually down by eleven. He used to sit drinking
whisky and watching the box and I knew he was good
for a cuddle after about the third or fourth glass.
I did exactly what I'm doing now, I sat on his lap.
MARVIN: Doesn't he specialise in theatre business?
LIZZY: Film budgets mainly. That's how he met mum. Why
are you changing the subject?
MARVIN: I wonder what he and she have in common.
LIZZY: I think they have a funny kind of sex.
MARVIN: Oh yes?
LIZZY; When I was sixteen he went to bed early and I
started tickling him and he half pulled me into
bed and I started pressing against him, I'd just
had a bath and only had a dressing gown on and
he started to put it in, I nearly fainted, I was
on top of him and then would you believe it the
front door opens and in comes mummy, she'd never
been home that early before, not in ten years,
and the first thing she does is to come to the
bedroom, she seemed to know, she was there from
the front door in one second flat, it was amazing,
he was half inside me, I thought I was going to
come and I swear he nearly did too, she came to
the bed screaming 'No, no!' and tearing all the
bedclothes off. Then she put her arms round me
and took me out of the room, we went to her bed-
room and she rocked me in her arms and kept say-
ing 'Poor darling!
Poor darling!"' So ended
the greatest thrill of my life. I thought, you


bitch, some instinct brought. you home. It
isn't that she cared about Arthur Stokes having
me, or about me having my own stepfather, she
just wanted to keep us both out of the deepest
thrill of our lives, especially me! I've never
forgiven her for that.
MARVIN: But---as a mother---!
LIZZY:
Rubbish!
She'd sell me to any pimp in town if
it suited her book.
Anyway I stayed awake
all night. I listened for his footsteps in case
he went to the john and expected me to go to him.
But the wimp never stirred, she made sure of that---
MARVIN: How?
LIZZY: By having him inside her.
She didn't let him
go until dawn was coming through. Then he fell
dead asleep, I could hear him snoring.
She made
him come twice, so he was exhausted. I had to
lie there listening to them making love. She
makes a kind of shocked gasp---
MARVIN: Yes?
LIZZY: Almost a protest, a refusal---with a lot of whisp-
ering---as if they're just there for conversation
and he keeps thrusting from time to time and she's
reminded that he's there and makes that gasp as if
he's taken a fearful liberty---
MARVIN: Yes!
LIZZY: That's very exciting for a man, don't you think so?
MARVIN: Oh yes.
He looks away.
LIZZY: Am I making you jealous?
(Peering at him)
You're
excited.
MARVIN: Not really. I was thinking---as a matter of fact---
how Freud said---I remember it from A Man Called
Shrink---a woman's lover or husband is always
secondbest for her because he isn't her father.
LIZZY: Fucking you was the best thing I've had, how do
you account for that? I wanted you all my life
you see, you were close to my mother, much more
than my real father.
MARVIN: Maybe she feared your spell over him.


LIZZY: You're changing the subject again. (Kissing him)
Do I have a spell over you?
MARVIN: I---I can imagine his excitement---and his wife
LIZZY:
Would it have been the most complete love of my
life, if he'd managed to get it right in?
MARVIN: Not love---the deepest animal pleasure---beyond
love!
LIZZY:
Is it against the law?
MARVIN: I think so.
LIZZY:
Would a baby that came out of it be deformed?
MARVIN: A monster, most likely!
Nature can't afford
pleasures that are too deep!
They gaze before them.
LIZZY:
It feels as if everybody's dead (gazing round
at the inner room)--
MARVIN: Those noises you said---the noises she makes in
bed---with the accountant---it intriques me because
I've never been with Tilly, yet I've been so close,
in stage embraces, stage marriages!
LIZZY: I can tell she drugs a man---not with her body,
she hasn't got much of a body, though she likes
them to play with her at first, but that isn't
more than a few minutes, it's when they're inside
that she weaves the spell, there's something
about her there that makes them prisoners for
life---I can tell when my father looks at her
and she only has to make a sound like the sounds
when he's inside her, maybe a little cough that
half turns into a gasp---and he's aching for her,
he keeps awake until she comes back, however late,
and god alone knows who she's been with---!
MARVIN: You think she has other men?
LIZZY: That organ of hers is so perfect, such a tunnel
of sweets and ecstasies for men, I can hardly
believe she doesn't rehearse its performances as
hard as she does her stage ones. And she's so
quiet, so secretive without being furtive---
MARVIN: Yes! (With a chuckle)
You have a strange sort


of elegance when you talk about her. But tell
me, you used to lie awake listening for her sounds
at night?
LIZZY:
Until I broke free, and that was why I married
Nigel Burbage, to get free of her-- -
MARVIN: Fascinating, fascinating!
LIZZY: I was living sexually in her pleasures!
MARVIN: Of course!
LIZZY: I sometimes thought, what a pity she doesn't
bring back other men, what a banquet that would
be! And perhaps I could then steal into her
husband's bedroom and try to work my spell on him.
MARVIN: Captive of both wife and daughter---poor Arthur
Stokes!
LIZZY: But don't you see, he'd never need to have a
fantasy or looki at another woman after that.
There'd always be fresh delights in his own bed!
And the rivalry between wife and daughter, neither
sharing their secret with the other! I think
it's the only thing we've got left---fucking our
own family!
MARVIN (laughing)
What?
LIZZY: We haven't got a future, we'll all be blown up---
MARVIN: All of us?
LIZZY: If you and I get out of here alive we shall still
have the big death hanging over us, the feeling
that if just one American or Russian is mad enough
to pull the trigger every city in Europe goes up
in smoke, everything loses its meaning because of
that, don't you see? It means we're reduced to
tribal life again, all these grand buildings outside
are just leftover things from the past when we had
a future, the palaces and old streets and cafés
and theatres, we don't belong to them any more,
they can't have any influence on us either because
they can be reduced to smoke at any moment.
That
Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament and the Abbey
and Buck House and Trafalgar Square lost their
connection with us long ago! Only the Americans
think we're connected, with all their Brit stuff.
MARVIN: What a strange girl you are!


