Maclean paces the room, pointing out this door, indicating that machine panel, or another here or there.
MACLEAN
What kind of life do you lead? Machines make your bed, shine your shoes, blow your noses for you. Machines listen for you, learn for you, speak for you. Machines ventilate your house, drive you down the street at ninety miles an hour, or lift you straight up into the sky, Always away and away from your home. I call on the phone and another machine answers, pre-recorded, and says you’re not here. How long has it been since you got out of your car and walked with your children to find your own air, which means air no one else has breathed, outside of town? How long since you flew a kite or picked do-it-yourself wild strawberries? How long? How long? How long?
Maclean sits. The parents are silent. Unnoticed, Peter and Wendy have come into the door at the far side of the room. Maclean drinks his coffee and finishes, as quietly as possible, thus:
MACLEAN
You haven’t been around. And since you haven’t been around, this house and its machines, that playroom has become the only available garden where your children can take root. But when you force-grow flowers in a mechanical greenhouse, don’t be surprised if you wind up with exotic orchids, strange tiger-lilies or Venus’s fly-traps.
GEORGE
What must we do?
MACLEAN
Now, very late, after playing an idiot Father Christmas for years, I’m going to ask you to play what will seem like Ebenezer Scrooge to your children.
George rises up and turns toward the playroom door.
GEORGE
You want me to switch off the room?
MACLEAN
The room, the house, the damned “sprinklers” in the lawn! Get out, stay out, get away; send the kids to me for treatment, but better yet, treat them yourselves. Look at them with your eyes, show them your faces, talk to them not on the intercom, but let them feel your warm breath in their ears, comb their hair with your fingers, wash their backs with your hands, sing to them, run with them a little way before they run so far ahead they run out of your lives.
George moves toward the door.
GEORGE
But if I switch off the room, the shock-
MACLEAN
Better a clean, hard shock now than letting the kids get any further from reality.
GEORGE
Yes … yes …
He opens the door of the room. Crimson light pours out. The walls inside bleed with running color. Reacting to this, George kneels to the panel in the floor and tears at it.
Suddenly, Peter stands out from the door.
PETER
George! No!
Maclean and Lydia are on their feet at this.
MACLEAN
Hold on, George. Not with the children here.
George whips the panel open. Peter leaps forward and slams it shut.
PETER
No, George, no, no!
MACLEAN
Listen to me-wait!
GEORGE
Get out of the way.
PETER
George!
GEORGE
(evenly)Don’t call me George.
He thrusts the boy aside, gets the panel open, but the boy is scrabbling now. Screams well out the walls of the scarlet room in a tidal blast. Maclean and Lydia freeze as the boy and George fight over the switches. Heat shimmers, animal heartbeats ricochet from walls, avalanches of zebras panic away with okapi, gazelle, and wildebeest, thundering, shrieking.
George knocks Peter’s hands off, twists and shoves him, and hits all the switches at once.
There are great elephant trumpetings, a final cry from many creatures now struck by electronic death, dying … The sounds run down like a phonograph record. In a flush of red light, all the colors of the room dissolve like oil down the walls into the floor as blood might be let from a flask. Silence. The room shadows into darkness. George slams the trap and locks it with his key and stands on it. The only sound is Peter’s sobbing and crying, slumped by George.
PETER
You! You!
GEORGE
(to himself)Yes… me… me!
PETER
(rising)You killed them! You killed them! I hate you! I wish you were dead!! I wish you were dead!
George slaps his face.
Peter holds his cheek, startled, then jumps and runs from the room. Wendy, bewildered, at the door, follows.
George holds out a key to no one in particular.
GEORGE
(barely audible)Lock the door.
Lydia does so. George holds out other keys.
GEORGE
Now… turn off the stoves, the voice clocks, the talking books, the TVs, the telephones, the body scrubbers, the bedmakers, turn off everything!
Lydia takes the keys, looks at George’s face, and hurries away. Maclean looks after her.
MACLEAN
No, George. That was badly handled. Brutal… brutal!
