Once in Royal David's City

by Michael Gow

  Playwright’s Biography

  MICHAEL GOW’S plays include the Australian classic Away, Toy Symphony, The Kid, On Top of the World, Europe, Sweet Phoebe, Live Acts on Stage, 17 (for the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain) and Once in Royal David’s City. His plays have been performed in Poland, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, Japan and all over the USA. Michael has been Associate Director of Sydney Theatre Company and Artistic Director of the Queensland Theatre Company. He has directed for all the major Australian theatre companies as well as Opera Australia, Australian Theatre for Young People and the Lincoln Centre’s New Visions New Voices program. Michael’s awards include two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, two Sydney Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards and an AFI Award for writing the ABC miniseries Edens Lost.

  First Production Details

  Once in Royal David’s City was first produced by Belvoir at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, on 12 February 2014, with the following cast:

  GAIL / OTHERS

  Helen Buday

  WILL

  Brendan Cowell

  MOLLY / OTHERS

  Maggie Dence

  THE BOY / OTHERS

  Harry Greenwood

  DOCTOR

  Lech Mackiewicz

  TEACHER / OTHERS

  Tara Morice

  JEANNIE

  Helen Morse

  BILL / WALLY

  Anthony Phelan

  Director, Eamon Flack

  Set and Lighting Designer, Nick Schlieper

  Costume Designer, Mel Page

  Composer, Alan John

  Stage Manager, Luke McGettigan

  Assistant Stage Manager, Keiren Smith

  Sound Supervisor, Michael Toisuta

  Assistant to the Set Designer, Georgia Hopkins

  CHARACTERS

  WILL DRUMMOND, a theatre director

  JEANNIE, his mother

  BILL, his father

  SPEECH THERAPIST

  SARAH, a schoolteacher

  ACTOR playing Lady Bracknell

  ACTOR playing Miss Prism

  ACTOR playing a character in The Importance of Being Earnest

  STAGE MANAGER

  WOMAN in airport

  Her GRANDSON, Tyson

  YOUNG GERMAN MAN

  YOUNG GERMAN WOMAN

  BORDER GUARD at Checkpoint Charlie

  MOLLY, an old friend of Jeannie’s

  GAIL, a woman in her 40s-early 50s

  WALLY, a man in his 40s-50s

  ANDREI, a doctor

  BOY on a skateboard

  CHORUS OF PEOPLE IN AN AIRPORT

  CHORUS OF MARXISTS

  SETTING

  The play takes place in a theatre.

  This play went to press before the end of rehearsals and may differ from the play as performed.

  WILL: Welcome. Thanks for coming. I’m in an airport. The stage represents an airport. Out there, say, is the carpark. Over there, the conveyor belt for the luggage. Imagine, here, a window looking out onto the tarmac. I can hear ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ playing. It’s Christmas, I’m waiting for someone and I’m thinking about Bertolt Brecht. First, the woman I’m waiting for. A story.