LIZZY: Family's gone too. So its laws have gone.
But we still grow up. Some effort is made in
our babyhood to make us feel that the world is
a familiar place and belongs to us.
So we fall
in love with faces---with uncles and cousins--
they pass through our lives or rather through our
dreams, because this is where we love them and
feel the sex flowing from them.
MARVIN: Talking about quoting from plays, are you sure
this isn't from one?
LIZZY: Did you know that there's a huge amount of incest
in America?
Women are sueing their fathers millions
of dollars for fucking them when they were girls.
Why I wonder? Even the shrinks say it's natural
for fathers to want to fuck their daughters and
vice versa.
MARVIN: But---do they condone it? I hardly think so.
LIZZY: Nothing real's condoned in this world! If you
make believe and do a lot of glad-facing on
television, that's condoned! If you go round
saying everything's the same as it always was,
and there's a future like there always was,
that's condoned! We've got to make believe,
to keep it all going!
MARVIN (half laughing) Lizzy---are you sure this isn't
from the holocaust play I did? You're so quaint!
And the language! Augustan, classical, just like
that play!
LIZZY: Let me finish!
There have never been people on
the earth like us, people who could say the human
race might come to an end in a moment, and not
only the race but every animal, and all form of
animate life, all nature and growth and thought!
So we have to live differently.
But we don't.
We should start all over again, deep in the cells,
like having sex in your sleep, in a dream, the
best sex of all, and for that kind of deep family
sex no strangers are any good---!
MARVIN quizzically)
Strangers?
LIZZY:
Outside the family.
People like Nigel Burbage!
MARVIN: You are a little mad.
LIZZY:
We can't fuck strangers any more! All my life
I've tried and failed. All those young men!


And dates!
The only thrill I ever got was
standing them up. They frightened me you see,
I ran away when they started getting all hot and
talking about love and waiting at the stage door
with trembling flowers in their hands! I read
a shrink's case history the other day, it was a
woman of 29 who died of cancer, she told the
shrink When I'm out of contact with people I feel
I don't exist, when I'm in contact I feel swallowed up
and controlled. That's how I feel. But I could
have told her what was wrong. She was living with
strangers instead of with her father. She worshipped
her father. She gave him everything, her money
even. When he knew she was going to die he asked
her to increase her life insurance and give him her
car as she wouldn't be needing it again, and she
did. That was her real lover! But she married
a stranger, could never get it together.
(Kissing
him urgently)
I want to marry you so that I can
fuck like in a dream, not be awake like I am with
other men, I want to feel you in the slime of life---
MARVIN (laughing)
Slime!
LIZZY:
When we were asleep I could feel those IRA men
downstairs yearning for a woman in their dreams.
Danger does that.
Do you remember the war-play
you did once---?
MARVIN: But that's the one I'm talking about! The holocaust
play. I lost twenty thousand on it.
LIZZY:
Where the woman goes round opening her legs to
the men just before the battle starts and they
know they're going to be killed.
That's family
sex! They have no faces any more, no memories,
attachments! The last coition! Can you imagine?
Well, when we were asleep on that settee I was
doing the same for those IRA men down there, they're
going to be killed whatever happens, whether they
blow us up or walk into the arms of the police
and get committed to prison for life. In my dream,
while I was fucking them, I could see them sitting
in prison for thirty, forty years dreaming about
that last coition---with me! (Looking round at
the inner room again) I think we should go down
to them Marvin!
MARVIN: That's mad!
Lizzy: I think if they see your face, and recognise my
face from their own dreams, they'l1 realise that
blowing us up won't solve a thing.


MARVIN. : They'll think, good, we'll kidnap these two,
we can use them as shields to get to the airport.
Listen, the only thing keeping them out of this
room is my supposed arms cache.
She has frightened---and
aroused herself with her
thoughts.
LIZZY: Let's at least enjoy our last moments then.
You should be inside me (urgently caressing him
again) ! I look into Nigel Burbage's face and
it's so new---how can I make love to a newcomer?
All those childhood years I yearned for you, and
now they're going to snatch you away from me!
You melted in with the golden light of an after-
noon and the tea-table gleaming with white cloth
and all the good things, the raisin cake and the
fire crackers and icing with little fairies 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? The
only sex there is is when the cells and the glands
respond in their dark recesses---respond to a
message from long ago when they were suckled on
the breast.
She jumps up, trying to pull
him into a standing position.
He remains staring at her.
She goes to the settee, inviting
him to come.
LIZZY (cont.)
Marvin!
She takes off her shoes, stand-
ing by the settee, then her
panties. She lets the panties
fall by the shoes. She looks
much like a forlorn child.
Still he doesn't rise.
MARVIN (studying her) You still live in childish sex,
still playing with uncles in your mind, unzipping
ten-year-old cousins...


