Triptych and Iphigenia

by Edna O'Brien

  Triptych and Iphigenia

  Books by Edna O’Brien

  The Country Girls

  The Lonely Girl

  Girls in Their Married Bliss

  August Is a Wicked Month

  Casualties of Peace

  The Love Object and Other Stories

  A Pagan Place

  Zee & Co.

  Night

  A Scandalous Woman and Other Stories

  Mother Ireland

  I Hardly Knew You

  Mrs. Reinhardt and Other Stories

  A Rose in the Heart

  Returning

  A Fanatic Heart

  The High Road

  Lantern Slides

  Time and Tide

  House of Splendid Isolation

  Down by the River

  Wild Decembers

  In the Forest

  Triptych and Iphigenia

  EDNA O’BRIEN

  Triptych copyright © 2003 by Edna O’Brien

  Iphigenia adaptation copyright © 2003 by Edna O’Brien

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Iphigenia first published in 2003 Methuen Publishing Limited

  FIRST EDITION

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Triptych and Iphigenia are subject to a royalty. They are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

  First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform them, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance to Rosenstone Wender, 38 East 29th Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10016, and by paying the requisite fee, whether the plays are presented for charity or gain and whether or not admission is charged.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Brien, Edna.

  Triptych and Iphigenia / Edna O’Brien.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  e-Book ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9913-3

  1. Women—Drama. 2. Mistresses—Drama. 3. Mothers and daughters—

  Drama. I. Title.

  PR6065.B7T75 2004

  822′.914—dc22 2004042381

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  For

  Chris Smith

  CONTENTS

  Triptych

  Iphigenia

  TRIPTYCH

  Triptych was first presented at Magic Theatre (Chris Smith, artistic director; David Gluck, managing director) in the Sam Shepard Theatre, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, on December 6, 2003. The cast was as follows:

  MISTRESS Lise Bruneau

  WIFE Julia Brothers

  DAUGHTER Tro M. Shaw

  Director Paul Whitworth

  Designer Kate Edmunds

  Lighting Kurt Landisman

  Costume Designer B. Modern

  Sound Designer Michael Woody

  Properties Artisan Sarah Ellen Joynt

  Stage Manager Sabrina Kniffin

  Production Manager Kenny Bell

  Casting Director Jessica Heidt

  CHARACTERS

  MISTRESS , Clarissa

  WIFE , Pauline

  DAUGHTER , Brandy

  The action takes place in New York City.

  Downstage left—a white wrought iron bench.

  Each character has her own space onstage but at times invades the space of the other.

  MISTRESS’s area—a staircase, a makeup table, a makeup case, a mirror with makeup lights, two shawls, and a book; The Duchess of Malfi. A long narrow window to the rear.

  WIFE’s area—a glass-top table, a drinks tray, glasses, a silver cigarette box, a pack of tarot cards, unlit candles in various sconces, a white orchid in a pot, a china umbrella stand with a man’s black umbrella.

  She is wearing a wraparound red skirt and a black sweater.

  DAUGHTER’s area—above wife’s area. A futon. A small drum and set of drumsticks.

  She is wearing a miniskirt and different colored slides in her hair.

  SCENE ONE

  Music—Jimmy Durante:

  When I fall in love

  It will be for ever

  Or I’ll never

  Fall in love

  When I give my heart

  It will be … for ever

  Stage lighting comes on fully as MISTRESS dressed in black as widowed Duchess of Malfi (circa 1601) stands before her mirror, saying her lines inaudibly. She is clearly nervous. On the bureau a vase of exquisite flowers.

  MISTRESS (saying her lines) The misery of us, that are born great,

  We are forc’d to woo, because

  None dare woo us:

  And as a tyrant doubles with his words,

  And fearfully equivocates: so we

  Are forc’d to express our violent passions

  In riddles, and in dreams …

  She stops suddenly as in the mirror she sees a hand come around the door, then a woman enter in dark glasses, wearing a long cream raincoat and carrying a large bunch of sunflowers.

  WIFE I hope you like sunflowers … not everybody’s taste, of course … somewhat glaring … brazen, but I find them so … sturdy … the sunflower.

  MISTRESS I think you’ve come to the wrong dressing room.

  WIFE (ignoring that) Il Girasole. On a train in Tuscany and Umbria one passes field after field of them … scorching, my honeymoon, our honeymoon was in pensions in Umbria … field after field of hot flowers … the bedrooms so cool … shutters drawn, dark brown furniture, dark brown fourposters … and the linen starched so stiff … it literally crunched when we lay on it … yes, the bedroom so cold and chaste and the fields so very hot and the lovers so ardent (brusque) not married, are you? … no little kids to grace the walls … a dressing room is quite a lonely place.

  MISTRESS Who are you?