  JEANNIE: Every summer weekend the three of us go to Bill’s mother’s. We get the train to Circular Quay. Then the bus all the way along Oxford Street, down Bondi Road, to our stop at the Bondi Hotel. Two blocks to where the flat is. Up three flights of stairs, then, always the same: cup of tea, how she is, how we are, how’s school, how’s work, what the neighbours have been doing. Then. The real reason we’re here. Back downstairs and as fast as we can down to the beach. Swim. Walk. Swim. Will reads, we lie in the sun. Lunch. Rest. Swim. But. Last Sunday. After lunch we were waiting for our food to go down. Will decides he wants to go for a paddle. That’s alright, as long as he doesn’t go in, no swimming until lunch has gone down and as long as he stays near us, right in front of where we always sit, next to one of the flags. We always sit there, so we all know where we are in the middle of all those people, we all know where to find each other, if one of us goes for ice-cream, or to the toilet or into the water. He was gone a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes. I sit up, can’t see him. I go down to the water to check. Still can’t see him. Up and down that strip of sand looking for him. Nowhere. Has anyone had a child go missing for even five minutes? Two minutes, can’t see them? You know, don’t you, you understand. When you look into a crowd for a child who isn’t there, it’s worse than any nightmare. You see him, ‘That’s him!’ You rush over, no, mistake, keep looking. ‘Over there, that’s him.’ No, no it isn’t. I was running by the end, crashing into people, falling over. Where? Where in all this endless crowd can he be? Thousands of people, thousands and thousands, but not him. And he’s only six years old. Couldn’t tell where I was, I was lost too. Find the flag, find Bill, get back to the flag, he’s probably come back. But no, not there, not there. As soon as I get to the flag Bill drags me, practically drags me along the beach. To the lifesavers’ room. Bill was a Bondi lifesaver, he knows what they do, where they take lost children. We go to this cement room under the promenade. It’s dark in there, after being outside in the sand in the bright light, not sure where I’m going but I just run straight in and there he is, sitting with the lifesavers having a Paddle Pop. I hold him that tight Bill has to make me let go. And he cries, he cries and cries he’s so glad to see me. I swore there and then it would never happen again. Never. I’ll always know what he’s doing, where he is. Always.

  WILL: And now this is an office in a hospital.

  THERAPIST: Now, Bill. See if you can say the word on this card.

  BILL coughs, clears his throat, mimes apology.

  JEANNIE: It’s this cold. He’s had this cold that won’t go away. It just hangs on.

  WILL: He’ll work it out, just let him try.

  BILL coughs, clears his throat, mimes apology.

  THERAPIST: Just spell the word out. Take your time.

  JEANNIE: He was never much of a reader. The headlines in the Mirror, that was it. Don’t know where Will got it from, where did you get it from, head always stuck in a book?

  WILL: We have to let him figure the word out.

  THERAPIST: What’s the first letter here? It’s a…?

  JEANNIE: I just wish the doctor would give us something for this cold.

  THERAPIST: It’s a P. Per. You see that?

  BILL: Per. Yes.

  JEANNIE: You’ve had this croaky voice for months, haven’t you?

  THERAPIST: Mrs Drummond, this is not a cold. Look at this diagram of the brain. This area here is where language comes from. Now if an artery is blocked, or a vein breaks and blood leaks out, there is damage. That’s what a stroke is. This is what has happened to Bill. He can’t get the words to express himself. It’s a terrifying thing. They don’t know what’s going on so they pretend there’s something else wrong, a cold for instance, that stops them from speaking. I’m trying to see how much damage has been done by seeing what words he can still manage.

  JEANNIE: And I’m saying there weren’t that many to begin with.

  THERAPIST: I’m sure there were plenty, weren’t there, Bill?

  BILL: [smiling, with a shrug] Ahhhh.

  THERAPIST: Yes. Now. Per.

  JEANNIE: Panda. The word is panda.

  WILL: He has to work it out for himself.

  JEANNIE: He’d never have got it. It’s humiliating.

  THERAPIST: Mrs Drummond, we really need to let him try.

  JEANNIE: This man was a sheetmetal worker nearly his whole life. He was apprenticed at thirteen. He only worked in two places. The last one he was at for 30 years. One day they said they wanted him to leave the factory floor to work in management. Pro
mised him the world. He believed them. So he did it. And then he got the sack. They sacked him. Retrenched they said, but it was the sack. The factory was taken over by some company from overseas and they wanted to get rid of everyone, they can make the tins cheaper somewhere else. They sacked him and he got nothing. No long service leave, no superannuation, nothing. They said that was all cancelled out because he’d left his job on the factory floor. And when he moved into an office they made him leave the union. So when they sacked him the union wouldn’t help, said he’d sold out. And he’d been in the Sheetmetal Workers’ for nearly 50 years, his father before him was in the Waterside Workers’. But a month’s wages for a life working in a factory, that was all he got. And he was good at it, you were a good foreman. The men and women he was in charge of looked up to him, respected him. Because he respected them. He was the only one who never had trouble with people from other countries. Even the Yugoslavs stopped fighting when they worked for you, didn’t they? You always told them, didn’t matter where they were from, when they worked for you they were all workers together. But they got rid of him. And he’s too old and too sick to find another job. I know what a stroke is, I don’t need any diagrams. And I know why it’s happened. They wasted his life. It’s all gone. Everything is taken off you in the end. Everything.