LIZZY:
But you were hungry for me---you said: so---!
MARVIN: Because that's a part of me too---I too am a
LIZZY: I only satisfied you in part?
He leaves this unanswered.
LIZZY (cont.)
Marvin!
Come inside me!
He rises with an awkward,
rather helpless movement.
MARVIN: You see Lizzy...
LIZZY: What?
MARVIN: It's Tilly I. want.
LIZZY: Tilly?
MARVIN: Tilly Armitage.
LIZZY: (staring at him) My mother?
MARVIN: When it comes over me there's nothing I can do,
it's a fever Lizzy and I have to have her!
LIZZY: Have her?
MARVIN: It won't subside until I've had her---! It's
an ache, a dull thrilling unbearably wonderful
but horrible pain! Don't you see?
LIZZY:
But you've had her? My mother?
MARVIN: We meet---! Each week at least!
It's a terrific
secret---for years, years, at least twenty-eight!
And the sex, it burns, sears, scorches, and when
the need's aroused in me Lizzy there's nothing I
She stands gapi ng at him.
LIZZY: You've had her all these years?
MARVIN: Yes.
LIZZY:
That's---criminal!
MARVIN: Don't you see we had to keep it secret, it
was something we couldn't control, even marriage
couldn't have contained it! We had to have the


lies, a lifetime of them, to shield us from
scrutiny.
LIZZY:
I don't believe you. I'm going to ask her
She runs through the arch.
We hear her grappling with the
key at the inner door, then it
opens.
MARVIN (dashing after her)
Don't go out for god's sake!
Her steps echo on the staircase.
MARVIN (off)
Viktoria!
Viktoria!
Come back!
Their steps echo together.
MARVIN (off)
VIKTORIA!


The lights are set very dim.
MARVIN and LIZZY are once more
lying asleep on the settee. As
before, she is more or less on
top of him.
But this time a blanket covers
them.
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 through the centre arch,
pauses to take in his surroundings.
He sees MARVIN and LIZZY and
remains there, more or less under
the arch, apparently gazing at
them.
He stands there for some time.
Then he moves silently forward,


towards the settee.
When he reaches the settee he
stops, facing downstage. He
turns his head from MARVIN to
LIZZY and back again. He moves
closer to MARVIN.
He bends down and peers deeply
into MARVIN's face, so that he
almost touches him. He remains
like this, peering at MARVIN,
motionless.
MARVIN, stirred from his deep
sleep by this proximity, blinks
slightly. He makes a sudden
start from his sleep when he
sees the HOODED FIGURE. He
makes a hoarse rattling sound,
like the terrified scream one
wishes to make in a nightmare,
but which fails to emerge.
Perceiving this, the HOODED
FIGURE withdraws, but slowly,
silently, still gazing down
at MARVIN, who is following his
movements with the utmost horror.
The HOODED FIGURE leaves as he
came, and as silently.
MARVIN (shaking LIZZY awake)
Did you see it? (As she
stirs helplessly) Did you see?
LIZZY (suddenly awake, her head up)
See what?
MARVIN: That---that---! Oh my god we must have left
the door open!
LIZZY (catching his terror)
Who was it?
MARVIN: A man! In a hood!
One of them!
LIZZY (convinced of the opposite) You dreamed itl
MARVIN: He was here, here! Well get up dammit and shut
that door!
LIZZY clings to him, hides
her head under the blanket.
MARVIN (cont.)
Where the fuck's that microphone!


ing around for it on the settee) Oh my god!
He finds it and fiddles around
frantically for the on-switch.
MARVIN (cont.) Hullo, hullo!
Are you there?
Silence.
MARVIN (cont.)
Oh my god, they've cleared off, left us
with the IRA! (with desperate glances upstage at
the inner room)
The HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR's voice
breaks in quietly over the inter-
com.
HN (VO) Are you calling us Mr James?
MARVIN: One of them just came in!
Hood over his head!
HN (Vo) One of the guerillas sir?
MARVIN: Yes!
HN (VO) With a hood over his head? Was he in policeman's
uniform Mr James?
MARVIN: Well I didn't notice that dammit, I was half asleep!
HN (VO) And how did he effect his entry Mr James?
MARVIN: He just walked in!
We must have left the door
open!
HN (VO) Have you closed it again Mr James?
MARVIN: Not yet.
(Hissing at LIZZY as he nudges and
pushes at her) Shut that fucking door!
LIZZY (hissing back) And get myself raped?
MARVIN (hissing) It's what you want isn't it?
LIZZY: Go to hell!
HN (VO) Shouldn't you do that right away Mr James?
MARVIN manages to push her off
and stumble towards the arch,
still holding the microphone.
MARVIN (into the mike) I'm doing it now.
He approaches the further room


in a gingerly fashion, craning
round the arch to see if anyone
is there.
LIZZY (hissing from the settee)
You fucking coward!
MARVIN: Ssssst!
He takes a plunge and with a
grotesque run kicks the unseen
door closed, then locks it and
rushes back as if pursued by a
ghost.
MARVIN (cont., into the mike)
I've done it, there's
nobody there.
HN (VO) Lucky for both of you if I may say so, Mr James.
What possessed you to open the door in the first
place?
MARVIN (making his way to his dressing table)
She ran out.
Miss Turndale ran out, couldn't stand the nervous
strain any more.
HN (vo) How's the lady now Mr James?
MARVIN: Rested, I think.
Will they---try to take us
hostage, do you think?
HN (VO) 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.
HN (VO) Threatening to kill you both if they aren't
given safe passage back to Ireland. But of
course sir the Home Secretary can hardly let
terrorists loose in the first place; and in the
second these men have three deaths on their
shoulders - already. All I can ask you to do is
to keep calm.
MARVIN: Aren't they threatening you as well?
HN (VO) Their feeling at the moment is that your name
attracts notice, while we're a bunch of policemen.
You and Miss Turndale are thus their first line
of defence, we their second.
MARVIN: Oh my god!


