Tea and Sex and Shakespeare, Thomas Kilroy

• ACT ONE, Daylight
• When the play begins BRIEN is discovered 'hanging' by the neck, suspended from the 'ceiling' of his room. For a few brief moments we are expected to believe that he is actually dead. Then he takes a lighted cigarette out from behind his back and draws upon it.
• BRIEN. Good God! It's the fucking in-laws!
• DADDY. ... (Announcement) OK, everyone! I don't want to be interrupted before midnight. OK? Got to work. Going to do a bit of writing now. Get that first act going. A few bits of ha-ha-immortal dialogue. Throw in a bit of Shakespearean hubris. The question is: How the fuck did he manage all those happy endings? Love, love, love (Sings)
• BRIEN. How could I eat breakfast when I was trying to hang myself?
• ELMINA (More tragic still). Oh, heartless beast. I am leaving. Forever! For Australia!
• BRIEN. If you're at the office, why do you persist with this voyeurism?
• ELMINA. I'm your wife--
• BRIEN. And the mother of our children.
• BRIEN. How many children do we have, Elmina?
• ELMINA. ... Do you realise we haven't made love for six weeks? And before that it was like waiting for Santa Claus!
• SYLVESTER. He has locked the door.
• BRIEN. Letters? Impossible! Haven't had a letter for five years.
• ELMINA. Have you paid the bills? No, of course not!
• BRIEN. ... Hello? Is that JC? (Pause) Ah, I'm not too bad. Slight touch of, well, constipation. Con-stip-a -- Never mind. Look. When are you coming back down here? (Pause) You're not! Well, could you -- send someone else? Something fucking terrible is going on down here.
• ... Contrary to popular belief, hanging doesn't give an erection.
• ELMINA (Tearfully). He writes repulsive letters to the newspapers and signs Daddy's name. Advocating abortion and all.
• ELMINA. ... I'm going to fornicate with Sylvester, here on Mrs. O's linoleum.
• BRIEN. I am observing through the keyhole.
• BRIEN. Let's fuck, quick, before anyone else arrives!
• BRIEN. Mrs O! Can't you see I'm engaged?
• ELMINA. It's this kind of thing that ruins a marriage. Pull up your trousers, Brien.
• SYLVESTER. To be quite brief about it, I want to be friends. More. Intimate relations. You could, if you so wish -- and I am observant -- divorce, and I could marry Elmina, I'm rather a dishy cook. Alternatively, take me on. No strings attached.
• BRIEN. Why should I pull up my trousers just because of that rapist!
• A loud report, as of a distant explosion, but, apart from a dazed BRIEN, there is no damage.
• BRIEN. I'm writing my play all the time, Sylvester. I'm writing my play just now, Sylvester, as I talk to you. Good morning! You see? Dialogue. Good morning! The uninitiated do not understand.
• SYLVESTER. Why are you always threatening death? You're perfectly healthy. Physically, any any rate.
• SYLVESTER. Rope? (Desperate pause) Have you discussed this with your wife?
• BRIEN. She thinks it's a joke.
• BRIEN. I've lost my biro, Mrs O.
• BRIEN. So it is. Call off the search, everyone. And how is Deidre, my student of William Shakespeare?
• BRIEN. There are too many questions, Deidre. Besides, my wife is trying to seduce Sylvester or vice versa, I can't remember.
• MRS O. I don't know half the things you talk about.
• BRIEN. Never mind. Concentrate on the other half.
• BRIEN. Well -- em -- ah -- um -- a -- a play.
• MRS O. ... And do you mind me asking, what's in the play?
• BRIEN. At the present moment, Mrs O, nothing.
• BRIEN. ... Just one or two imagined caricatures like yourself, Mrs O.
• BRIEN. Cafeterias? Good God, Mrs O, we're trying to discuss the the inability of the human race to create a decent existence -- that great porridge of a world out there --
• BRIEN. I'm not writing a book, Mrs O. I'm writing a play. I mean I can't write anything.
• BRIEN. Good God, do you think the human imagination has existed for centuries on the squalid, brutal, reality of people?
• BRIEN. And she's still a virgin!
• DEIDRE (Offering examination paper). It's number three. 'Discuss the character of Macbeth.'
• BRIEN. Deidre, take it from one who knows. Literature is dead.
• BRIEN. No, no, no -- none of it's true any more.
• DEIDRE. But you said, Mr Brien, we were always in Act Five.
• BRIEN. The curtain has come down, Deidre. I think.
• BRIEN (Rushing to window. Opening it). Christ! Those bills!
• BRIEN. Deidre -- listen to me -- I shall keep the information in strictest confidence. Are they coming to tea?
• BRIEN. Mummy and Daddy! There's only one Mummy and Daddy! The foul progenitors of my wife Elmina. In short, my in-laws.
• DEIDRE. I am not a -- a sex object.
• DEIDRE. Leave me alone, you awful man!
• DEIDRE. Don't you dare -- And I only wanted to go over the exams with you!
• She runs off, down the stairs.
• BRIEN. Somewhere along the line, there, I missed my chance.
• ELMINA. Ho! You're ridiculous! If only you saw yourself!
• MRS O. She's gone running out into the street, exam papers an' all, crying her eyes out, Mr Brien.