  WILL: Bertolt Brecht. One of the great poets, one of the great playwrights, one of the great directors of the 20th century. He ended up with one of the great theatre companies of the world: The Berliner Ensemble. Why am I thinking about him now, here? Two scenes; first a rehearsal room.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Twenty-eight years ago, Prism, you left Lord Bracknell’s house, number 104, Upper Grosvenor Street, in charge of a perambulator that contained a baby of the male sex. You never returned. A few weeks later, through the elaborate investigations of the Metropolitan Police, the perambulator was discovered at midnight, standing by itself in a remote corner of Bayswater. It contained the manuscript of a three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality. But the baby was not there! Prism! Where is that baby?

  MISS PRISM: Lady Bracknell, I admit with shame that I do not know. I only wish I did. The plain facts of the case are these.

  Pause.

  On the morning of the day you mention, I prepared as… On the morning of the day that is forever… On the morning of the day, a day that is forever branded on my memory…

  Pause.

  Yes?

  STAGE MANAGER: I prepared as usual to take.

  MISS PRISM: Sorry.

  WILL: Fine, it’s fine, relax, you’re doing well.

  MISS PRISM: Sorry, really.

  WILL: Why don’t we go back to Prism’s entrance?

  LADY BRACKNELL: You were warned about this. I know she’s done some marvellous things for you. But that time has passed.

  ACTOR: Jesus.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Jesus what?

  WILL: This isn’t helpful.

  ACTOR: Jesus that’s a bit unnecessary.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Someone has to say it. She can’t do it.

  WILL: Never speak about another actor like that, not in my rehearsal room.

  LADY BRACKNELL: The play is hard enough without this constant stress. We haven’t run it once. The rhythms of the play are going for nothing. We won’t get a single laugh. And it is a comedy. I feel I should remind you of that. Then at least one of us will be doing their job.

  MISS PRISM: My mind is full of holes. I can’t do it anymore. You can’t save me. Will, I know how much you want to. And God love you for it. But you cannot save me. Let me go.

  WILL: And second scene; a café. Teach?

  TEACHER: It’s not really ‘teaching’.

  WILL: No. No, I can’t teach. I can’t teach drama.

  TEACHER: You wouldn’t be teaching, just—

  WILL: I can’t use words like paradigm and trope—

  TEACHER: No, no.

  WILL: Discourse.

  TEACHER: Last year we did Theatre of the Absurd. I got someone from my old French department to talk to them. Waste of time, it was all way over their heads. It’s the practical experience that would be fantastic. So don’t think of it as teaching. It’s just a bunch of kids who’d love to hear you talk.

  WILL: Really, I’d rather work in a call centre.

  TEACHER: Just let me tell you. My Year Elevens are doing political theatre. It would be fantastic if you could give them an introduction to Brecht.

  Pause.

  Bertolt Brecht? Epic theatre, the Alienation Effect?

  Pause.

  Jess said you directed one of his plays at university, in German. She still remembers it. I’ve tried to get them to read Mother Courage by tying the themes into their history course, but. Big ask. And we acted out a couple of scenes from The Chalk Circle in class. Which was strange. We did the trial scene and when Grusha won’t pull the child out of the circle, yes? Because she doesn’t want to hurt it? And the judge gives her the child because she’s the best mother? It was actually, really, it was moving. So the kids are confused now, because, you know, you’re not supposed to feel anything in his plays.

  WILL: And that’s you what you teach them?

  TEACHER: Yes, so it would be great for them to have someone who actually directs plays to talk to them about Brecht’s theory.

  WILL: Brecht was a Marxist. That was his theory. ‘Studying political theatre’? That should include the study of the politics, don’t you think? You teach in a private Church school. How would that go down?