LIZZY (hissing, her head emerging for a moment)
I wish
to christ you'd stop saying that!
HN (vo) At this point it's a war of attrition sir.
I think we're wearing them down.
Being so few,
they can only sleep fitfully, and in rota.
As for you and Miss Turndale, sir, may I suggest
you quarrel less audibly? Your voices are reach-
ing us over the IRA radio.
MARVIN: Oh my god!
HN (vo) Are you a catholic sir?
MARVIN: No.
HN (VO) Ds Miss Turndale?
MARVIN (hissing)
Are you a catholic?
LIZZY (hissing with withering scorn)
What---Tilly
Armitage's daughter? I'm not even baptised!
MARVIN (into the mike)
HN (VO) Would you therefore join us in a prayer from
one of us here who's a C. of E. minister?
MARVIN: OK!
C. OF E. Let our minds dwell not on saving this life
MINISTER
(VO) 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.
C. OF E.
MINISTER
AND
Amen!
OTHERS
MARVIN is thoroughly mourn-
ful after this, his chin in
his chest.
The intercom cuts out.
LIZZY (appearing again) When a clergyman turns up it's
the death knell.
That's why they wear black!


MARVIN: Oh don't be superstitious!
LIZZY (jumping up) I'm going to make some coffee.
(Going to the further room) We need a plan!
She disappears and we hear
her opening cupboards,
switching on the stove.
LIZZY (cont., off)
Those idiots aren't going to save us!
What the hell are you talking about---how you make
coffee? All you've got is this instant stuff!
You're just a born fucking liar!
MARVIN: They'll pick that up on the IRA radio!
LIZZY (off) You should have let me go down there. I'd
have managed it somehow.
Wound them round my
little finger.
MARVIN begins pacing round
in his restless way.
MARVIN: Either that or put your big foot in it!
He wanders to the archway
and watches her at work on
the coffee.
MARVIN (cont.)
What the hell are you doing? That's
for constipation! The coffee's in a jar marked
jasmine tea.
Something made of glass crashes
to the floor.
MARVIN: Oh my god!
LIZZY (screaming)
STOP SAYING THAT!
Can't you see I've
burned myself?
MARVIN (quietly)
You'd better let me do it. Come on.
He leads her back into the
main room, his arm round her.
She is nursing her left hand.
MARVIN (cont.)
Just like your mother. She can't even
fix an egg.
LIZZY (hiding her head in his chest)
I don't want to die!
MARVIN: Here (lowering her to the settee).
So what about
this plan of yours? Could we manage to talk
quietly about it?


LIZZY (tearful poutingly)
What's the use? You don't
believe in me!
They sit close on the settee.
LIZZY (cont.) You - can't believe that I might be as
serious and knowledgeable as you are on the
theatre !
MARVIN: What's that got to do with getting out of here
alive?
LIZZY: Don't you see why that man came in here? To
see you with his own eyes! The great Marvin
James! Don't you see what magic you have for
people, as long as they don't know you personally?
Now that can be used!
MARVIN: How?
LIZZY: Would you give me your attention for a moment--
then decide if I'm just a cheap rep actress or not?
He nods.
LIZZY (cont.) I needn'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 and poses that were fashionable at the
time.
MARVIN (drawing away)
Listen I don't want a lecture,
not in our present situation!
LIZZY: Just listen!
Critics of the time tell us he
had an easy and familiar yet forceful style.
You know too that in 1746 he and the actor Quin,
who played in the old flamboyant style, had a
competition to see which of them the audiences
preferred. They played alternate nights.
And Garrick's naturalistic style won. 53 years
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. 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 (with a glance at the inner room)
Yes.
LIZZY: Which of those three do you prefer?
MARVIN (bored)
I don't know.


LIZZY: Kemble?
MARVIN: Not really. He was a sort of half-way house,
you know. That was the romantic time, it killed
theatre, you got all those poets like Shelley and
Byron writing unactable scripts.
LIZZY: So it's Garrick?
MARVIN: Oh yes.
LIZZY: So you see Marvin how you live at cross purposes,
how you esteem Garrick and act like Quin, so that
in the end you succeed only in being Kemble.
A long silence during which he
stares at her.
MARVIN: And this is going to get us out of the clutches of
the IRA?
LIZZY: Don't you see what I'm saying? that you must now
graduate to Henry Irving by adding hypnotism?
MARVIN: You are bonkers you know...
LIZZY: Don't you see that you can go down to those
guerillas and become, by the addition of that one
thing, magical presence, the captain not only of your own
career but their lives, and rescue us.all from our
present predicament?
MARVIN: It's a speech from that theatre play I did dammit!
Lizzy, swear these aren't your own speeches!
LIZZY: But you're afraid they might be.
MARVIN: Are you seriously proposing---?
LIZZY: I'm proposing that with your magic you can
beguile, persuade, flatter and convince anybody
to do anything! Don't you see that this was what
I wanted to do---go downstairs and use my magic
on them but I lack your fifty years of experience
on the stage---?
MARVIN: Fifty?!
LIZZY: All your life you've twisted directors, managers,
leading ladies, agents and audiences to your fickle
fancy. Again and again people say they're putty in
your hands! They plot against you behind your
back but the moment you stand before them they're
deflated!


