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    Spouting Black Holes
    Spouting Black Holes
    Spouting Black Holes
    Ebook686 pages9 hours

    Spouting Black Holes

    By Bill Reed

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    SPOUTING BLACK HOLES is a collection of sevenof Bill Reed’s most popular plays brought together in modernised form and language.

    The works collected here are:
    Mr Siggie Morrison with his Comb and Paper
    Burke’s Company
    Truganinni
    Bullsh (including More Bullsh)
    Cass Butcher Bunting
    Just Out of Your Ground
    You Want It, Don’t You, Billy?

    Each play has been ‘modernised’, in that the playwright has changed the plots as necessary to bring them up-to-date and brought the colloquialisms to be more familiar to the modern ear. Here and there, staging, too, has been altered to reflect modern-theatre’s economies of scale. Settings and characterisations, though, have not been changed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBill Reed
    Release dateJan 28, 2016
    ISBN9780994531117
    Spouting Black Holes

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      Book preview

      Spouting Black Holes - Bill Reed

      Mr Siggie Morrison with his Comb and Paper

      Burke’s Company

      Truganinni

      Play 1: White Exercises

      Play 2: Pantagruel In-between

      Play 3: King Billy’s Bones

      Bullsh

      Cass Butcher Bunting

      Just Out of Your Ground

      You Want It, Don’t You, Billy?

      also by Bill Reed

      about the author

      THE PLAYS…

      MR SIGGIE MORRISON WITH HIS COMB AND PAPER

      Introduction

      At a time when our playwrights are concerning themselves more with our history than its heritage, it is a startling and exciting experience to be confronted by a new play which is far from the current mainstream in its individuality and perception.

      As a director, I was immediately impressed, on the first reading, by the inherent theatricality of the play - the knowledge and understanding of the special requirements that constitute a theatrical event. In this work the combination of knowledge and enquiry gives us not just a play but an experience of the struggle for creation.

      The playwright takes us on a journey in search of reality. At times we are totally convinced, (often by use of the unreal theatrical device) at other times we withdraw from these convictions. But our total involvement is governed by the emotions experienced, whether by fake stage characters or real people, so that we are concerned, not just by the search for truth but by man's inhumanity to man. I believe this play has a great deal to say about mankind. Our treatment of each other, whether it be at the humanitarian level of simply helping our fellow man or on the personal level of using and destroying someone for our own gain. Then again it questions our inheritance. Is this the land of milk and honey where the sun continually shines - the land of our fathers where life is wonderful for all men? Is this a great Australian myth?

      The Australian theatre is concerning itself with Australian ideas and problems. For me MR SIGGIE MORRISON with his comb and paper is a definite acquisition to this growth, but better still I believe Bill Reed has provided us with a play that is not for our eyes and ears alone but speaks a universal language for all theatres.

      Peter Batey,

      Artistic Director,

      South Australian State Theatre Company

      The Premiere

      First performed at Scotch College open-air amphitheatre, Adelaide, by the South Australian Theatre Company as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, February 29 1972, with the following cast:

      SIGGIE Neil Curnow

      PARSONS Shawn Gurton

      BIG JULIE Daphne Grey

      MISS GLAMORGAN Rona Coleman

      'BOY' Tony Porter

      JARVIS Brian Wenzel

      MISS HOLLAND Barbara West

      MRS PRUFROCK Julie Hamilton

      Directed and designed by Peter Batey

      The Cast

      If the cast needs to be reduced for practical purposes, the playwright suggests that:

      JARVIS could very ill-humouredly double up as ‘BOY’

      BIG JULIE could very disgustedly double up as MISS GLAMORGAN

      MISS HOLLAND could very fumblingly double up as MRS PRUFROCK.

      One production simply had MISS GLAMORGAN represented by a spotlight on the stage with voice over.

      Any character changes should be swift and out in the open and with the minimum of change of pace… eg, JARVIS could simply roll up a trouser leg and change voices to take the part of ‘BOY’.

      The Monologue

      The Monologue should be on a continuous tape and run without break from the opening of the doors of the theatre to the closing of the doors of the theatre. It should be piped into both the auditorium and the foyer.

      It should be the continuing, organic backdrop to the performance. It is never shut off, but only lowered to an inarticulate, yet still audible level whenever necessary. It is the 'consciousness’ of the play, although its effect shouldn’t be more than the background ‘hum’ of, say, other people at an animated gathering

      The full text can be used or those parts of it given in this playscript can simply be used repetitiously.

      When the Monologue ‘breaks through’ it is as disruptive and is of a source just as unknown to the actors as it is to the audience.

      Monologue sample Text

      (pre-recording and rising and falling over PA)

      You ought to shine through down here. You ought to shine through a little bit more down here. That's what you ought to do. Peek through. There's a hole up there. You could shine through the hole up there a little bit. For a bit. Just for a bit. Let me know you know I'm down here. You ought to know that. You ought to shine through down here just a peek. Now. Please.

