Perfect Days (NHB Modern Plays)

Liz Lochhead

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780012698
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A funny, sad and truthful romantic comedy about beating the biological clock.

Winner of an Edinburgh Fringe First Award

Barbs Marshall is a celebrity hairdresser in Glasgow. She is successful and well off, but she is 39 years old and almost deafened by the ticking of her biological clock. To make matters worse, her mother is a nag, her best friend is holding out on her, and her ex-husband has a new 22-year-old girlfriend. Then she meets a 26-year-old stranger who seems more than ready to oblige. But the complications are by no means over...

'People seldom write life-style comedies like Perfect Days for the stage anymore. The last scene has jokes so marvellous that they are greeted by rounds of applause as one blinks back the odd tear' - Financial Times

'The mix of pithy patter and heartwrenching poignancy works a treat' - The Times

'A huge popular hit' - Daily Mail

PERFECT DAYS

Perfect Days was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, on 7 August 1998, with the following cast:

BARBS MARSHALL	Siobhan Redmond
ALICE INGLIS	Anne Kidd
SADIE KIRKWOOD	Ann Scott-Jones
BRENDAN BOYLE	John Kazek
DAVIE MARSHALL	Vincent Friell
GRANT STEEL	Enzo Cilenti
Director	John Tiffany
Designer	Georgia Sion
Lighting Designer	Chahine Yavroyan
Sound Designer	John Harris

The play was revived at the Hampstead Theatre, London, on 6 January 1999.

Lyrics from the song If Not You by Dennis Locorriere copyright © 1998 Screen Gems–EMI Music Inc, Screen Gems–EMI Music Ltd, London WC2H 0EA. Reproduced by permission of IMP Ltd.

Characters

BARBS MARSHALL, thirty-nine, a Glasgow celebrity hairdresser

ALICE INGLIS, forty-four, Barbs’s oldest friend

SADIE KIRKWOOD, sixty-two, Barbs’s mother

BRENDAN BOYLE, twenty-seven to thirty-seven, Barbs’s best friend

DAVIE MARSHALL, forty-two, Barbs’s estranged husband

GRANT STEEL, twenty-six, an attractive stranger

The action of this play is all set in the same large and very stylish Merchant City loft in Glasgow, Barbs Marshall’s home.

The scenes take place consecutively on nine different days in Barbs’s life. They span from Scene One, a week or so before her thirty-ninth birthday, till Scene Ten, about eighteen months later.

ACT ONE

Scene One

Music – it’s Dusty Springfield singing ‘I’m Going Back’ – the end of the second verse. It fades out as the lights go up.

ALICE INGLIS, a handsome and pleasant-looking woman in her early forties, sits in her clean M&S slip on a chair in the middle of this large space. A trendy loft. To one side, off, is the kitchen, to the other, off, bathroom/bedroom. There is a loft bed or mezzanine above part of this living space. Centre back, there is a large door into the public hallway, the outside world.

BARBS MARSHALL, a very flamboyantly attractive woman in her late thirties, is just finishing cutting ALICE’s hair. The last two snips and she picks up the newspaper on which the fall of clippings is caught and pours it into the waste bin.

Around them, piled on the sofa, are some expensive and chic clothes.

BARBS. So, Alice, I was telling you, we get to Glasgow airport, guy on the desk recognises me, we get an upgrade, very nice, thank you very much, first class practically empty, great, spread out a bit, relax, the champagne cocktails, the blue blue sky, the white fluffy clouds beneath us… I’m feeling: okay maybe he’s not got the highest IQ in the world but he does have a gorgeous profile and at least he’s not wearing that fucking awful jumper that he turned up in wan night, tucked into his trousers can you believe, and gave me a red neck in front of Brendan from work.