MARVIN: That's not your speech dammit!
(Wracking his
brains frantically)
Where the hell---?
LIZZY:
You're frightened aren't you? You daren't go
down there!
MARVIN: No I daren't! They'll shoot me on sight for
one thing.
LIZZY: You're going to leave it to the Home Office to
get us out of here? and those policemen? They'1l
bungle their job, you'll see!
MARVIN (his agitated pacing even quicker)
I mean I like
the idea! And it could work! I know what you
mean---my magic! Especially the Irish! At
the Gate theatre (his eyes gleaming), when I said,
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee;
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
Adagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
LIZZY:
Alright, that's enough!
MARVIN: :
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw (miming the dagger).
Thou marshall'st--
LIZZY (waving her hands in front of him)
Marvin! Come
back!
MARVIN:
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going:
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools---
LIZZY (clapping her hand over his mouth) SHUT UP!
MARVIN comes to in a bleary
fashion.
LIZZY (eont., quietly, holding him).
Don't you see we
havé work to do?
MARVIN: I---I was about to explain---at the Gate Theatre...
LIZZY:
But perform in front of them! here! now!
MARVIN: I'm trembling---I


LIZZY:
But you always do before your first entrance.
MARVIN: Yes!
LIZZY:
And the more you tremble the better the perform-
ance!
MARVIN: Yes!
She leads him gently towards
the arch.
MARVIN (cont., stopping)
No dammit we've got to rehearse
something!
LIZZY: Just talk to them!
MARVIN: I never do that. I have to know my lines!
Listen, let's do a scene. The ha are you honest
scene, how about that? You go in the kitchen---
make your entrance from there---I'l1 take it from
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.
(Fussing about) Oh my god, the police won't
like this--
LIZZY: It's better than being blown up!
MARVIN (going to his dressing table) Here, take this
packet of letters.
He opens a drawer in his
dressing table and extracts
a packet of letters neatly
tied round with blue ribbon.
MARVIN (cont.) I always think she means his letters to
her when she says I have remembrances of yours.
We can do a bit of sexual sideplay on the I did
love you once bit, though it might get you raped.
Oh my god!
She takes the packet from him
and goes into the kitchen to await
her cue. He sets lights,then begins.
MARVIN (cont.) Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!
The fair ophelial
No LIZZY,


MARVIN (cont.) Soft you now! The fair---! Well come
on! what the hell are you doing?
LIZZY comes in quietly. She
has taken the ribbon off the
packet of letters.
LIZZY:
These letters are from my mother!
MARVIN (dashing forward to retrieve them)
How dare you---!
She jumps aside, clinging to them.
LIZZY (reading from the letters)
'She tried to burn the
house down yesterday'.
Who's she?
MARVIN: I wouldn'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 mother once a week!
LIZZY (resolute)
Who is she?
He sits himself at his dressing
table and pauses before he replies.
MARVIN: She's my daughter. Her name---Viktoria.
With
a 'k', you know. Like this theatre.
LIZZY:
That's the name you shouted at me down the stairs.
He nods.
LIZZY (cont.)
She's your daughter.
MARVIN: Yes. By your mother. There---I told you not
to walk into the fire.
She sits down too under the
weight of the shock.
watches her.
MARVIN (cont.,) That's what growing up is. Taking blow
after blow and realising they don't kill you.
Read some more, burn your hands more.
LIZZY (reading again reluctantly, yet also excited)
'She's a criminal, like you.' (Looking up 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 put that candle
where the monkey put the nuts. She says you've
snuffed out her candle, put her light out. And
then she says she loves you'.
(Looks up at


MARVIN again)
'And how she'd much rather
see you than me. That's your work too isn't it?
Undermining and pulling down, counting me for
nothing, upstaging me as you've alwaya done in
our shows, until the audience hardly sees me any
more! By the way, Viktoria says she put a real
knife in your dagger cupboard last night---"
LIZZY looks round at the stage-
daggers cupboard.
LIZZY (cont.) A real knife?
MARVIN shrugs.
LIZZY (cont.)
If it's true and there's a real knife in
there, you could have killed me when you were
fooling about. That could have been my blood,
not ketchup.
MARVIN: It could.
LIZZY: So is there a real knife in there?
MARVIN: Oh Viktoria's full of nonsense.
LIZZY (reading again) 'She says you'll not tell the
difference between that knife and the other
knives, you won't find out until too late that
you've murdered somebody in one of your scenes,
they'll imprison you and then you won't be able
to murder us with your mind any more. Viktoria
eats like a pig. She grabs food and stuffs it
into her mouth and sometimes vomits it out before
she's even chewed it, I have to watch this---!'
Is all this going on now?
MARVIN: A few months ago.
LIZZY: And now?
MARVIN shrugs.
LIZZY (cont.) You let me think I was bearing your first
child!
MARVIN: My first acknowledged child. I built this theatre
in her name to celebrate her existence but no
one knows I'm her father and no one ever will. No one
even knows she's called Viktoria, including herself!
LIZZY (furiously)
My ex-husband built this theatre!
MARVIN: Rubbish.
He was just the front, like he is for