      I'm cold. I'm wet. I'm cold and wet. I don't want to be cold and wet. I didn't come home to be cold and wet. Don't turn away from me. You oughtn't to turn away from me. Please. Why have you turned away from me? There is a hole up there. You could shine through. There's a hole. You ought to shine through. Why don't you shine through just a little bit? A peek. A little peek There's a hole there. I don't want to die down here. Why should I die down here?

      (coughs)

      Smell. Smell. Is it me? It's not me. It's me a little bit. Not all me. You know it's not all me You know I couldn't hold my bowels for days and days. If you shine through a little, just a peek a little bit, you could dry it all up. You could dry it all up. You could dry me up. Bum me. Bum me again. That's what I want. You know that Bum me. That's what I want. It's me. Don't you see? It's me. It's my face. Look at me. It's my face. Don't I shine through it anymore? Don't I? I've come home. It's me, Siggie, and I've come home. I'm home. I didn't come home to die down here. I've come home to you. I came home to you, you know that. You don't shine much in England. You don't shine through much in England, do you?

      It's so dark down here. I can't live down here It's too dark for me to live down here. You know that. Why don't you shine through? You could shine through if you wanted to. If you really wanted to, you could shine through just a little bit down here. You should know I've been trying to get back for years. I shouldn't have to be down hem if you're angry with me not coming back. You should have been there and seen what it was like. Not very nice. All that yellow water and all that. Not to mention my arthritis. Which I haven't because I don't want to gripe. What's the use of griping? Griping gets you nowhere because nobody ever listens to you when you're griping. About arthritis in particular. About yellow water in your... in...

      (cannot hold back coughing fit any longer)

      Nobody wants to know if you've got yellow water in your lungs. Or if you've got arthritis like I've got arthritis. But what can a bloke say? There's nothing a bloke can say about it because nobody even bothers to listen. All they say is stiff. Stiff. That's all you get. Really. Really and truly deep down where it all matters in your mind. That's all you get. Or they've got troubles of their own. When they haven't really because if they had yellow water in their lungs and arthritis of the fingers like I've got and sitting here rotting because I reckon I'm going to rot pretty soon and all itchy and peeing in their trousers like I am, they'd know what trouble really is. I can tell you. I can't even move and it's smelly down here. I can't even turn away from the pong. I know I pong. Nobody has to tell me I pong. Anybody would pong if they were stuck down here like I'm stuck down here not able to even turn away from the pong and it not doing my lungs any good…

      Oh, my God Jesus dear sweet Jesus God, help me Please get me out. Please get me out. I don't want to die. Why should I die? Why should I die? I don't want to die. I shouldn't have to die. Why should it be me down here ponging and dying. I've never ever thought about death so why should it be me down here dying when I haven't given death a second thought. Oh, God. Help me. Please help me because I don't want to die. What would the world be like without me? How can I think about dying when the world would be something that didn't have me in it? Something that wouldn't have me in it oh God Jesus sweet dear Jesus. It's blank when I think of death. There's nothing there when I think of death. Why should I be born if all I can do is die because what is the use of living if you're going to die all over the place from the time that you are born. It's not fair. It's not something I asked for. I didn't ask to be down here. I didn't ask to be put down here and to die like this what with all that horrible yellow water in my lungs and Miss Glamorgan.

      Miss Glamorgan? Who’s Miss Glamorgan? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, as I was saying, they say nothing if you try to tell them. What you've got that'd kill anybody else. Nothing. Not a thing. It doesn't matter a thing if I suddenly up with... like that saying; it flows, Siggie, honestly Siggie, it really flows, y'know? if I come up with… just let's say for the sake of, up with...

      (outcry; a theatre-wide conversation-stopper)

      HELP! HELP! PLEASE... HELP!

      What I mean is if I came out with a blood curdler, they wouldn't even... even... they wouldn't even... What's that? Listen! What's that? Ssh. What's that? Let's have a bit of shush...

      (but coughs while trying to keep silent.)

      Please let the kids come back. I'd be all right if the kids came back. No sweat if the kids came back. I'll play fox. Right, I'll play fox and when they come back they'll think they've done me damage and. I'm not saying they haven't done me a damage. They've certainly done me a damage all right. But when they come back I'll lay down and play possum and they'll think they've done me more damage than even the little bloody... sorry... horrors think they have and they'll have to go and get their daddies or mums or go and get me a policeman. I wonder whether they'll send around the fire brigade. You hear about the fire brigade going and hauling people out of places in the nick of time so it could well be the fire brigade gets around here first. That's if those kids tell them. Even if those kids tell their daddies or their mums or a policeman or anybody. They can tell anybody. I must remember to tell them that. Might make them feel better if they know I don't care whether they tell anybody just as long as they tell someone. After all, it doesn't matter who they tell as long as they tell. That's the main thing. As long as they tell. Not all of them have to tell either. Only one of them has to tell really. Only one of them has to open his mouth. It could be her mouth. Its mouth. That's better. I don't want to be caught being rotten to kids but any kids that do what those kids are doing to me don't deserve proper parents. Things. Things at Christmas time. Books. Though I never had books. But you know what I mean. Any kids who do what they've done to me don't deserve the basic courtesies... good word. Gee, I've got them floating all around my mind. It's incredible... there I go again... how it just comes and goes. All those lovely words. I've always loved all those lovely words. All those lovely words just floating around in your mind just like it's a nice cool pond in a park and all those lovely nice words are swans drifting along and popping out now and again when you last expect it. Don't deserve basic courtesies of common decency... lovely words, those... of a normal society and good friendship and common decencies and nice manners and good behaviour and doing the right things by others when it comes down to it all. Or something or other. You know what I mean.