• BRIEN. Die, Daddy! (Shot) Die, Mummy!
• DEIDRE. Oh, Mammy, Mammy! Did he shoot himself?
• ELMINA. When is your next outrage? (BRIEN shoots at her. Wild laughter from ELMINA, head back in) I just love wardrobes.
• BRIEN. Trouble! Attend to your daughter, Mrs O. Strange, violent passions. Making tea. Spoons of milk. Aha!
• BRIEN. ... (To DEIDRA) I noticed you're wearing tights.
• BRIEN. You do? You and I ought to be lolling about, running up and down erotic passages. Of blank verse.
• BRIEN. Doesn't mean it!
• DEIDRE. Immoral talk is the beginning of the landslide.
• BRIEN (To a now empty scene). Where can I do my writing, then? I can't just write anywhere, you know. I need -- need inspiration.
• Pause. SYLVESTER emerges from his room in surgical gown and mask, carrying a long knife.
• ACT TWO, Nightlight
• SYLVESTER chops at BRIEN'S hands so that blood gushes out onto the table. SYLVESTER steps back. BRIEN seems totally indifferent, raises his head, looks about. ELMINA, with yet a new hat, flounces in from the wardrobe and screams at the sight of BRIEN.
• BRIEN (Modestly). It's nothing.
• ELMINA. This is the end!
• BRIEN (Hopefully). It is?
• SYLVESTER. Question. If you say you've destroyed your wife, why is she to be seen passing back and forth to the supermarket?
• SYLVESTER. Question. If you've lost your biro, how can you hope to satisfy her sexually?
• SYLVESTER. Question. Have you ever considered the eternal triangle? It keeps things going. This chap, Sylvester.
• BRIEN. ... Listen, mate. It's the reverse. Yeah. It's your plays that have been fucking me around.
• ... What I want to know is, well, how do I end it? You know. Final curtain.
• BRIEN. Are you the little girl I used to help with her English compositions?
• BRIEN (Rapidly composing). She was a sweet, innocent, gosthering thing, perambulating back and forth with her school bag. I watched her daily from my window, planning an introduction, a how-do-you-do, casual, and restrained-like, at the traffic lights!
• BRIEN. I will be -- ah -- brief. I want to force your daughter, there, Mrs O, Deidre of the mythic name, here on the floor, to my pleasure (Dagger aloft), with the aid of this injurious instrument.
• SYLVESTER (Turning head over shoulder, then back to embrace). This is the second love scene.
• They kiss. BRIEN is now in the room.
• BRIEN. Oh, no you won't, Syl. Your days are numbered, Syl. The time has come for the murder of the wife. Act Five has arrived, lovers. The curtain is about to come down!
• ELMINA. There is -- a baby.
• SYLVESTER. How can he be put away if he's writing the dialogue?
• BRIEN. By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in 's hand.
  O perjured woman! thou dost stone my heart,
  And makest me call what I intend to do
  A murder, which I thought a sacrifice:
  I saw the handkerchief.
• BRIEN. What is this? A trial?
• SYLVESTER. Precisely. (General announcement) The Trial Scene!
• DADDY. Has he debauched the girl?
• DADDY. I always said you shouldn't have married one of them.
• DADDY. His fingers? I knew it! A sex pervert.
• MUMMY. I refuse to believe the worst of anyone. Unless I'm convinced, of course.
• MUMMY. It's her Shakespearean elocution, Daddy.
• MUMMY. Tea. What a nice idea.
• SYLVESTER (Very doctorly). A clear case of literary impotence. Aggravated by a neurasthenic dislike of tea-drinking and an obsessive running up and down Shakespearean passages. Symptoms: severely torn pages, also evidence of concealed still-born masterpieces as well as other aborted odds and ends. I'm afraid there's no known cure.
• BRIEN. ... He's no doctor, that creep. He's an Italian waiter. Name of Iago.
• SYLVESTER (To DADDY, MUMMY, and ELMINA). Signore. Signora. Signorina. Per favore.
• ELMINA (Woodenly). You might at least come and sit at the table.
• BRIEN (To MUMMY: vital information) Half the human race is evolving. The other half is trying to climb back into the trees.
• MUMMY. Alone, of course. Divorce is unchristian. I think we may be thankful now that there is no children.
• BRIEN (At window). He's trying to screw Deidre in mid-air.
• DADDY. Bloody lunatic.
• MUMMY. In need of help.
• BRIEN. Couple? Couple? What couple? Good Christ!
• ELMINA and SYLVESTER have entered to music with linked arms. ELMINA wears a tiny bridal veil and SYLVESTER has a large flower in his buttonhole.
• MUMMY. Oh, Daddy, I'm so glad that everything has come to a happy end!
• DADDY (Taking charge). Halt! There is the question of the suitcase.
• DADDY. Mrs O! This is a matter of no small importance. I insist on knowing where you deposited the suitcase that contained the infant.
• MRS O. I left it in the cloakroom of Kingsbridge Station.
• OTHERS (Pointing to BRIEN). He is the one who did it!
• MRS O. Come on, Deidre, we'll make the best of it.
• ELMINA. Hiya! Well? (Pause) And how was your day?
• BRIEN looks at audience, raises an eyebrow, and the play ends.