my productions. Who do you think went round
the City with a begging bowl? It was I!
Because I wanted a theatre in her name! I
needed your damned ex-husband to hide the connect-
ion between myself and her, which might otherwise
have become public.
LIZZY: Why shouldn't she be known as your daughter?
Is she spastic or something?
MARVIN: In a sense.
LIZZY:
Then it was you who made her so---by denying her
true fatherhood!
MARVIN (with surprising mildness)
I've lost every friend
in the world on that account.
Sooner or later
they meet either Tilly Armitage or Viktoria and
I begin to fear they will see the truth, and I
quickly withdraw from the friendship.
LIZZY: But why shouldn't the truth get out? You are
her father! Where's your guts? not to mention
your compassion and decency?
MARVIN: Don't you see, that would mean revealing my
association with Tilly Armitage?
LIZZY:
MARVIN: I come back to that trembling state of desire
when I think of her. I'm not myself. You saw
that, you touched it on that settee. And the
thriil between Tilly and me depends on utter
secrecy.
LIZZY:
Good god.
So you sacrifice a human being...
He nods.
MARVIN: We can't do without it any more, the furtiveness
which was all I learned about sex when I was a
child---the forbidden sounds in another room,
the creaking of the bed, the rhythmic movement!
Oh you're very moral Miss Turndale---about my
sexual appetites. Not about your own.
LIZZY: But your own daughter---don't you think she might
be proud to be seen as your daughter, acknowledged
as such?
MARVIN: She can't be sure she is my daughter. I keep
her in doubt, you see.


LIZZY (to herself)
Unthinkable...
MARVIN: I suppose she lives in constant terror of me.
Terrified to lose my love and attention because
never certain that she has a right to them.
LIZZY:
That you can even say all this!
MARVIN: I warned you at the beginning against association
with me. Those foolish enough to depend on me
I sear and scorch for life! Do you realise that
since the earliest childhood Viktoria has been
forbidden even to name me to her friends---?
LIZZY:
I was too!
MARVIN: Children accept that sort of thing if you get them
early enough. A strict injunction, repeated often
enough, becomes as fixed as the stars in the sky for a
child. In the twenty-eight years that have passed
since her birth not a soul has discovered, as far as
I know, that she isn't the daughter of the man Tilly
Armitage married. Namely your father. Arthur
Turndale.
That's his name?
LIZZY (hating him)
That's his name.
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 Day Darlings.
Viktoria came in clutching her belly, oh it was some
absurd little drama she was enacting, and Joyce whisp-
ered to me venomously, 'Look at that! She's holding
her belly because you've got your fist up her cuntl'.
Either Joyce Bellamy is psychic or she knows something.
LIZZY (bursting out) So you have got it up her cunt!
MARVIN: May I put in a good word for myself Lizzy? Betrayal
was the horror of my childhood, night agter night,
it was in my mother's goodnight kiss and in her
surreptitious return in the early hours with yet another
fellow half her age. The bed springs would clang
like bells in hell, and at dawn, sleepless, I would
rise and go to the door of her bedroom, and do you
know what I would do, I would stand there Lizzy
and try and smell him, smell the kind of man he was,
so that my stomach was sickened for life. Do you
wonder I couldn't let my daughter go, even to the
point of acknowledging her as my daughter, one who
in her due time could fall in love and marry and
have children, and thus betray me! Won't you see
that she's the only creature in my life not bold
enough to do without me and thus betray me? I---


The HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR breaks
in over the intercom.
HN (VO) Mr James?
Neither of them stirs. Then,
with his eyes still on LIZZY,
MARVIN takes up the microphone.
MARVIN: Yes?
HN (Vo) I'm afraid we must give up hope.
MARVIN and LIZZY continue to
sit quite still.
The guerillas won't accept the Home
Secretary's conditions. I can't tell what
might happen. The police may make a surprise
attack, in view of the fact that the situation
is desperate anyway. Of course that's very
risky and could involve their deaths as well as
ours. The guerillas delivered their ultimatum
a few minutes ago: if the Home Secretary doesn't
recant within ten minutes from now, the fuse will
be fired.
I'm sorry Mr James. Miss Turntable,
this is particularly tragic in your case because
you are an innocent party. Prayers are being
offered throughout the nation and the United
States, wherever there is an interest in classical
theatre.
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: Bravely, yes.
The intercom switches out.
They sit in silence.
LIZZY: I'd have told the whole world you were Viktoria's
father.
I'd have walked out of here and told
the press.
MARVIN: But if she cannot be identified even on a birth
certificate?.:
LIZZY: What's her name?
MARVIN: That's between Tilly and me.
LIZZY: You love a woman passionately and you don't
acknowledge your child by her! And you make
love to me like a starving man!