  TEACHER: There wouldn’t be a problem.

  WILL: Jess suggested, she asked you to do this, I know that, I see that, she’s a good friend, she’s concerned.

  TEACHER: Yes, she is.

  WILL: I’ve been having a, it’s been a, my father died a month ago,

  TEACHER: She, yes, told me, I’m sorry—

  WILL: I pulled out of a show, thank you, she’s afraid I’ll give it away completely. I’m grateful, touched, but no. Some friends are lending me their house at the beach, I’m driving there Wednesday, get everything ready, my mother’s coming at the weekend, I’m going to give her the best Christmas I can, just focussing on her. I don’t want to be thinking about anything else.

  Pause.

  So.

  TEACHER: You don’t need to decide now.

  WILL: I think I have, decided.

  TEACHER: If I give you my number, just in case you, if something occurs to you. I would so, so appreciate it. So would the kids.

  Pause.

  Look, it’s an hour, sometime in the New Year, whenever it suited you. And we’d pay well. Our drama program is better funded than a lot of professional theatres. And politics would not be an issue. Our headmaster is a history teacher. He’s knows Marxism is dead.

  WILL: What?

  TEACHER: Yes, he jokes about it; ‘How can you have a class war if there’s no longer a class system?’

  WILL: So I’m in the airport, waiting for my mother and, despite myself, I’m thinking about Bertolt Brecht. I’m not thinking about his plays, not his poetry, but one of the essays he wrote. He wrote a million of them, about writing, about theatre, acting, politics. This essay’s in a collection called Über den Beruf des Schauspielers: About the Actor’s Profession. It’s about how to direct actors playing a crowd on stage. Brecht insists people in a crowd on stage shouldn’t move around frantically, getting up, sitting down, doing individual stage business. What actors in a crowd should do, as in real life, is move only when the situation, which is to say the power balance, changes. And since people don’t move much in life, in theatre they should do it even less. To make. Things. Clearer. I’m thinking this because the people in this airport look like a group of people playing a crowd in an airport. Maybe it’s because they’re all half turned to each other chatting and half turned to the big windows that look out onto the tarmac. Which is where the audience would be. While I’m thinking all this there’s this kid racing round, bashing into people’s legs, bouncing off and raci
ng away again like a human pinball. This is the Ballina Byron Bay airport, I should have told you that already, but people here are supposed to be completely free of aggression and tension and at peace with everything and chilled. But. These actors represent all the people in the arrivals hall and because this is theatre they can speak the thoughts of the whole crowd out loud, reveal what’s underneath.

  CROWD: Someone should control that kid!

  Where’s this brat’s parents?!

  He’ll hurt himself, then scream the place down!

  I’d like to drop-kick the little shit out into the carpark!

  WILL: This woman, dressed all in white, streaked-bleached hair, too much tan so her skin’s like an elephant dipped in chocolate, tries to slow him down at least…

  WOMAN: Tyson, what’s Santy gunna bring you for Chrissy?

  KID: Fuck off, Granma.

  WILL: And she smiles at me.

  She smiles.

  But again, she’s actually thinking—

  WOMAN: He disobeys me, he torments me, he abuses me. It’s torture, it’s a nightmare. I can’t tell him off, I can’t tell him it’s wrong, I certainly can’t smack him and that’s what I’d like to do, smack the little bugger’s arse. But my idiot daughter wants him to grow up without stress. What about my stress?

  WILL: The plane is due to land. I go to the window to see. But the real reason I go to the window is to get close to this guy. Eighteen years old, 20 at the most. From the way they’re standing I can tell he’s with this young woman. As you can see, I’m standing close enough to feel the guy’s body heat. I can see the vein in his bicep and his left nipple. I’d only have to raise my hand slightly and I could put it in the small of his back then slide it down into his shorts, like this. Yes, it was lust that got me over here but even now I can’t get away from the topic.

  GIRL: Sieh da, der Flieger ist gelandet.

  WILL: Because he’s German. What these two are thinking. In translation…