      It's just the stink. It's just the pong. It's just my legs. It's just my leg aching so much and my fingers aching so much and swelling up like they are. Look at them. It's just that all that bubbling in my... you know… lots of places in me really…

      (coughs gently by auto suggestion.)

      I think I've wet my strides. I think I've done it. I can't help it. I've done it. That's all there. Is to it. I've done it. Not the first time. I've done it. Down there. Oh God, I smell. I smell. Gee, I smell. It smells down. Here and. I've done it in. In my pants. Damn. Damn. Damn. Please. Please. I'm not complaining. No. Not. Complaining. But I. But I think I've done it in my pants. Yes. I think I've done it in my pants. I think I've done it in my pants. What have I done? What is going... to happen...? What's going to happen to me, please? Please?

      Mustn't think about it. Mustn't. You mustn't think I'm complaining. It's just that I'm so cold and wet and aching. Well, I was aching and smelly. I just don't like to think I'm doing something down there that I'd be... yes, embarrassed about. Yes, all embarrassed when somebody finds me. When somebody finds me and says what have you been doing down there and then sniffing like they do or me trying to cover up something embarrassing that I've been doing because they wouldn't believe that I've had to do it and there was nowhere else to do it. They don't believe you. That sour looking man. I think it was a man. That sour looking man who was sitting next to me on the plane when I was coming home and asking the nice young air hostess for another seat, he wouldn't believe that I had to do it in one of those lovely brand new brown paper bags. I could tell he wouldn't. Oh, yes. I could tell all right. When I tried to get out excuse me to him each time, he just turned away. He turned away and put his head up in the air. He turned away and put his head up in the air and his nose under one of those funny old nozzles they had in there where air came through.

      I didn't care. I was on my way home. I had my ticket in my hand. I would have had my ticket in my hand if they hadn't taken it off me before we got on. That's not the point though. It's as good as having your ticket in your hand when you're sitting in the plane and they haven't turfed you off because if they haven't turfed you off then that means you must have had a ticket in your hand to be able to get on in the first place. Stands to reason. And if you had your ticket in your hand that means you must have been able to buy it. And if they haven't turfed you off and you've been able to buy a ticket then that means you were able to afford to buy the ticket in the first place. That's fair enough. That's logical. Gee, where do I get all these words from? What was it? Never mind. You would not have thought dear little children could be like that. I was always nice and kind and helpful to dear little children and you wouldn't have thought that dear little children would do a thing like this to me. You'd think they'd care. You'd think they'd say sorry. You'd think they'd go home right away and say: Dad, there's a poor old man stuck down there and what can you do about it. But what can you do about it? There's some little kids who are not dear little children and they're never going to grow up to be nice and kind to old people like me stuck down here like me. Even if they're not stuck down here like me. Dying for all I know. I'm not saying that to scare myself. I don't want to die down here and I know you won't let me die down here but there could be cases of poor old people like me stuck down here or some other place just like this who would die down here if they came across some rotten little kids who didn't care whether they were stuck down here and wouldn't go and tell their daddies or a policeman or get an ambulance or help you out, like. That's what I mean. What I mean is that there are some poor old people who might die down here if they ‘were stuck down here like me and they were cold and wet and aching or was aching but now not being able to feel a thing down there which is. Which is just as worse when you think about it because it could be anything. It could be a disease down there in my legs and with a disease down there in their legs like I think there's something wrong with my legs then they mightn't be able to pull out of it if some kids didn't bring them enough to eat even or even go and tell their daddies or mummies. Mummies would be better, because they'd understand...

      (Ed: plus see other monologue bursts given in the play… and on continuous loop. Also add to text as thought necessary.)

      Act I

      (Stage dark, except for SIGGIE back stage. He seems to be lying beneath some weight that he has given up trying to shift off him.

      He lies statically for a long time, staring up into the spotlight, as though it was the sun. When he speaks it is equally as flatly.

      In the meantime, however, the MONOLOGUE continues to dominate the theatre until it gradually decreases into an underlying ‘hum’.

      Finally, SIGGIE finds himself able to be heard… somehow knowing that, and:)

      SIGGIE: Who's out there?

      (It comes back as an empty echo. In the distance y a dog howls faintly. There is a disturbing and indistinct human cry for attention. An ambulance siren rises then fades again. All this is far off. Nothing more. SIGGIE falls back. The MONOLOGUE bursts through again… quickly, aggressive to him, before receding again suddenly. The ’sunlight’ comes across the old man until it falls directly onto him. He basks in it, until...)

      SIGGIE (outcry) Why've you turned off me?

