Jeffreys Stephen Jeffreys: Plays

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78850-073-9
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 456 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Modern Plays

A selection of the best work of Stephen Jeffreys, whose career stretches from an award-winning play at the National Student Drama Festival in 1977 through to an adaptation of The Alchemist for the RSC in 2016. Included here are his first big success, Valued Friends, a comedy of manners about the property market which won both the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards; a riotous farce set in the time of Elizabeth I, The Clink, in which a stand-up comedian becomes involved in the political skulduggery surrounding the ailing queen; an autobiographical drama set in 1966, A Going Concern, about a washed-up family business; and Jeffreys' smash-hit, The Libertine, a Restoration romp about the licentious Earl of Rochester, much revived and also filmed with Johnny Depp. Rounding off the volume are two previously unpublished plays: Interruptions, inspired by Jeffreys' interest in the collective aspect of politics and his fascination with the Japanese aesthetic principle of Jo-ha-kyu; and a very likable, short autobiographical monologue, Finsbury Park. Together, all six plays represent the impressively wide range of topics and styles that Jeffreys embraced. Above all, each one of them is intensely and enjoyably theatrical to its very core. 'I had the great pleasure of working with Stephen Jeffreys on his play, The Libertine. Would that all playwrights had his openness, his talent, his hard-headedness, his experience, his enthusiasm, his complexity, and perhaps best of all his talent and interest in eliciting the best in others' John Malkovich 'Stephen's plays always bear the kitemark of unique, handcrafted quality' Ian Rickson

Stephen Jeffreys (1950-2018) was a British playwright and a key figure at the Royal Court Theatre, London, where he was Literary Associate for eleven years, then a member of its Council. His celebrated playwriting workshops have influenced many writers, and are distilled in his book, Playwriting: Structure, Character, How and What to Write, published posthumously in 2019. Jeffreys' plays include The Libertine and I Just Stopped By to See the Man (Royal Court); Valued Friends and A Going Concern (Hampstead); Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad (part of the Tricycle Theatre's Great Game season about Afghanistan); The Convicts' Opera (Out of Joint); Lost Land (starring John Malkovich, Steppenwolf, Chicago); The Art of War (Sydney Theatre Company) and A Jovial Crew (RSC). His adaptation of Dickens' Hard Times has been performed all over the world. He wrote the films The Libertine (starring Johnny Depp) and Diana (starring Naomi Watts). He co-authored the Beatles musical Backbeat which opened at the Citizens Theatre and went on to seasons in London's West End, Toronto and Los Angeles. He translated The Magic Flute for English National Opera in Simon McBurney's production. His plays are published by Nick Hern Books.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jeffreys, Stephen

Leseproben

ACT ONE

Scene One

Early June 1984. We hear The Searchers’ ‘Needles and Pins’. Lights up.

The sitting room of the flat, just before midnight. HOWARD has commandeered the table, sitting at his typewriter surrounded by papers, books and card-index systems.

SHERRY is standing next to him. She wears a short dress, an absurd floppy hat and a huge shoulder bag. She has just come in and speaks with great excitement and volume.

SHERRY. The train is packed, Howard, I mean I’ve trodden on faces to get a seat. We’re somewhere between Knightsbridge and South Kensington, there’s this just incredible smell of sweat, you know, not stale sweat, excited summer sweat. Suddenly there’s this guy, lurching towards me through the pack and he is crazy, there are no questions about this, the man is gone and he has singled out me, no one else will do. He shoves aside the last remaining body and looms over me, hanging from the strap, swaying like a side of beef, I mean he’s enormous and he starts stabbing his finger at me: ‘How much do you care? How much do you care?’ That’s all he’s saying, over and over. ‘How much do you care?’ Everyone’s looking at me. He’s crazy but they’re staring at me. They want to know how much I care too. About what, nobody’s saying, so I take a chance, put my hand on my heart and say: ‘Very deeply, very deeply indeed,’ thinking this might get the crowd on my side, but no, nobody applauds, nobody cries, nobody even laughs. They’re just waiting for the crazy to come back at me, and, Howard, he does. ‘What about? What do you care so much about?’ And they all stare at me again. I can feel the mood of the train switching against me. We get to South Ken but nobody gets off. They all live there, I know they do, but they’re saying to themselves: ‘We’ll walk back from Gloucester Road.’

The doors shut, the train starts. ‘What about? What do you care about?’ Howard, I can’t think of anything. In a calmer moment I might have said: ‘The early films of Ingmar Bergman, my mum and being the greatest stand-up comedian the world has ever seen.’ But I can think of nothing. The silence is just incredible. I mean I’m not ignoring the guy, I’m racking my brains. The whole carriage is racking my brains. Eventually I look the guy in the face, admission of defeat, and he just says: ‘You see, you see.’ And the doors open and he gets off at Gloucester Road. All those people who really live in South Ken are now saying to themselves: ‘What a glorious evening – we’ll walk back from Earl’s Court.’ Howard, they’re prepared to stay on till Hounslow Central, gawping at my embarrassment. We get to Earl’s Court, I’m so paranoid I can’t face them all in the lift, I have to climb the emergency stairs to escape. Have you any idea how many emergency stairs there are at Earl’s Court?

HOWARD. Eighty-four.

SHERRY. Are there really?

HOWARD. I counted them.

SHERRY. What a nightmare. Are you going to make some tea?

HOWARD. No.

SHERRY. I put the kettle on when I came in.

HOWARD. I don’t want any tea.

SHERRY. Oh. Did you go out collecting tonight?