  WIFE A stranger … just popped by to wish you well on your opening night and give you a flower … not at all as beautiful as those (examining the flowers in the vase) someone with more taste than moi … an admirer (nostalgic) it brings me back … how it brings me back … I was an actress, too … ingénue … I had a future, people compared me to some of the greats … then cupid struck in the form of a young man who just decided to hang around the stage door, pestering me, the way I am pestering you … just waltzed into my life.

  MISTRESS I shall have to have you removed.

  WIFE Not before I wish you well. I bet you’re superstitious, especially on a night like this … all jitters.

  MISTRESS How did you get in here?

  WIFE The door was ajar. I walked in and walked down the stairs, simple. And now, I will vanish, like the sis
ters in that Scottish play, which we don’t mention … Good luck, Duchess.

  Woman puts down the flowers and goes.

  Mistress picks up the flowers, then unnerved, throws them down.

  VOICE OF STAGE MANAGER Ladies and Gentlemen of the Duchess of Malfi Company: Please take your places for the top of the show. Places, please, for the top of the show.

  Mistress walks over the flowers and toward the stairs. She ascends it holding up her costume.

  Lights go slowly down.

  SCENE TWO

  Darkness.

  Dulcimer music of the period is intermingled with a collage of lines from The Duchess of Malfi as the wind rises and gathers to a storm.

  The vase of flowers overturns and the exquisite flowers fall to the floor. All the flowers blow around the stage, up, down, and around, omens of what is to come.

  Loud clapping offstage. Lights back on.

  SCENE THREE

  Mistress, out of her costume, wears a kimono. The Wife has returned.

  Wife has the sleeves of her coat rolled up and is wearing elbow-length black velvet gloves; she is clapping and smiling.

  WIFE Bravo … Bravo. You were wonderful … wonderful … I loved just before you were strangled when you said, “Give my little boy some syrup for his cough.” So beautiful …

  MISTRESS (crisp) Thank you.

  WIFE When is your birthday? … Wouldn’t it be funny if we had the same birthday?

  MISTRESS Why would it be funny?

  WIFE (mock serious) Destiny.

  MISTRESS (holding the door open) If you will excuse me … I have friends waiting.

  WIFE Of course you have. (theatrical) Then I’ll go pray; no, I’ll go curse the stars.

  Wife goes out.

  MISTRESS Jesus.

  Mistress picks up the broken vase and some of the flowers.

  The telephone rings and she jumps, then goes tentatively to answer it. As she listens her expression changes to a smile.

  MISTRESS Yes, of course I know … How do I know? … Henry … I can’t see you … I cannot. (She listens, her smile happier.) You know very well why … you are a married man and I have been down that road before. (emphatic) It’s hell. What’s hell about it?—when the married man goes home. Of course I want to … (whisper) you know that. (anxious) There’s been a crazy woman in here … it’s been a very crazy night … storm … oh, it went well … so they say … thank you for the exquisite flowers … by the way, I thought you were in the country … you what? … (She cradles the phone between mouth and ear.) All right then … just one drink … one night cap … promise … promise … I have to do an interview tomorrow morning and you are not a free man.

  SCENE FOUR

  Lights crossfade to bright light in Wife’s area.

  Very loud blues music—Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin.

  Wife is a little drunk as she dances and sings to the music. She is wearing a sleeveless vest and a very short skirt. She veers from anger to false cheer, sometimes dancing, skipping the songs as her mood and temper alter. At times she talks back to the music.

  WIFE (mimicking the Mistress) “I think you’ve come to the wrong dressing room … If you will excuse me, I have friends waiting.”

  BRANDY, her daughter, enters, wearing a miniskirt and bright socks.

  DAUGHTER Partying! All by yourself … Poor Mommy.

  WIFE You look ridiculous.

  DAUGHTER This one must be something … what does she do? Cat-walk?

  WIFE She’s an actress.

  DAUGHTER Famous?

  WIFE Look Brandy, you’ve got to stand by me. You’ve got to say, “Don’t do it, Daddy … don’t, don’t do it.”

  DAUGHTER (angry) I hate this fucking house … scenes, fights, tears … Daddy can’t stand it … that’s why he goes to the country. … He can’t work with a crazy woman like you.

  WIFE (quietly) Brandy. I need you. You have got to stand by me in this … it’s for everyone’s sake.

  DAUGHTER What’s so different about her?

  WIFE She’ll play one of his heroines—a slut.

  DAUGHTER You’re nuts.

  Daughter goes into her own area.

  SCENE FIVE

  On a board, pinups of her favorite rock stars and her father. She kisses her father’s face.

  DAUGHTER Silly Daddy … silly silly Daddy, (scolding voice) I’m watching you.

  Daughter begins to pin the sheet to the wall.

  DAUGHTER All my friends adore him … Two of them have crushes on him … They ask for his autograph because he’s quite famous … he comes to school on opening day with my mother, my mother wearing stupid clothes and clunky jewelry … of course I prefer him … One Christmas Eve it was snowing and he lifted me out of bed and said (conspiratorial voice), “Would you like to see the tree in Rockefeller Center?” and he put Mummy’s fur coat over me and we snuck out and got into a cab … it was magic, the tree, the lights, the snow, couples ice-skating after midnight, and my father holding me in a long fur coat, and people looking at us as if we were lovers. Yes, lovers.