      (Instantly a blackout, during which the MONOLOGUE hums along with the added background of the ambulance siren receding too. When the spot returns upon him, he is calm again:)

      SIGGIE: I was dreaming... silly... I was here, but it wasn't hurting though and there was a big hall with bouquets of flowers all around me. The sun was shining through the rafters and then this funny shape came in and walked up the aisle towards me. When he came close I saw he was wearing my face and his eyes were closed and I knew he was dreaming and dreaming about me up here and when he woke up I knew, listen, I knew, I would no longer be...

      (shudders, then)

      Listen, please go and tell your...

      (Lighting up. The 'main stage' set shows half-completed scenery of an airport lounge. At back is a large plate-glass observation window. It is dark outside; only the lights from the control tower shine dimly through.

      The actors, except PARSONS, are back stage with SIGGIE being a very loose focal point. MISS GLAMORGAN sits apart from them. They are all carrying scripts to which they will refer occasionally as at an advanced rehearsal. Whenever they do consult these, they speak unmistakably theatrically. Otherwise, they are evidently not 'within' the play. PARSONS himself is front stage, trouncing up and down, creating 'mentally'.)

      MISS HOLLAND: That's all very well.

      JARVIS: Why follow anything but your worst nature?

      MISS HOLLAND: No, I've arrived where I've got to face my obligations.

      JARVIS: You're single.

      MRS PRUFROCK: (hotly) So am I. But that doesn't mean to say all single women only have nursed waiters. Worst natures.

      JARVIS: Don’t you start. I've been through it all myself.

      PARSONS: (shout upwards meaning MONOLOGUE) Turn that annoying thing off!

      MISS HOLLAND: You haven't got an eighty-year-old mother at home who you've been neglecting for years precisely because your feet have taken you in your own selfish direction.

      MRS PRUFROCK: (sententiously) I know. I've been through it all.

      MISS HOLLAND: What one's got to be sure of is whether your own thing is a thing worth doing. Oh God, two months and I ache to leave again. Rothenburg, the Tauber, Stuttgart, Konigsberg Klops and strudel and wurst, Berlin. Lieder in the snow on tipsy nights, hic. Mothers… honestly.

      MRS PRUFROCK: I was exactly the same.

      JARVIS: Ptochocracy!

      MISS HOLLAND: What?

      JARVIS: Government by beggars. Ptochocratic. This country, this

      (waves script)

      archaeological-dig script. It's all so shagging pauce. Tell you what, the best you can hope for back here is to become that single black jelly bean everybody wants in a bag of sucked-out jujubes.

      MISS HOLLAND: What worries me is I feel so unreal. Staying imperial somehow when everybody else has... gone metric.

      JARVIS: (snorts) Moral émigrés, aren't we all?

      MISS HOLLAND: Faites rien. 'Tomorrow's troubles to the windes resolve'.

      PARSONS: (flourish at them) Use the time to consolidate, mes enfants. Animate. Behave. Assimilate. Assumizate. Enmesh. Adjunct together.

      MISS HOLLAND: (sotto voce, indicating PARSONS) When I told them I was going to work for him, they said he was around the bend. Even in London.

      JARVIS: Wagner himself. Raving dead ringer.

      MRS PRUFROCK: Oh, let’s get on with it. I'd like to go abode wise moi, just for a change.

      JARVIS: (joke sniff) I smell the change you mean.

      PARSONS: (still acting the creative director) Imbiba mugga fermented mare's milka morning.

      (stops, starts again)

      Co-actate into coagulates. Make more intimated moments magical. Say, a bird flies across the Arctic waste, turns left at the first pole returns across the steppes with a glorious landslide right back to the equator, turns to his mate getting high on monkey juice and says, 'Jesus, that's the real stuff. Have I just been on a freak freeze-out'.

      (self-rebuke)

      Merde, not quite there. Try this:

      (then)

      You are standing on your head looking up at the heavens above you and see the clouds sweeping towards some distant and mysterious white tower. The illusion is that the whole sky is moving and carrying you along with it. But you know it is supposed to the Earth which is moving, so all that empty sky out there can't be moving per se. But supposing it is just as you think you might be. Are you going to dissolve into it, or it into you? And dissolve how? Into some pinpoint of super-heavy mayhems, or into a vast lighthearted dissipation? What we are posing here is: is imagination real thought or visitation?

      (The actors are still gathered around themselves with their scripts, though, and:)

      MISS HOLLAND: (looks at script) Where were we?

      JARVIS: (reads) 'Night'.

      MRS PRUFROCK: (ditto) Day.

      JARVIS: Night.

      MRS PRUFROCK: Pardon poke, day.

      JARVIS: It says night, you scarecrow.

      MRS PRUFROCK: It says day.

      JARVIS: Christ. Night, night.

      MRS PRUFROCK: Tell him, dear.

      MISS HOLLAND: Well... dayish. I suppose. It varies at the turnarounds, you know.

      (By now, PARSONS has regathered his creative juices. He looks down, then around, then with right theatrical mood caught, drops to his knees and knocks on the floor boards.)

      PARSONS: We know you're there, Siggie. Somewhere down there among the… not to put too much of a pretty picture on it… the rats. Slugs. Earwigs. What have you. Backing your skinny arms against the slimy wet walls.