Maclean hurries off after Lydia.
George, alone, rests his head against the playroom door, listening, eyes closed.
GEORGE
(to himself)Brutal? Yes, but dead! Are you dead in there?! Good.(tiredly)Good…
He moves away across the room, exhausted, and at the door turns to look back at the door.
GEORGE
I wonder… does the room hate me, too? Yes … it must. Nothing ever likes to die. Even a machine.
He exits.
Blackout.
Music in darkness.
A small bedlight comes slowly up after half a minute. We see Lydia in bed at the front of the stage. A dark scrim has come down between the bed and the set in back, so we do this scene in one. Lydia rouses.
LYDIA
George?
She sees him to stage left now, back turned, in his dressing robe, looking out an imaginary window, smoking.
LYDIA
Can’t sleep?
GEORGE
Who can?
LYDIA
Not me, anyway.
GEORGE
It’s after midnight.
LYDIA
Yes. Listen. The house is so still.(she sits up, listening)It used to hum all the time, under its breath … I never quite guessed the tune… though I listened for years and tried to hum the same way, I never learned….
GEORGE
Thank God for small favors. Good Lord, it was strange, walking around, shutting off all the heaters and scrubbers and polishers, and washers. For an hour there, the house felt like a cemetery, and me its keeper. That’s past now. I’m adjusting.
LYDIA
The children will, too. They cried themselves to sleep, but they will forgive us.
She sits up listening as if she had heard something.
LYDIA
There’s no way for them to-tamper-with the room, is there?
GEORGE
Tamper?
LYDIA
I just don’t want them doing anything down there, messing about, rearranging things-they couldn’t do anything to the room, could they?
GEORGE
To the room? What would they want to do to the room? Anyway, there’s a lot of electricity in those walls with all the machinery. They know better than to mess, and get a nasty shock.
She listens again, and breaks up her own mood by trying to be jocular.
LYDIA
Oh, I’m glad we’re leaving tomorrow, mountains, fishing, everything out in the open again after years.
GEORGE
Dave said he’d bring his helicopter round after breakfast and take us to the lake himself. Good old Dave!
George comes back to sit on the edge of his wife’s bed.
GEORGE
Lydia?
LYDIA
Yes?
He takes her hand. He kisses her on the cheek. She jerks away suddenly.
GEORGE
What is it?
LYDIA
Oh, listen, listen! Far away, the sound of runn
ing antelope, the roar of lions.
WENDY and PETER
(very remote)Help.’ Motherl Father! Help! Help!
LYDIA
The children!
GEORGE
The playroom! They must have broken into it!
PETER and WENDY
(remote)Mother! Father, help, oh, help!
LYDIA
Peter! Wendy!
GEORGE
Kids! Kids! We’re coming! We’re coming!
The parents rush off into darkness, as the lights go off over the bed. In the dark the voices continue.
PETER
Father, father, quick! Quick!
GEORGE
Peter, Wendy!
LYDIA
Children, where are you?
WENDY
Here, oh, here!
The lights flash on; George and Lydia rush in through the playroom door.
GEORGE
They’re in the playroom!
LYDIA
Peter! Wendy!
Once inside the door they peer around.
LYDIA
That’s strange …
GEORGE
I’d have sworn-
They look about to left and right and straight ahead through the fourth wall, at the audience.
LYDIA
George, it’s-Africa again,the sun, the veldt, the vultures …
She backs off. George half turns and as he does so, the door slams shut behind them. George leaps toward it.
GEORGE
Damn door. A draft must have-
Locks click outside. George tries the lock, beats at the door.
GEORGE
It’s locked!
LYDIA
It can’t be! There’s no way for it to lock itself!
GEORGE
(thinking)No…. no… Peter? Wendy?
LYDIA
George, over there, under the trees…
GEORGE
Kids, open up…I know you’re out there.
LYDIA
The lions … they’re walking out into the sun …
GEORGE
(shaking the door)Peter, Wendy, now don’t be ridiculous. Unlock this door!
