De Angelis Amongst Friends

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31922-0
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 80 Seiten

Journalist Lara, and her ex-MP and crime-writer husband Richard, are happy and successful. Having moved to a fashionable gated community they invite their old neighbours Caitlin and Joe to dinner. When the security system fails, the food is delivered by a stranger and the dinner party takes quite a different turn. April De Angelis's darkly comic social satire Amongst Friends premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London, in May 2009.

April De Angelis's plays include Kerry Jackson (National Theatre), My Brilliant Friend (adapted from Elena Ferrante's novels for Rose Theatre, Kingston, and NT), House Party (BBC4 and Headlong Theatre), Gin Craze!, a musical with Lucy Rivers (Royal & Derngate), Extinct (Stratford East), Rune (New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme), The Village (Stratford East), Wild East (Royal Court), A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint/NT/tour), The Warwickshire Testimony (RSC), The Positive Hour (Out of Joint/Hampstead/Old Vic; Sphinx), Headstrong (NT Shell Connections), Playhouse Creatures (Sphinx Theatre Company), Hush (Royal Court), Soft Vengeance (Graeae Theatre Company), The Life and Times of Fanny Hill (adapted from the James Cleland novel), Ironmistress (ReSisters Theatre Company), Wuthering Heights (adapted from Emily Brontë's novel for Birmingham Rep), Jumpy (Royal Court and Duke of York's Theatres), Gastronauts (Royal Court), and After Electra (Theatre Royal, Plymouth). Her work for radio includes Visitants,The Outlander, which won the Writers' Guild Award 1992, Cash Cows for the Woman's Hour serial (all BBC), and adaptations of Jane Austen's Emma, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place and Stratis Myrivilis's Life in the Tomb. For opera: Flight with composer Jonathan Dove (Glyndebourne), and the libretto for Silent Twins (Almeida).

Autoren/Hrsg.

De Angelis, April

Leseproben

One

Lara This is a mistake. Tell me again what they said.

Richard They said fine, fine, they’d be happy to come.

Lara And –

Richard They said it’s been a while.

Lara Yes, and you said –

Richard I said that’s our fault.

Lara Yes.

Richard And then there was a silence.

Lara What kind of silence – smug, aggressive, guiltinducing, triumphant, suspicious, punishing?

Richard This was on the phone.

Awkwardness. I mean it’s been years.

Lara I thought you were happy.

Richard I am happy.

Lara What is it you’re missing?

Richard I’m not missing anything. I have an extremely nice life. I love this place, I love you.

Lara Then you had that dream.

Richard Yes.

Lara You woke up –

Richard With a kind of sadness, yes.

Lara You thought about the dream and you thought about them straight after.

Richard Yes, and that means –

Lara The two are connected subconsciously, I know that. Now here we are waiting for them. They’re late, that’s aggressive, or perhaps they’re having ‘trouble’ getting through the gates?

Richard Why didn’t you use your veto, your on-no-account-invite-those old-friends-of-yours-over veto?

Lara They were my friends too. I was curious. I wanted to see what they looked liked. I wanted them to see what I looked like. I didn’t think you had the cajones to go through with it.

Richard I have plenty cajones.

Lara Maybe you me to use my veto and you went down this path always hoping I’d be the one to hold you back –

Richard It’s just a dinner party.

Lara – to stop this headlong plunge into folly.

Richard Do you expect the avocado to explode? It’s three hours of pleasant banter, then we never have to see them again.

Lara Promise?

Richard Yes.

Lara I don’t remember my dreams. It’s just as well – God knows who we’d be inviting over … Ken Livingstone.

Richard Is it natural, is it healthy not to remember your dreams? To put your head down on the pillow and totally switch off – to be dead in a way.

Lara What a horrible thing to say to your wife. Why do I bother investing in all that interesting nightwear if you think I’m clinically dead?

Richard What I meant was. it’s nice sleeping next to someone who is still mentally functioning at some level – even if it’s involuntary.

Lara Remind me again what your dream was about.

Richard It was set in a morgue and I was some kind of functionary in this morgue.

Lara Like a high priest.