      (BIG JULIE strides in behind PARSONS and cuts them all off. She goes up to the others and points to where, back stage, SIGGIE in his technicolour Sunday-best outfit -- but trousers too big and coat shroudish -- staggers under the weight of a cheap cardboard suitcase from left and eventually off right. PARSONS doesn't notice him, nor the actors being led off in disgust by BIG JULIE.)

      PARSONS: Siggie? Come on, Siggie. Stale urine raising steam. Smelling yourself. Alas, Siggie, mate, who hasn't piddled in his pants some time in his life? Keeps you from drying up. Know what I mean?

      (pause)

      What're you thinking, Siggie? Oysters for breakfast? Out of bed, p.m. The old one-two shuffle with cane and monocle, Astaire twirl of the old duke and away he goes... Siggie Morrison, bon viveur, life's traveller... England, Europe, Siam, Warrnambool... Siggie Himself swanking down Castlereagh Street. We're all turning our heads. Who's the pop Pop? Who's the dandy Daddy? The cry goes up. Siggie Morrison, who else, you dead ignoramuses. Or ignorami. Siggie's arrived back in Australia at last. Honky tonk. The harbour bridge falls into the sea. Members of all parliaments confess to being boy scouts. Come on, Siggie. Relent.

      (BIG JULIE re-enters, stands looking down at PARSONS with contempt. He senses her presence, looks up, laughs nervously.)

      BIG JULIE: Now I've seen it all.

      PARSONS: (knocks on the stage boards) Sydney. Down here.

      BIG JULIE: Oh, yes.

      PARSONS: Why not? I make it Sydney. I dub thee Sydney of the Southern Cistern Seas.

      BIG JULIE: You need dubbing on your deadwood.

      PARSONS: I was using the divine human attribute of abstract reconstruction.

      BIG JULIE: (eyes upward) Good God.

      PARSONS: I will ignore that by pointing out that if mere prop men, at a few right-hand turns of a few countersunk screws, are able to string a few bits of wood together and say, right, this is an airport lounge. No, more. London airport. And if you don't believe it, then up yours. Now if yer actual tradesmen can shove that down yer gullet, I say: All right, I, being the leading creative light around here... I say it modestly... I wish to add to all this: fine, and Sydney's down here and old Siggie's down here and if you laugh at that, and don't give me any of your sneering hiccoughs, you're in the wrong game. That's all. Signing off.

      BIG JULIE: Ha. Ha.

      PARSONS: I'll ignore that too. Visions sharpened by the fourth dimension. I, an actor... an ancient craftsman looming away at his dying art... adding for my own amusement... although admitting that that need not negate the inherent flair of it all... a bird, for example, with its wings clipped is still inherently capable of flying... I may be quoted... as I, an actor without spectators am still capable of shooting a certain style, shall we say, at blank spaces... adding, to re-iterate, a qualm of a soupcon, a pinch of imagination's adumbration… look it up in the online Oxford… to the dreary and unchanging three dimensions of wood and plaster board…

      (BIG JULIE burps loudly.)

      PARSONS: (pained) That is extremely rude. Still, I say again. This is the northern airport from which Siggie Morrison, hero of our play, journeys home after forty years. Creative statement. Siggie Morrison after forty years is travelling Down Under. Ergo.

      (knocks on floor boards)

      This way in the mind's eye. Down here, therefore, is Sydney. There. You may not realize it, but I have just retrieved your sense of logic through illusion. You needn't thank me. I shall go even further.

      (knocks on the floor boards again)

      Listen. If you tap Sydney, it's hollow too.

      BIG JULIE: Like your head.

      PARSONS: (calls out) Take five.

      BIG JULIE: We're taking more than five. We've gone on strike, tinkerbell.

      (And turns to go off.)

      PARSONS: No, seriously. Imagine if Siggie Morrison was a real person, renamed only for the exigencies of drama. Imagine him stepping arthritically out of some room-and- board right now in his yellow corduroy pants and his pink shirt and his white straw hat, carrying that ridiculous lady's mauve umbrella... started out on his daily circuit with the snot drop hanging from the end of his nose and his little reptilian eyes filling up with decrepit pools while, behind, the landlord tries to think of ways he can get the little drip out of the room... and some hairy labourer right now is pointing out that little technicolour poof to his mates... If that's what a flesh-and-slosh Siggie Morrison was probably doing right now... actual, breathing, material and murmuring his idiotic little 'my, my's' and 'geez's' to all the retrorockets in women's ears... then for the sake of argument, this...

      (taps boards)

      'ere be Sydney. And down there, Siggie Morrison crawls away into his sad, pathetic tear-jerking existence just as really as if he was up on the stage here with us right now...

      (Before huffing off, BIG JULIE disgustedly turns PARSONS' head around so that he can see SIGGIE back onto stage dragging his suitcase along the ground, sighing, letting the suitcase drop, catching his breathy then speaking back to the wings)

      SIGGIE: Crikey me, of course I will. I'll just wait here. Don't you all go worrying about little old me.

