We Happy Few

Imogen Stubbs

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781854598134
• eBook ISBN: 9781780014807
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

A comedy drama about an all-female theatre company touring Britain during the darkest days of World War Two, written by the well-known actress and premiered in the West End.

While the men are fighting Hitler and the bombs are falling on London, a 'girls only' theatre company sets out in a battered 1920s Rolls-Royce to bring Shakespeare to a culture-starved Britain.

Imogen Stubbs' play We Happy Few was inspired by the real-life Osiris Players, whose travelling productions during the War inspired many to take up the profession - Judi Dench to name but one.

We Happy Few was premiered at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End in June 2004 in a production directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Juliet Stevenson and Patsy Palmer. An earlier version of the play was performed in 2003 at Malvern Theatres.

ACT ONE

Darkness. Footsteps. A rim of light delineates a fastened double door at the very back of the space.

LADY’S VOICE. I think these are the keys . . .

A chain rattles and the first of several locks turns.

Don’t hold your breath . . .

Two more locks turn.

MAN’S VOICE. We’ve probably found all we’re gonna need from your main store, so maybe . . .

LADY’S VOICE. Fret not . . .

Another chain rattle and a final lock turn.

I’ve never been in here myself so I . . .

The doors creak open to reveal an ELDERLY LADY carrying a torch, and a YOUNG MAN.

LADY. Sesame! Here we are. ‘Hetty’s Horrors’.

She moves the torch-beam around to reveal an astonishing, cobwebbed souk of clothing and furniture, a mouldering wonderland of racks, rails (some two storeys high), crisscrossing lines of hanging garments like a back-street in Naples, mounds of chairs and tables, a throne, an upright piano, a stack of swords, a copse of lances, halberds and banners, a film projector, a small roll-top bureau, some tattered wings and a pram.

MAN. Jesus . . .

LADY. I rather agree. It must have felt like this when they opened Tutankhamen’s tomb. What a cornucopia of . . . of . . . !

MAN. Of tat! What did you mean . . . Hetty’s horrors?

LADY. Do you know I don’t know and I should. I started here nearly fifteen years ago and they just used to call it ‘Hetty’s Horrors’ . . . Ah lights lights! (She finds a switch for a dim overhead bulb.) Apparently she ran a company of some sort . . .

MAN. Oh right . . .

LADY. . . . and they toured about or something, and when they gave up, the whole caboodle, props, costumes, armoury was stored here. I think it was meant to be part of the hire store like all the other rooms, but I doubt if anyone has used this stuff in over fifty years.

The MAN looks around, touches costumes hanging on rack, etc.

MAN. No surprise there, then . . . It’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever seen, . . . well, apart from everything nominated for the Oscars this year.

LADY. Overlooked were you?

MAN. What happened to cutting-edge? . . . It’s all so yesterday . . . stick it in this mausoleum . . .

He switches on the projector. Nothing happens.

LADY. Anything take your fancy? Some lovely hessian.

MAN. What happened to these wings? . . . looks like dried-up ketchup or something . . . This place really spooks me . . . it’s like being in Oxfam on acid.

LADY. Mmm. Though I’m afraid the nearest I’ve ever got to drugs was a Haliborange . . . It was just a thought. So which one are you thinking of doing Nineteen Forties?

MAN. Titus Andronicus.

LADY. Of course.

MAN. End of the war, end of an era . . . Shake it up a bit . . .

They move back to the door and she switches off the light.

LADY. I must see if there’s an inventory for all this. God only knows what might be in here. Ah well . . . sorry to disturb . . . sleep . . . sleep . . .

She closes the doors and locks and chains are fastened again.

So what were you saying dear . . . one of the characters is a cross-dresser?

MAN. Saturninus, yeah, transsexual – not tutus . . . but fabulous as in ballroom dresses or anything with sequins.

A distant door slam. Darkness. Silence.