Richard More some lower order of neophyte. And it was my job – God, it sounds horrible to say it now – to, to …

Lara Go on.

Richard To … the dead people.

Lara No!

Richard It gets better. I knew some of the dead people were only pretending to be dead and my fear was that they would – well, grab hold of me and – well – yeah.

Lara In this dream you fuck dead people and they fuck you back?

Richard Yes.

Lara You think I would have agreed to this dinner party with that kind of omen hanging over my head?

Richard It’s not an omen.

Lara Necrophilia is in no way a blessing on an enterprise.

Who are these people you’ve invited?

I don’t know them any more, who are they?

Richard They are our old neighbours.

Lara They had a flat in the house next door to ours and we owned all of our house.

Richard That qualifies them as neighbours. They became our friends.

Lara Because we were going through that phase in our relationship where we didn’t like to be alone together.

Richard What?

Lara Every couple has the ‘I need this person in my life but I enjoy them better when I don’t have to talk to them constantly and can look at another set of faces at the weekend’.

Richard I had no idea that existed.

Lara This is why we became so close to them – there wasn’t a weekend where we weren’t popping in and out for drinks, eating a meal together –

Richard And then we drifted apart.

Lara We moved, Richard.

Richard Do you think we thought we didn’t need them any more because we could get better people?

Lara I don’t think we’re that shallow, but now we know Arabella and Brutus and Cuba and Charles.

Lara That was Cuba and Charles – they’re having after-supper drinks in the Mezzanine Bar with a special guest couple who are big in the entertainment world, would we join them?

Richard We have our own guests.

Lara Phone them now, cancel, tell them I have toothache.

Richard That is a rejection that is so obvious.

Lara This is what happens when you invite a socially lukewarm couple – a hot couple phone up and you have to say no.

Richard If trust between friends cannot be sustained then where in the hell are we?

Lara What about trust between a couple?

Richard In some parts of the world that is the last bastion of humanity.

Lara Are we talking about South-East London? I just remembered the last time I spoke to them and it was …

Richard What?

Lara Nasty.

Richard Nasty?

Hello, hello.

Hello – it’s them.

Just push the gate and come on through. Push the gate, it should open.

Push it push it push it push it yes, will you will you, yes yes yes, push the, push the, push the – OK, see you in a minute.

That’s them.

Lara Our Lalique frosted-glassware bowl with tulips and putti –

When we were moving I didn’t trust the removal guys, they were Moldovians and I wanted to transport it personally, and I showed it to Caitlin and Joe saying how it was so precious to me because it was the only thing Granny rescued from the old world.

Richard Your granny was a gambler who barely held on to her own knickers.

Lara I paid enough for it to lie about its provenance – then it went missing. When I told Caitlin and Joe they weren’t sympathetic, and I saw her flash him a look that said – oh my God, she knows it’s us.

Richard Caitlin is a breastcare nurse, she hasn’t got an aggressive nerve in her body.

Lara You were always very impressed by her breastcare credentials but I saw the look, I saw it.

Richard They did not covet that bowl, they adored postmodern kitsch – tawdry with a popular appeal.

Lara Stealing something you hate means you want to wound the other in an unnecessary way.

Richard Lara.

Lara Who are those people? What do they want? They’re nothing but sadistic thieves.

Richard I did this for you Lara, for you. Because I thought it would be good, for you.

Caitlin Hi.

Richard Hi.

Lara Hi.

Caitlin It’s us. I can’t believe it it’s been so long –

Richard Why we haven’t done this before –

Caitlin I know, it’s mad, isn’t it?

Richard Crazy.

Caitlin You’re both looking great – aren’t they, Joe?

Joe Super.

Caitlin And I love your place – isn’t this a palace? God, everything’s so perfect. The floor!

Lara What have you brought, Caitlin?

Caitlin Oh God, it’s nothing.

Joe I said to Caitlin, they will have some of their own food.

Richard As it happens we’re getting it delivered.

Central African nosh – it comes wrapped in leaves.

Caitlin Leaves!

Joe A common feature of plants.

Richard It’s communal, we all dip in – for the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa food...