      (He smiles warily at PARSONS. Then notices the couch and, dragging his suitcase after, goes over to it, lies back with eyes closed. PARSONS turns away when he recovers his senses, tries to ignore SIGGIE's presence... whistles, sits, examines a bit of prop, calls for coffee -- nobody answers -- examines his fingernails until he cannot stand it anymore. Whips around to SIGGIE)

      PARSONS: What's the game?

      SIGGIE: Sorry, this your seat?

      PARSONS: Never mind about the seat.

      SIGGIE: I didn't mean to take your seat.

      PARSONS: I don't care about the seat.

      SIGGIE: I wouldn't like to have taken your seat.

      PARSONS: Forget the seat!

      SIGGIE: You don't come across somebody nice enough to give an old man like me his seat often. Not these days.

      PARSONS: (into air) Big Julie!

      BIG JULIE: (head appears) Don't call me Big.

      PARSONS: Julie!

      BIG JULIE: (reappears, indicates SIGGIE) Answer that then, divine re-creator.

      (She retracts her head again)

      PARSONS: Big Julie! Julie!

      (He gets no reply)

      SIGGIE: My, my. I'm all so excited.

      (giggles)

      It's the first time I've ever flown. It's the first time I've ever flown through clouds, too. I've always wanted to fly through those lovely clouds. They say it's like snow. But it's vapour really. That's where we get the word vapourized from. From flying through clouds that we think are like snow. Excuse me.

      (He closes his eyes again.)

      PARSONS: You!

      SIGGIE: Oh dear. My friends said it'd be all right for me to wait here on this seat.

      PARSONS: (suspiciously) What friends?

      SIGGIE: They came all the way up to see me off. Isn't that nice? I'm going home.

      (giggles)

      I've been away forty years give or take. I'm an Australian.

      PARSONS: All the world's a stage Australian.

      SIGGIE: Forty years, two months and three days.

      (giggles)

      Stayed Aussie all that time even if I say so meself.

      (And closes his eyes again. PARSONS hurries over to the wings.)

      PARSONS: (off) How did he get here?

      BIG JULIE: (head on) I found him in the Mens, if you must know.

      PARSONS: In the Men's can?

      BIG JULIE: (defiantly) I've got nothing to hide.

      PARSONS: Don't you know who he's trying to impersonate?

      BIG JULIE: Give over. Who else could look like that? Bit of luck the poor old bugger has brought his lawyer along to sort you out too.

      PARSONS: (reverting to style) Mere bagatelle of an imbroglio. Main street, rush hour, two people suddenly dash into each other’s arms, make violent love by the fire hydrant. They don't know each other's name. It's just that for the last twenty years they've just bumped into each other on the way from work and had it away by the fire hydrant. That's imbroglio. Who’s to blame?

      (to 'off')

      Did someone take that down? We might be able to use it later.

      (back to BIG JULIE)

      However, imbroglio must be in good taste before I'll go along with it.

      (indicating SIGGIE)

      That ain't good taste.

      SIGGIE: (looking up) If you see my friends, would you tell them I'm here? Case I go the nod off, you see.

      (They stop. But SIGGIE says no more. Finally...)

      PARSONS: I warn you. I shall maintain my aloof stance against ridiculous imported possibilities.

      BIG JULIE: You should have seen your slack gob when old Siggie walked on, big man.

      PARSONS: (carefully) Who said it's Siggie?

      BIG JULIE: I asked him, you squashed dung.

      PARSONS: (uncomfortable nonchalance) How can it be Siggie? There's no Siggie up here. He lives with Charon in men's minds down beneath the aspidistra roots.

      BIG JULIE: Like hell there ain't no Siggie, you shiver of shot.

      PARSONS: I wouldn't pull a thing like that on an old man who was real.

      BIG JULIE: Yeah, you'll kick yourself all the way to the bank.

      PARSONS: Art and association.

      BIG JULIE: Bad art and bank accounts, you mean. You conned your way around him. They give them free legal aid these days.

      PARSONS: (shivers) Don't say things like that.

      BIG JULIE: I always knew about you. But this is where you really strained your striber with me.

      PARSONS: (whisper) Is he asleep?

      BIG JULIE: No, he's just working up the energy to get at your jugular. And that's in your damn pocket, too...

      PARSONS: (generally) Everybody hold everything! Hold it! We'll start again. And this time let's work together to arrive at something, given that the moment of infant rift from the mother has come to us all.

      (clicks finger at SIGGIE)

      Go away.

      (He waits but nothing happens.)

      BIG JULIE: You stand to make a bomb out of this damn play.

      PARSONS: (evasively) Where's the others?

      BIG JULIE: Looking at you, thinking what a tic you are. We didn't know he even existed. You're just psycho enough to make up something like him. You didn't even bother to change his name. Mongrel.

      PARSONS: Typical feminine reaction.

      BIG JULIE: You... crossbreed.

      PARSONS: I deny that. Anyway, assume with great assumption that this really is Siggie. I would have done him a favour by using his name. I nestled him within the diphthongs of my art... pupated him… gave him a cocoon to you... Siggie Morrison, the pupa Poppa. Dozing in a nice quiet sunny corner of the theatrical garden. What's wrong with that?