  SCENE SIX

  Early morning. Light in Mistress’s area. She is wearing jeans, hair tossed, bemused.

  MISTRESS Oh God, oh God, oh God … I did show some gumption … at first, but then his hand, his thief’s hand, came under my skirt and he said, “You could not have put those stockings and those garters on just to go straight home,” and I said, “You could be right, Henry, you could be right.”

  Wife in Daughter’s area.

  Daughter reading a magazine interview.

  DAUGHTER Actress tells why she takes on difficult roles.

  WIFE (brisk) Go on.

  DAUGHTER (scanning) Her deep entreating voice, her tragic heroines … (skipping) “Oriental fury,” the pathos of a disappointed queen …

  WIFE Her years.

  DAUGHTER Doesn’t say.

  WIFE ’Course it doesn’t say. (intent voice) A long lock of her hair.

  DAUGHTER Not the voodoo crap that the maid did with snake oil and chicken’s blood.

  WIFE Yes, the voodoo crap with snake oil and cockerel’s blood.

  DAUGHTER (cutting in) It’s ghoulish.

  WIFE It worked on her husband.

  DAUGHTER He got run over.

  WIFE He had it coming. (sweeter voice) O, my precious snake oil and warm cockerel’s blood, unhair her head, dim her eyes (vicious) … This malefaction must be stopped … a cuckoo in our nest.

  DAUGHTER I hate it when you act.

  WIFE Make her dull of tongue and dwarfish … a poor pastiche of what she was …

  DAUGHTER You should put yourself up for auditions … bit parts …

  WIFE This is not acting … feel my pulse … the man’s gone mad … Her gypsy’s lust.

  Mistress takes up the story.

  MISTRESS (on the floor or stretched on staircase) Your hair … your hair … kept going on about my hair … We mustn’t fall in love, I said … speak for yourself, he said … Ran his forehead all along the wall … (imitating Henry) I am dying, Egypt … dying. It was there, no, not there. There. (She kisses the wall.) Anyone could have come in; says to expect him at all hours, he’ll get a stepladder, bribe the man at the stage door, (rueful) I am dying, Egypt … dying.

  Wife has come across to eavesdrop.

  DAUGHTER (calls across) Mummy. What is love?

  WIFE Ask your father. Ask his whore.

  SCENE SEVEN

  Mistress comes downstage, sits on bench. Wife watches pantherlike and follows.

  WIFE Ah, there you are.

  MISTRESS So you must be Pauline.

  WIFE Yes. I must be Pauline.

  Wife sits.

  Mistress moves along to distance herself

  WIFE You have cats? (waits) You look like a cat person, a silver-haired or a tortoiseshell curled up on your lap … we have a dog, an old lazy setter—Jesse—getting on … oh yes, dozes most of the day.

  MISTRESS I came here to be by myself.

/>   Pause.

  WIFE Ever pick anyone up on a park bench?

  MISTRESS No.

  WIFE I did. A Latino … I recognized him from our deli … we got chatting … he said he could cover a woman’s face, any woman’s face, with a paper bag, and he could tell her exact age from just feeling her cunt … A bit like telling the age of a tree from the circles in the trunk.

  MISTRESS Not quite.

  WIFE That got you going … I often wonder about women coming … us … us coming … if it’s different for each one of our little individual cunty selves … men are so reserved about it … take you, now … you have this composure … this veneer … Grace Kelly would play you if you were ever to be played and if she were still alive … but that’s beside the point … as a matter of fact I would say in the flagrante department you would crow as loud as the rest of us.

  MISTRESS You do rattle on … is it your nerves?

  WIFE (with a husky laugh) No, sister. The one thing I take care of, is the upstairs department. I mean life and love and kids and all that stuff can send a woman loopy … I’ve seen them … beautiful women … all bloated … out to lunch with big hats and dark glasses because their husbands have wandered … Do you know the surest way to keep your man happy?

  MISTRESS You are about to tell me.

  WIFE Give him rope … be mysterious … tell him about the Latino and the paper bag but don’t say you met him on a park bench … It was overheard. Every sensitive man loves two women—Mamma Mia and Mamma Whore and he’s sincere about it … so let’s not bitch about them … I love men and I can see you love men unreservedly.

  MISTRESS And how do you arrive at that conclusion?

  WIFE Your swallow, (pause) the way you give little gasps, little intakes, when that Duke, whatever the fuck his name is, comes on to you in the play.

  MISTRESS I am inhabiting the character, the Duchess of Malfi … We are different creatures. My dear woman, how little you know about the theater …

  WIFE I know plenty. At this moment you are shit scared.

  MISTRESS Why should I be shit scared?

  WIFE Because you made a wrong connection, schmuck. You ate of the forbidden fruit. I want my husband, every last little piece of him.