The light is getting brighter in the room, the sun is blazing from above. The sound of the rustling vulture wings grows louder. Shadows flash across the faces of George and Lydia. The rumbling of the lions is nearer.
LYDIA
George, the lions, they’re running toward us!
George looks out through the fourth wall, grows uneasy, somewhat panicky, and bangs at the door.
GEORGE
It’s all right, Lydia. Children, damn you, you’re frightening your mother, open up! You hear?
LYDIA
Running! Running! Near! Near!
GEORGE
Peter!
LYDIA
Oh, George, the screams, the screams. I know now what I never said… the screams were familiar … the voices… because the voices, the screams were us, you and me, George, you and me…
GEORGE
No! Kids! Hear me!
He bangs the door, turns, freezes, horrified.
LYDIA
George, stop them running, stop them, stop, stop!
She throws up her hands to guard her face, sinks to her knees.
LYDIA
They’re going to jump! Stop, stop!
GEORGE
No, they can’t, they can’t! No! No!
The light blazes, the lions roar! A great shadow rushes from the audience, as if the lions, in a solid pack, were engulfing the stage in darkness!
Swallowing blackness takes all light away.
In the darkness, Lydia and George scream and scream. Then abrupt silence, the roar, the bumbling purr of the yellow beasts fading away.
After a long while of silence, a helicopter lands nearby. We hear David Maclean calling in the darkness.
MACLEAN
(easily)George! Lydia! I’m here! George? Lydia?
The lights come slowly up. We are still inside the playroom. Seated facing the audience on two corduroy pillows are Peter and Wendy, their faces impassive, as if they had gone through all that life might ever do to them and were beyond hearing, seeing, feeling. On a pillow between them are small cups and saucers, a sugar and creamer set, and a porcelain pot. Wendy holds one cup and saucer in her frozen hands, as does Peter.
The door to the playroom opens. Maclean peers in, does not see the children immediately.
MACLEAN
George-
He stops, peering off into the distance, as across a veldt. We hear the faint roar of lions. He hears the flap of vulture wings sailing down the sky, and looks up into the burning sun, protecting his eyes. Then at last he looks over at the children, sees them, and in his face is the beginning of realization, of horror, of insight into what they have done.
MACLEAN
(slowly)Peter? … Wendy… ?
Peter turns his head slowly to look beyond the man.
PETER
Mr. Maclean.
Wendy turns more slowly, in shock, to hold out before her the small cup, her eyes blind to any sight, her voice toneless.
WENDY
A cup of tea?
Blackout
THE END
To the Chicago Abyss
The curtain rises.
The empty stage represents a park. There is a bench at far-stage left and another at far-stage right. On the left sits a middle-aged woman who is busy taking a knitted sweater apart, unweaving the yarn, and rolling it into an unclean ball. She carries knitting needles with her and it is obvious she intends to reknit the yarn into a new garment once she finishes the destruction of the original sweater.
On the right bench a young man leans over drawing in the dust with a stick, very intent, very much to himself.
The old man enters now, gazing all about as if he wanted to see everything, looking ahead, looking behind, looking up, looking down. On his way perhaps he finds an old gum or candy wrapper, peers at it with admiration and puts it in his pocket for later reference. He is dressed poorly, his clothes are stiff and ancient with dirt, his feet are not so much in shoes as they are repaired, tacked together, and bandaged in leather and black friction tape.
As the old man moves, he seems alert for something, as if he had been searching for years, and might have to search many more years. His mouth and eyes are almost apprehensive. His eyes dart. His mouth trembles, as he talks to himself, as if there was much he wished to say, but could not bring it out.
Now, in the middle of the stage, he looks around. Though he does not speak yet, we read the desolation of the city in his face. He turns in a slow circle, as if surveying the city and his eyes tell us that the place is dead. He cannot bear to look at it. He glances now, instead, with vitality renewed, at either bench. He must decide where to sit. He chooses the bench with the woman on it and very quietly, with a slight bow, which she does not acknowledge, approaches, and sits at the far end away from her. She goes on taking the sweater apart.
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