      (BIG JULIE burps at him again. PARSONS indicates SIGGIE.)

      PARSONS: I ask you: who is this... screw-on screwdriver anyway? Another secret of your whoreabouts?

      BIG JULIE: (shrugs) Use the spare flair of your imagination. Your two backs are showing.

      (She goes off.)

      PARSONS: (after her) And you need a lifesaver to take up the slack.

      BIG JULIE: (comes back on, grabs him by shirt front) Look, you...

      PARSONS: Beat me. I'm suffering already.

      (BIG JULIE releases him in disgust, goes off. PARSONS turns to SIGGIE, watches as the sunlight from outside slowly pans across to fall across SIGGIE. As it strikes him, he comes awake with a delighted cry, gets up to stand in its warmth. Tries to 'dry out'.

      SIGGIE and the MONOLOGUE start up saying the same thing together as he does so. At first his ululating of the sunshine has him audible with the MONOLOGUE but he is soon merely mouthing what it is saying, and even sooner not bothering to try to keep up with it anyway)

      MONOLOGUE and SIGGIE initially: (all around) I was born in the sun. I don't like not being in the sun. I always said to myself, I said: it’s not right not being in my sun.

      PARSONS: (to wings) What about a bit of help back there?

      MONOLOGUE and fading SIGGIE: (all around) Come over here, Siggie, they said. Come back home. We know a place where your sun, where you, where your sun shines through all day every day. Where you never miss a beat, they said. They said a place where you shine through all the time, summer, winter, autumn and that other time. Spring, that’s it. Spring. Fancy me forgetting Spring. They said it made no diff. Summer, autumn, winter or spring. They said. Because you shine through all day every day, see, Siggie. Even all night if you want, every night. Although I didn’t believe that … I mean fancy expecting a man to believe that. Every day and all day. My sun. Well, why not? Where there’s a lemon-scented hum and a salmon gum and there‘s a poplar popping up all over the place and a bloom, like, and there’s…

      PARSONS: (above fading MONOLOGUE) Anyway, let's not jump to conclusions. It might be him, then again it mightn’t be him. Let’s put it this way: it could be him but it ought not to be him. All I can do is grant you a certain ambience, that’s all. And to be perfectly crude, ambience sucks.

      (The MONOLOGUE resides to its normal background humming. PARSONS stares daggers up at the control room.)

      SIGGIE: (up at sunlight) You don't shine through much anymore. I'm cold and wet. I'm in pain... somewhere...

      (confused)

      it's wet and slimy in here... pain somewhere...

      PARSONS: I'm in pain. We're all in bloody pain. Go on, get it off your convex chest. Say you remember me. Say I remind you of someone. I can't stand people... standing around.

      SIGGIE: (sweetly) Are you from the airline? How nice.

      (giggles)

      I had to take all sorts of odd jobs to save up my fare. But I finally made it. Heavens, I'm not boring you, am I? You will say if I'm boring you, won't you? Don't feel you've got to keep me company just because you're from the airline people, because I always bore people like airline people.

      PARSONS: You won't bore me.

      SIGGIE: But you will tell me if I bore you, won't you? Promise?

      PARSONS: (bored) I'll tell you if you bore me.

      SIGGIE: The awful thing is I know I'll bore you sooner or later. My, everybody's being so nice to me. Last year, I cleaned up a bank for a bit. The back manager left me a note one night. … Have I told you this?

      PARSONS: (still bored) His note read: 'Dear Mr Morrison, you don't seem to be able to remember any of the little notes I leave behind for you, so I'm afraid we'll have to let you go'...

      (as much as he can round on the old man)

      1 know all about it but where did you get it from?

      SIGGIE: I think it was under his Dictaphone thingo.

      (giggles)

      Knock, knock.

      PARSONS: Who's there?

      SIGGIE: Dictaphone.

      PARSONS: Dictaphone who?

      SIGGIE: (giggles) Dictaphone up your...

      (stops, shivers.)

      Why is it so cold and wet and slimy here...? It's getting at... my pain... somewhere.

      PARSONS: You're not cold and wet and slimy.

      SIGGIE: I feel cold and wet and slimy. My old legs feel heavy.

      (sits)

      It's not right never to have my sun, is it? White things without blood crawl around under tin when the sun doesn't shine...

      (he stops, convulsively brushes revolting things off his legs.)

      Uh.

      PARSONS: For shit's sake, don't have a fit on me.

      SIGGIE: Mushrooms growing. Yellow thingmebobs when I cough. Yellow water in my lungs. I'd never eat mushrooms...

      (then directly up at PARSONS)

      Would you eat mushrooms?

      PARSONS: I'd eat off an overcrowded fly screen. Now please go. Leave the snothouse without leaving too much snot.

      SIGGIE: Without the sun, I wouldn't have grown. Truly. Not that silly old me is anything. Blood oath, no. But what sort of world would it be without me? Gee, I'd be something that wouldn't be in it.

      (shudders)

      I was born in the sun. In the back of my dad's ute on the way to hospital. I think. That was in Australia. I am Australian. You mightn't wear that, but I am. They wouldn't believe me.