HOWARD. They phoned me up. I told them I was ill.

SHERRY. Howard!

HOWARD. I’ve been out twice. What’s the point? Collecting for the miners in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea? I was stood two hours outside the Tube on Monday with me plastic bucket, copped one pound forty and I put the quid in meself. If I’d been up in Glasgow I’d not have been able to hold the thing up after five minutes.

SHERRY. So you’re writing the book instead?

HOWARD. That’s it.

SHERRY. Going well?

HOWARD. No.

SHERRY. Oh.

Pause.

Are the others in?

HOWARD. I’m sorry.

SHERRY. No, I didn’t mean you were being –

HOWARD. I’m just tired, I’d like to go to bed.

SHERRY. – boring or anything. Well go to bed.

HOWARD. I can’t, I need to speak to Paul and Marion.

SHERRY. Where’ve they gone?

HOWARD. Concert. The Searchers.

SHERRY. Oh yeah. More sixties nostalgia. Is it healthy I ask? I mean, you can’t imagine these destruction metal bands getting together for twenty-first-anniversary gigs.

HOWARD. Destruction metal?

SHERRY. Very big in Germany. These guys, they hire a warehouse and smash the stage up with drills and amplified sledgehammers. It’s pretty loud. Paul did a piece about it in the NME.

HOWARD. You mean, they use, like, manufacturing tools for – SHERRY. Yeah, cement mixers and stuff –

HOWARD. – signalling the decline of manufacturing culture, that’s…

He makes a note.

SHERRY. Apparently it gets pretty dangerous. I mean you’re standing there listening and the walls fall in on you, it’s meant to be great.

HOWARD. Well it would be.

SHERRY. You gonna put that in your book?

HOWARD. Might make a nice little footnote. The section on deindustrialisation.

SHERRY. Howard. You couldn’t lend me some money could you?

Pause.

HOWARD. How much d’you want?

SHERRY. Just… a tenner. Is that all right? Brian at The Queen’s Head owes me for my last three gigs – and he wasn’t around tonight, bastard, and there’s a few

HOWARD. I’ll lend you ten quid, Sherry.

He reaches in his pocket. Sound of people arriving through the front door.

Did it go all right, The Queen’s Head?

SHERRY. Pretty dead audience. Got a couple of laughs towards the end. I don’t think they understood what I was doing at all.

He hands her a ten-pound note.

Oh… that’s great, ta.

HOWARD. Well as long as you’re getting the bookings, getting the experience.

SHERRY. Yeah, well. I’m getting the experience. But the audiences don’t seem to be learning much from it.

She scrunches the money up and hides it in her hand as she hears PAUL and MARION approach. PAUL comes on, car keys in hand, closely followed by MARION.

PAUL. You’re still up.

MARION. They’re still up.

HOWARD. Good were they?

PAUL. Merely stunning.

SHERRY. Didn’t get their pacemakers wired up in their wah-wah pedals, then

PAUL. It’s easy to be cynical. They did not look one day older. Twenty-two years on the road and they looked like a set of fresh-faced youths.

MARION. And they hadn’t learned any new songs either.

PAUL. You know what I admire? I admire the sheer stamina, the slog, the perseverance. All this bullshit you hear about the rock ’n’ roll heroes, the ones who destroy themselves with drugs, or chuck lawsuits at each other or get killed in plane crashes. That’s not heroic, that’s the soft option. You know what true heroism is? It’s twenty-two years in a Ford Transit staring at the cat’s-eye lights on the way back from the Club-a-Go-Go, Lowestoft.

MARION. Does anyone want tea?

HOWARD. Love some.

SHERRY. It’s just boiled, I put it on.

MARION. My ears are ringing.

She turns to go. SHERRY follows her.

SHERRY. Marion. I had this really weird thing happened to me on the Tube. There we were, between Knightsbridge and South Ken…

PAUL holds up a cassette.

PAUL. Look at that, eh, magnetic gold.

HOWARD. You got an interview?

PAUL. Fifteen minutes’ worth. Frank and John. Classic. Cut some old favourites into it and I’ve got a nifty programme. Syndicate it globally.

He slumps into a chair. HOWARD tidies papers.

(Suddenly remembering.) And! And – You’ll never guess.

HOWARD. What?

PAUL. The support band.

HOWARD. The Swinging Blue jeans.

PAUL. More obscure.

HOWARD. The Downliners Sect?

PAUL. More talentless.

HOWARD. More talentless than The Downliner’s Sect? I give in.

PAUL. The Blue Scarecrows.

HOWARD Never heard of them.

PAUL. You won’t have heard of them. They’ve only been together for six months. But you will have heard of the bass guitarist.

HOWARD. Jack Bruce down on his luck is he?

PAUL. Dennis Combes.

HOWARD. Never.

PAUL. The man himself.

HOWARD. Dennis Combes.

PAUL. Bass guitar, vocals and insulting the audience.

HOWARD. Making a go of it then, is he?

PAUL. No. Had a few words with him. Christine – remember Christine – they’re married now, just about – she’s got a good job, likes to get him out of the house of an evening.

HOWARD. Can see her point. Was he good?

PAUL. Same as ever. Played a fretless. Still trying to sound like Charlie Mingus.

HOWARD. He was all right, Dennis. The two of you were good together.

PAUL. Well –

HOWARD. You were, should have stuck at it.

PAUL. Like The Searchers.

HOWARD. Could have been where they are today.

PAUL. The thing with Dennis, the real problem, was that he...