The sound of an ambulance
siren.
MARVIN: We meet on the last Sunday of every month at
Leicester Square tube station by the ticket office.
We go to a hotel. We go through many men, some
of them imagined, others real.
LIZZY:
I'm glad we're going to die.
MARVIN: It was the opposite of your love---for familiar
faces. We were strangers. That was the thrill
of the enterprise. Not even love bound us. So
the thrill depended on the secrecy.
LIZZY:
And everything had to be sacrificed to that, even
a human life.
Another ambulance siren.
Some police cars with sirens
sounding.
They stare at each other with
fear.
MARVIN: Tilly yearned for rough ugly types she wouldn't
dare even to talk to. I gave them to her, in
fantasy. So I shared the greatest secret of her
life. We became used to secrecy. We carried
it too far perhaps (a shrug). A mistake perhaps
but not a villainy..
He makes one of his sighs,
having got it off his chest.
He looks at his watch.
LIZZY:
And you? Was it just a charitable function on
your part, at least at the beginning?
MARVIN: I supplied Tilly with her betrayals, and in order
to have them she never betrayed me. It was my
way of getting round the betrayal that my mother
taught me lay like a worm at the heart of every
woman.
LIZZY: If we lived---Wwould you go back to her?
MARVIN (going to her) No.
(Embracing her)
I'd do for
you what I did for her.
LIZZY (trying to break from him)


MARVIN (keeping hold of her)
I'd be every man of your
life!
She gives way, kisses him.
Then she leads him gently
to the window in the inner
room.
LIZZY (gazing out) Look how normal everything seems I
buses in the distance, people. I can see a
woman leading her dog.
MARVIN (also gazing out) We want to be there now it's
too late. We never did before. We ran away
from it all our lives and now---!
LIZZY:
But is it too late? Why don't we do something
Marvin? Even if it's only a scene from Hamlet?
One last thing!
So that we can say we tried!
If they're going to blow us up anyway let's go
down there, face them!
(Clinging to him) I
want you---I've got to go on having you---!
Another police siren.
MARVIN: Lizzy! Get that dress of yours on! It'll be
dry by now. Quick! The one from May Day Darlings.
Do you know the part---Clarissa?
LIZZY:
I played it in rep---at York and Coventry and
Liverpool.
He draws her in a kind of
dancing motion back to the
dressing room.
MARVIN: I'm thinking of the dance. Do you remember?
Dallying with a maiden?
LIZZY:
Of course!


MARVIN: I've a tape of that whole number. And
the lighting programme! I can synch them together
on that machine!
He hurries to the lights console
and extracts two cassettes from
the drawer.
He inserts them.
MARVIN (cont.) Do you remember? When an old man dallies
with a maiden---
She joins in for the next line.
MARVIN)
He dances with death, he dances with death!
LIZZY )
MARVIN (cont.)
We've got three minutes flat!
With a last glance at him for
reassurance she runs behind the
screen to change into her original
dress.
He hurries to the inner room.
MARVIN (cont.)
And now for MAGIC!
He too disappears. We hear
him open the door to the stair-
case.
LIZZY (from behind the screen)
Marvin!
MARVIN (off)
Don't be afraid!
He begins shouting down the
staircase at the guerillas,
his voice echoing.
MARVIN (cont., off)
Guerillas!
Guerillas!
We're
putting on a show for you! From May Day Darlings!
With music and lights! Feel free to come upstairs!
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! I shall leave
this door open!
If we're to die let us do so on
a note of joy! Better still, come and join Miss
Turndale and I, and leave death for another day!
He hurries back into the


dressing room. He returns
to the console and, repeating
his routine at the beginning
of the play, sets the lights,
gazing up at the area where
they will next come.
Then he presses two buttons
on the console simultaneously.
The overture to May Day Darlings
begins.
With childish wonder he watches
the lights being reset by the
lighting programme he has activated.
MARVIN (cont., mouthing to the rhythm)
When an old man dallies with a maiden
He dances with death, he dances with death!
MARVIN puts on his trilby hat at
a rakish angle. He glances at
himself in the dressing table
mirror, humming.
He is urbane
and debonair, as at the beginning
of the play. He puts on a jacket.
LIZZY makes a sweeping entrance
through the arch in her dress.
The lights continue to change.
They come up gold on LIZZY,
for her entrance, then the gold
spreads to enclose the entire
stage in a bustling, cheerful
light that exactly reflects
MARVIN's man-about-town appear-
ance.
The cue for their dance begins.
They meet centre stage, behind
the settee, and he takes her
hand. She does the first steps,
he remaining still to watch them.
He mimes charmed approval of her
efforts.
Then he joins her steps until
they are dancing together with a
precision so marked that they
seem to be one body.
Her face bears a rapt, joyous


expression, his one of debonair
control and mellow pleasure.
We feel 'What a remarkable union'.
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 own minds before
we hear them, so natural and
spontaneous are they.
The lights continue to go through
changes, sweeping up in the areas
where MARVIN and LIZZY dance,
adding silver to gold, amber to
silver.
The dance has elements of Jack
Buchanan's 'soft tap'style.
The mood however undergoes a
change. The debonair quality
of MARVIN's appearance gives way
to a certain rigidity and fatigue.
LIZZY on the other hand dances
with ever stronger and more
emphatic movements.
MARVIN begins to falter, then
reel, yet strangely keeping his
rhythm. His face takes on a
vacant, then frightened look.
They now break from each other's
rhythm as the lights change to
darker and more threatening
combinations.
She begins dancing round him
as he falters. She stamps rather
than dances. There is a strange
deep twanging in the music,
disturbing.
He almost falls.
It is now
that the danse macabre begins.
He gradually picks up her rhythm
but in a helpless, jerky way.
She is powerful, flushed, strong.
But a certain deathly joy comes
over his movements too. It is
a mad joy, beyond life, uncanny,
as if his movements are being


