Red Car, Blue Car (NHB Modern Plays)

Jack Thorne

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781780015880
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A heartbreaking short play about guilt, grief and responsibility, written for and performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2011.

RED CAR, BLUE CAR

Red Car, Blue Car was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, as part of their Where’s My Seat? season, in June 2011, with the following cast:

PHIL	Hugo Speer
MARIE	Nina Sosanya
Director	Tamara Harvey
Designers	Amy Cook and Lucy Osborne

Characters

PHIL
MARIE

Also:

TOM, non-speaking
FIONA, non-speaking
MARK, non-speaking

There are three chairs and a lot of crap on the stage. PHIL sits in the middle chair.

TOM enters carrying a giant strawberry. MARIE enters behind him with a very small tub of cream which she eats with a spoon. He seems a little lost. He exits the stage. MARIE thinks and then sits on a chair beside PHIL.

PHIL. There is a woman sitting with a boy with swollen eyes. He must be no more than ten. She’s holding his arm for him – cradling it in her lap. And he keeps looking at it as if he’s afraid it will disappear. Like it’s not attached to him. A guy with a bloodied bar napkin taped to his head walks past them. He holds eye contact with the mother. Then wobbles and moves on. A woman sits playing with her phone and looks at nothing as she gently cries. An old black woman sits in the corner waiting for news. I keep expecting someone to ask – what are you here for? No one asks what am I here for… A woman comes rattling past, her man rattling beside her. She’s pregnant. He thinks he is. Showing off as he shouts encouragement. Looking to the nurses for audience appreciation. You’re doing fucking great. You’re doing fucking great.

MARIE. ‘You fucking do it. You fucking do it.’ I push him across the bed with a smile and he looks at me with a capacious grin. Do I mean capacious? He takes the basketball and puts it under his T-shirt and smiles and goes ‘Big Bertha’ – it’s sort of a name – it’s not a name – ‘Big Bertha’ – you have to say it like a fairground attendant to really get the use out of it ‘Big Bertha’ – followed by one of his laughs – gna gna gna gna – he laughs like a cartoon character. Anyway, then he hands it to me. Like it’s a present – a gift – a present. And I look at it – think and then I put it – I put the basketball up my top. And I’m nervous for some reason. And he says ‘you look beautiful’ – and he’s got the eyes he sometimes does – ‘you’re beautiful’ and I say ‘damn, really, if I knew it’d be this easy I’d have got pregnant years ago’ and he says ‘you look beautiful.’ And I say ‘Okay. All I’ve done is let you fuck me and pissed on a stick. But okay.’ ‘You look beautiful’ he repeats and I smile and I say ‘Okay. Okay. You’re getting boring now.’ And then he says ‘Big Bertha’ and I laugh – he laughs Gna Gna Gna Gna – and I hit him.

PHIL. The mother and child are called. She delicately moves his arm as they stand together. But it hurts him and he looks at her like she’s caused the pain. She smiles like she doesn’t mind. A young man comes in and walks delicately up to reception – they ask what’s wrong he says I think I need a private consultation, the receptionist nods at him and says someone will come right out to take his details. When they do it’s behind a curtain. And I never see him again.

MARIE picks up a basketball from the debris and puts it under her top. She turns around – humming ‘The Stripper’ and doing a weird dance move.

Reception – two women with too much make-up on trying to look like they understand everything. I think about my wife and daughter. The man with the bloodied napkin is called and taken through. A young black woman comes in and sits beside the old black woman waiting for news. She’s been crying. The old woman hasn’t. They barely talk. A man of my age comes in and tells the reception something and then sits gently swaying holding his gut. I won’t see him taken through. There are the sounds of sirens coming and sirens going but I never see a paramedic. The show-off man comes through and starts making loud phone calls to everyone he knows. It’s so fucking exciting, he declares, so exciting. I’m over the fucking moon, fucking moon, we both are. Yes. She’s just birthing the placenta now. Then a doctor emerges. Elegantly peeling off slightly bloodied latex gloves as he walks. He’s approaching the reception desk. He talks to the prettier receptionist. All prettiness is relative. She touches his hand as they talk. He tells her the RTA is dead. And that’s all I need to hear.