A VOICE. Bloody cheek! Give me strength!

From the costume rails:

ANOTHER VOICE (whispered, amused). Language. ‘Hetty’s Horrors’. You have to laugh . . . Hetty? (Silence.) Hetty?

HETTY. All those years of blood, toil, tears and sweat for what? ‘So yesterday’? Since when were sequins ‘cutting-edge’? Enough. You heard her. Sleep, Flora.

FLORA. Nil desperandum . . . we didn’t do it to be remembered.

HETTY. ‘Remember me.’

FLORA. ‘Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.’

Silence.

The projector suddenly comes to life and throws an eerie image onto a dust sheet: a group of bearded men wearing cricket flannels clutching a Union Jack. The image changes to close-ups as the bearded faces laugh and hug and kiss each other. The film runs out and becomes numbers, etc. and then blank. The projector bulb goes out but the motor and spools continue to whir in the dark. Then all is silent.

I don’t remember why we did do it.

HETTY. Oh for God’s sake, Flora.

FLORA. There was the pageant, I remember that . . . but of course we were only there as Lights and Costume . . .

A half-light, no more than an aura suffuses the nearest racks of costumes, and stepping slowly and silently into the space comes QUEEN ELIZABETH I. The faintest music plays, the memory of ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ (Vaughan Williams), and QUEEN VICTORIA, holding a prayer book, follows, her eyes cast down in mourning. A spectral BOUDICCA glares ahead of her. ARTHUR appears in armour, bearing Excalibur, as HETTY’s voice is heard as if through a distant loudspeaker.

HETTY. This royal throne of kings, this scept’red isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise . . .

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

This land of such dear souls, this dear . . . dear God, where the hell is Charles I? . . . Stop, stop, stop . . .

CHARLES I, clean shaven, appears from behind ARTHUR.

CHARLES I. Sorry, no beard as yet and no Derek either.

HETTY (dressed in trench coat). Flora, where’s Charles I’s ruddy beard? And you little people – no, not you Shakespeare, but Big Ben, Brittania and the Sopworth Camel . . . yes, you . . . You are criss-crossing the pageant. Kindly stick to the cross and cut the criss . . .

FLORA (wearing slacks, sensible shoes and a headscarf). Sorry . . . My eyes are stinging from that spirit gum, ooh, but then I do get hay fever every year so . . .

HETTY. I want a beard, Flora. Not your life story.

FLORA. Mea culpa, they’ve sent any number of Henry VIIIs but not a Van Dyke in sight.

HETTY. Where the hell are the scissors? Honestly, Flora, do I have to do everything myself . . . And where the hell’s Derek?

She strides away. FLORA claps her hands.

FLORA. Hello, sorry to be a wet blanket after that valiant rehearsal but can I just say that when it comes to changing into civvies, Tudors and Stuarts to the billiards room, Angevins and Plantagenets to the ping-pong hut . . .

HETTY returns cutting a beard out of something white.

HETTY. Necessity is the mother of invention. That’s what put the ‘Great’ into Britain.

She glues the make-shift beard on CHARLES I rather brutally.

CHARLES I. If you don’t mind my saying, it seems a rather odd-looking beard . . .

HETTY. Not at all, you’re quite right. It’s a sanitary towel.

CHARLES I. A what?

FLORA. Kotex sanitary towel, dear . . . marvellous in a facial-hair crisis . . .

Everybody freezes except HETTY and FLORA.

Remember?

HETTY. No, I don’t. But then I don’t want to . . .

FLORA. How the director never turned up.

HETTY. Director? He couldn’t direct Dorothy up the Yellow Brick Road.

FLORA. And you took over.

HETTY. Stood in.

FLORA. And you were doing so awfully well . . . Until the moment the wireless played over the loudspeakers . . .

CHAMBERLAIN’S VOICE,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction and Acknowledgements
• In Search of the Osiris Players
• Original Production
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two
• Production Note
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information