worked by her. His look is
inspired, deathly, while hers
is coolly triumphant. The
lights go into deep purple,
brighten to silver and then 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's jacket has a
SKULL AND CROSSBONES. For a
moment or two there is total
BLACKOUT, and these two luminous
designs hover together strangely.
Then the lights gradually return
to their first setting.
The
debonair MARVIN is once again
there, so is the happy LIZZY,
quite as if the danse macabre
hadn't taken place.
The music ends.
They look round hopefully at
the arch, expecting an audience
of guerillas.
There is no one.
Holding each other disconsolately
they go through the arch, hesitant,
alert. They stand looking at the
door leading to the staircase.
Then theyreturn to the dressing
room, chastened.
He suddenly grips hold of her.
MARVIN (screaming with frustration)
It's your damned
marriage got me into this! I've been suffocating
in this place for five years---in this damned
incestuous situation---kept here like a puppet--!!
He begins shaking her. She
appears in shock, her eyes wide.
MARVIN (cont.)
You and that fucking monster! You organised
this between the two of you didn't you? Didn't you?
I know you both need me for your fantasies---just
like your motherl---that's what you do with him
1sn't it? Isn't it? I could feel it in you
down there (indicating the settee), I could feel
it like in your mother! And you fantasise how
you're fucking all the men you want, including me---
including your father---and being raped by


all those guerillas---and now they're going to
kill us---just like your mother---rough ugly types---
and me looking on as the jealous father---with
Nigel Burbage's prick inside you---(shaking her
violently) you're a bitch Viktoria, a bitch!
LIZZY: I'm not Viktoria!
MARVIN: Viktoria!
Viktoria! (Shaking her)
LIZZY frantically)
I'm NOT VIKTORIA, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT!
They continue shouting each
other down.
She breaks free from him and in
her desperation dashes to the
daggers cupboard and pulls it
open.
MARVIN (rushing after her) No you don't!
She seizes a dagger and plunges
it into his chest. Ketchup
sprays everywhere.
He seizes a dagger too and not
they rain daggers on each other,
drenching each other in ketchup.
Finally he staggers away half
blinded by it.
She watches him from behind,
whimpering.
Suddenly she seizes another
dagger from the cupboard and
plunges it into his back as he
stumbles downstage.
The knife sticks. It remains
there in his back.
He stands there.
He manages
to walk round the settee, as
if to his dressing table. But
he collapses to the ground.
The knife is still sticking in
his back.


LIZZY stands there horrified.
She begins screaming.
LIZZY:
Marvin!
Marvin!
She runs to him and tries to
stir him. She shakes him but
he doesn't move.
Whimpering frantically to herself
she dashes to the door on
the set, actor's left. It is
locked. She runs back to MARVIN.
She feels in his pockets for the
key and finds it.
She runs
back to the door and manages to
open it after panic-stricken
fumbling.
MARVIN remains motionless.
She is gone, leaving the door
open. A sterile light comes
from the corridor.
Some time passes.
Silence.
MARVIN stirs.
He begins raising
himself slowly into a crouching
position. With much effort he
manages to stand upright.
He moves slowly, shuffling, towards
the arch.
The knife is still sticking in
his back.
He disappears into the inner room.
We hear the lavatory door being
opened. We hear him pee. He
flushes the toilet.
Painfully, dimly, he returns to
the dressing room. He steadies
himself on the back of the settee.
He stands there.
LIZZY returns like a shadow,
stands there gazing at him in
astonishment, quite still.


LIZZY (suddenly rushing to him)
Marvin I thought---
He holds her in a loose
embrace.
They kiss each other, ketchup
and all.
LIZZY (cont.)
Marvin I went right down to the foyer.
There's no one about! No guerillas, no police!
Everything normal.
MARVIN: No one there?
LIZZY:
No one! I heard people laughing in Nigel's
office, that's all.
MARVIN (speaking painfully, hushed) I suspected as much.
When I heard that man's voice, I knew who it was.
I mean the Hostage Negotiator. I met him several
times. Every time I had lunch at the House of
Commons I seemed to meet him. He's the best hostage
negotiator in the land.
(Taking time to get his
breath)
Name of Cowell.
Sees right inside a
guerilla's mind. He saw right inside mine, I'm
afraid. And yours. What a brilliant stroke,
inventing the IRA. Turning us into hostages
ourselves.
Brilliant.
(Halting to retrieve his
breath again) They're putting him up for a knight-
hood, I heard. Well---
He breaks gently from their
embrace and walks unsteadily
and with extreme slowness to
his dressing table.
There he sits with enormous
relief.
MARVIN (cont.)
I'd better get ready for this damned Dress.
LIZZY:
It isn't dawn yet!
Darling, it's early morning!
MARVIN (working away with great weakness at the cold cream)
I need to get in the mood.
(Musing to himself)
That hooded man. Brilliant! The explosion.
So convincing!
(He sighs)
He is trying to work on his face
when he half rises, leaning on
the table, and gazes before him.
MARVIN (cont.) Oh my god...
He falls to the floor. He


lies face-down, motionless again.
The knife is still sticking in
his back.
She approaches him stealthily,
staring.
She bends down to look closer.
She sinks to her haunches, close
to him.
LIZZY (touching him)
It was worth it for the dance...
He remains there, rigid.
Her head sinks to his back.
She lies on him, crying silently.
In the distance Big Ben strikes
four.