      MONOLOGUE: (sudden burst) They said, Siggie come with us. I said why I don't mind telling you. I said why all suspicious like. But I didn't like to let somebody know you're all suspicious. It doesn't help relationships if you let somebody know you're all suspicious. They go and get all suspicious if they think you are being suspicious. They think hello what's he or she been doing to make me feel suspicious that he's feeling suspicious about me. It's the insinuation. Beaut word that. I say again. What was that...

      (stops as suddenly as it begun but it has been enough to have SIGGIE covering his ears and rebelling against it)

      SIGGIE: (trying to get above it) They wouldn't believe a man!

      PARSONS: (shouting too) Who?

      SIGGIE: (agitated) Kids... jumping about on the tin sheets on me...!

      (Long pause, until:)

      PARSONS: You would turn up sooner or later, wouldn't you?

      SIGGIE: I'll just rest here until my friends come back.

      (PARSONS indicates his annoyance by coming forward and yelling up at the theatre’s control room)

      PARSONS: Testing, testing. One, two, three...

      (Listens, gets no acknowledgment, shrugs, turns away.)

      SIGGIE: (conversationally) Are you going on the same plane? I hope you won't give me tomato sandwiches. I wouldn't even dare go in a lift with a tomato sandwich under my belt.

      (giggles)

      Who wants more wind up there?

      (then)

      Are you going home too?

      PARSONS: Strike me lucky.

      SIGGIE: (delighted) Old Roy Rene Mo.

      PARSONS: (mimic of Mo) No, no. So help me, I'm a dirty great spud on top of a lot of flaming matchsticks... call a mug mash-head.

      SIGGIE: I could tell you were Australian too. What've you been doing over here?

      PARSONS: (now pretty much looking for help) I’ll bite… where?

      SIGGIE: London. Gawd. Whatareya?

      PARSONS: (stops, looking about) Oh... London.

      SIGGIE: London.

      PARSONS: London... oh, sure.

      (looks at him closely, then runs excitedly to wings, speaks off.)

      He really thinks he's still in London!

      BIG JULIE: We could have told you that half an hour ago.

      PARSONS: (accusingly) Put-up job.

      BIG JULIE: Sure, sure.

      PARSONS: (decision) Nobody do anything. I've got to think.

      BIG JULIE: Yeah and that way, you get to do nothing.

      PARSONS: (to wings) As I see it there are three alternatives. All of which aren't worth a pig's arse, I admit. However...

      (back to SIGGIE)

      Actually, it was dictaphone up your directory. Or dictionary.

      (then back to wings)

      Okay, so we shut down. We shall inertia-ize rather than anathematize... look that up in your English aids to Australian actors... him out. We shall sit around him and stare. Bodily. Sedentary as the seasons in slide shows. Note the attachment of words to the various alloyed anodes around which art bubbles. He will then fidget; we will do nothing. He will ask perhaps for a script; we will do nothing. Eventually he will ask for the bus fare. I myself am broke, but one of you will...

      (MISS GLAMORGAN skips onto the stage from the other side to the accompaniment of an extract from 'Swan Lake'. She is dressed in a long white robe, with a white rose in her hair, and is bathed in a sweet and pure light.)

      MISS GLAMORGAN:

      Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

      Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight

      And Lo!...

      PARSONS: Abort, abort!

      (PARSONS grabs MISS GLAMORGAN, tries to muffle her. She struggles, strangely trying to make it over to SIGGIE)

      PARSONS: What the... Miss Glamorgan!

      SIGGIE: (sits bolt upright, into air) Miss Glamorgan?

      MISS GLAMORGAN: (directed at SIGGIE) Yes!

      (But is shoved off, muffled.)

      SIGGIE: Did somebody say Miss Glamorgan?

      PARSONS: (innocently) Miss Glamorgan?

      SIGGIE: Somebody said Miss Glamorgan.

      PARSONS: You said Miss Glamorgan.

      SIGGIE: (really distressed) I thought somebody was saying Miss Glamorgan.

      PARSONS: Oh, her.

      SIGGIE: Who?

      PARSONS: Her.

      SIGGIE: What 'her', please?

      PARSONS: (viciously) Miss Glamorgan.

      SIGGIE: (thinks, then giggles) Leg puller, you.

      PARSONS: (testing him out) Granted later in life than most but your cart-horse of love. That Strabo of your purse-strings. Miss Glamorgan. Right?

      SIGGIE: (laughs weakly) I don't think it could have been. Poor Miss Glamorgan died years ago. How did you know about Miss Glamorgan?

      PARSONS: (testing again) All right, I’ll come clean. It was an actress playing Miss Glamorgan.

      SIGGIE: (distressed) Oh dear, have I done something wrong? Why would anyone want to do that to poor Miss Glamorgan?

      PARSONS: Nothing’s hidden from the director’s script, dad.

      SIGGIE: Is that like a print-out?

      PARSONS: Exactly.

      SIGGIE: (nodding sadly) Nothing.

      PARSONS: Ah yes, inevitably, the hot breath of the great

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