MARIE. We met on – the internet. Not a thing I’m particularly proud of. I’d like to say we met on a cultural-exchange project in Cairo. Or dancing in a nightclub in Brixton to heavy heavy beats. Or at the zoo – I was with my niece, he was with his nephew – we met at the monkey compound when they got chatting, we were embarrassed at first then he did a monkey impression, and I was like a squidgy banana in his hands.

PHIL. I leave the hospital via the front entrance and stand smoking a cigarette – my wife doesn’t like me smoking. And then I – then I –

PHIL exits the stage.

MARIE. But we didn’t meet at any of those places, we met on the internet. The home of porn, Wikipedia, humiliation and loneliness. I am a woman – click – looking for a man – click – my age is – click – my income bracket is – click – my preferred age for him is – click click click – my preferred income bracket is – click click click click – tell us about yourself – click click click click click – what do you do for a living – click click click click click click – what do you like to do in your spare time – click click click click click – where do you see yourself in ten years – click click click click click click – where do you see yourself in one hundred years – click click click click click click – are you tall, medium, short – do you have a small, medium or large breasts – do you have sticky pointy round or slightly darkish nipples – do you have any special skills you can do with said nipples – have you ever fellated a horse? I met one man – Guardian Soulmates – lovely, fresh, gentle, Guardian Soulmates – asked me to wear a muzzle – how do I find out if you’re my Guardian Soulmate? How do I know if you’re the person drawn into dating via a left-leaning website who I could spend the rest of my life with? Oh, I know… I’ll get you to wear a muzzle. The secret – and I was stupid not to guess this – the secret to soulmating – for life – is muzzling – for life. True. Story. Yes, there were – there are – some men – some male daters – who need to die – and I did briefly consider becoming a notorious Match dot com murderess – the notorious Match dot murderess. Different profiles, different internet cafés, tell them to meet me in a variety of places, offer to let them meat me – M–E–A–T – see what I’ve done – yeeah – take them home – drug them – then tie them up and gently skin their penis and watch them while they bleed out in the bath.

TOM re-enters and then exits.

Matt was the seventeenth I met. I briefly did call him Mr Seventeen and then he asked what that meant and I said that – I said I didn’t want to explain. He said he enjoyed how old-fashioned internet dating was – the exchange of letters, the occasionally chaperoned first date, the gentle discovery of each other. But the truth is – was – is that Matt was just as lonely as I was. Big Bertha and Mr Seventeen.

FIONA enters the stage and sits beside MARIE.

‘Let’s go for a drink’ he says. ‘Yeah. Let’s go do some shots. The baby will like that.’ I say. He laughs. Gna gna gna. ‘Okay. Then let’s go for a coffee. An ice cream.’ ‘It’s one a.m.’

PHIL re-enters and sits beside FIONA. He’s carrying a thermos. He pours himself a coffee.

‘Then let’s go for a walk, I can’t sleep, I’m not going to sleep now and nor are you – let’s go for a walk.’

And I say – ‘Okay.’

PHIL. The streets are quiet. It’s five a.m. A man ambles past. With a gait. Red car. Blue car. He looks at me as I pass him. He smells of mustard and wet newspaper and dick. Black car. Yellow car. Blue car. Blue car. A woman in a business skirt walks too quickly for her shoes. Each step involves a slight slip. Guttaging guttaging guttaging. A man listens to his phone dressed in overalls. Not walking too quickly. Not music. Some speech radio or – comedy podcast – he smiles as he passes. Not at me.

PHIL drinks his coffee.

MARIE. And he folds his arm in mine. And I say ‘what are we doing out here, it’s cold,’ and he says, ‘we’re being insane together. We’re celebrating.’ And I say ‘Okay.’

PHIL. Blue car. Red car. Blue car. Green car. Orange car. Red car. Blue car. Two men walk together. Identical to look at. But saying nothing. Both have a newspaper tucked under the same arm – both walk w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Original Production
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information