I mean true and everlasting love it is not, but he’s a nice guy and all that, own teeth, daft about me, well so far, it’s only been three or four weeks, defin-ately dead keen, or so I’ve been led to believe by the dinners, the phone calls, the nipping my heid off about Paris – how he used to live there how there are all these sweet wee dinky little special places he knows that he’d like to take me, so there we are, we get to the hotel and here they’ve overbooked so this time we get an automatic upgrade to the four-star no problem, it’s gorgeous, the corner room, the fruitbowl, the flowers, the complementary chocolates, the half-bottle of champagne, the big king-size bed all turned down at the corner… And – now, to let you know, Alice – back home in Glasgow I’ve been avoiding it, by the way, because truth to tell I do not really fancy him, at least I do not fancy him when I am actually with him, I’ve been, frankly, postponing the inevit able for this weekend where I have calculated, quite cor rectly according to my Predictor Kit, I will be ovulating – and he says to me he can’t sleep with me because he’s Met Someone and he’s fallen in love! No, correction, he can sleep with me, but we can’t have sex because that would be him being unfaithful to his new wee dolly inamorata.

I’m like: What? I’m like: What are we doing here? And Why? He’s like: Well, it’s a fantastic city, and I’m his best friend – best friend! – and he wants to show me it and he didn’t want to disappoint me!

Chinese!

ALICE. Men! Eh? What a fucking wanker!

BARBS. I’m like… naah, he won’t be able to last out, but we go for dinner, we walk along the Seine in the moonlight, we have a couple of brandies, and yet, no, quite oblivious to me and all my brand-new extortionate La Perla flimsies bought special, nope – bedtime, he pecks me chastely on the cheek and falls fast and instantly asleep, snoring away like billy-o while I am lying there wide awake and just bloody raging.

Because, apart from the galling fact that one of my dwindling supply of eggs is up there, yet again going to waste for want of the Sparky Sperm the Tadpole with its name on it, now that I can’t have him do I not start to fancy him something chronic? Torture.

ALICE. Mental!

BARBS. So much for the Romantic fucking Winter-break Valentine Special Weekend in Paris. I mean you lower your standards to minus zero, decide you’ll settle for fuck all and even that is denied one.

ALICE laughs. BARBS is taken aback then joins in.

Well I guess I’ll always have Paris… (Beat.) Product!

BARBS applies a scoosh of mousse to ALICE’s hair.

ALICE. Barbs, this is helluva good of you, pal, but don’t go to a lot of bother.

BARBS. Nearly done… Wur Own Make. Softstyle shinegel megamousse. This is the styling product out of the range that may well yet bankrupt Razor City. However, Stefan would not be deflected from his dreams, would he? And I do have to admit it is a super product. Among a market chock-a-block jam-packed hoaching with super products…

Don’t move.

ALICE. Ach, as long as I’m neat and tidy…

BARBS. Alice, you get your hair cut. By me. At my home. Which is something I have never done for anybody since 1978 –

ALICE. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know, I know, I didny mean it like that… yes, I’m an ungrateful bitch, so I am. I know. I mean, here am urr getting styled by The Stylist that every single person on Morningtime Makeover fights over –

BARBS. Exactly. Doing your hair for you in the privacy of her own home so that tonight you will look fabulous. Neat and tidy your arse, Alice!

So – Paris – you’d think that was bad enough. That was me. Humiliated. Following month I’m like forget it. Month after that same. Then the next month, unexpectedly, something presents itself…

ALICE. Barbs, excuse me, but can you not get that artificial insemination stuff?

BARBS. Yes, Alice, you can, but something about it does not appeal to me. Maybe I do not like to think of having to tell my baby its daddy is a wanker…

They both laugh.

Na, for some reason… Maybe it’s aesthetic, maybe it’s pride…

ALICE. You could always go back to our Davie!

BARBS. Aye right!

ALICE. He’s crazy about you, Barbs, he’s never ever got over you.

BARBS. Aye right, aye! Anyway Howard next door –

ALICE. The dishy one?

BARBS. P – G – L.

ALICE. Eh?

BARBS. Pointless Good Looks… Computers. Anyway, he’s always been after me. My Midnight Caller. He wished. But I’ve always knocked him back. Well, obviously he’s never come out with it in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Perfect Days
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information