The Modern Monologue

Women

Michael Earley, Philippa Keil, Michael Earley, Philippa Keil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9781136750823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teatro

First published in 1994. The Modern Monologue is a continuation of the previous collection The Classical Monologue. This starts at the dawn of the modern age in 1892, presenting a survey of indispensable speeches from plays that continue to shape the course of modern theatre. The plays included in this collection also happen to be the ones that have helped to define modern acting in all its many guises. Modern playwrights such as Brecht, Genet, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Shepard, Guare, Nichols and Churchill, to name only a handful of the dramatists represented here, assume that a play and its characters are malleable and shifting; that mood swings, strangeness and sudden eruptions are key components of modern theatre's compelling attraction.

Absent Friends (1974) Alan Ayckbourn

Act I. The open-plan living-room of a modern executive-style house. Saturday afternoon.

Diana (30s) ‘always gives the impression of being slightly fraught. She smiles occasionally but it’s painful. Her sharp darting eyes don’t miss much after years of suspicions both genuine and unfounded.’ Paul, her husband, is a successful businessman who is regularly unfaithful to her. She arranges a tea party for Colin, an old friend, so that his pals can show their support for him following the recent death by drowning of his fiancée, Carol. However, Diana and her friends never actually met Carol and have not seen Colin himself in over three years. As Diana prepares for the party she ruminates about her husband to Evelyn, who has her baby with her and registers no apparent interest in the conversation.

DIANA. Him and his squash. It used to be tennis – now he’s squash mad. Squash, squash, squash. Can’t see what he sees in it. All afternoon hitting a ball against a wall. It’s so noisy. Bang, bang, bang. He’s not even out of doors. No fresh air at all. It can’t be good for him. Does John play squash?

[EVELYN. No.

DIANA. Oh.

EVELYN. He doesn’t play anything.]

Oh, well. He probably doesn’t need it. Exercise. Some men don’t. My father never took a stroke of exercise. Till he died. He seemed fit enough. He managed to do what he wanted to do. Mind you, he never did very much. He just used to sit and shout at we girls. Most of the time. He got calmer though when he got older. After my mother left him. (Looking into the pram.) Did you knit that little jacket for him?

[EVELYN. No.]

Pretty. (Pause.) No, there are times when I think that’s the principal trouble between Paul and me. I mean, I know now I’m running myself down but Paul basically, he’s got much more go – well, I mean let’s face it, he’s much cleverer than me. Let’s face it. Basically. I mean, I was the bright one in our family but I can’t keep up with Paul sometimes. When he has one of his moods, I think to myself, now if I was really clever, I could probably talk him round or something but I mean the thing is, really and truly, and I know I’m running myself down when I say this, I don’t think I’m really enough for him. He needs me, I can tell that; he doesn’t say as much but I know he does. It’s just, as I say, I don’t think I’m really enough for him. (She reflects.) But he couldn’t do without me. Make no mistake about that. He’s got this amazing energy. I don’t know where he finds it. He goes to bed long after me, he’s up at dawn, working down here – then off he goes all day … I need my eight hours, it’s no good. What I’m saying is really, I wouldn’t blame him. Not altogether. If he did. With someone else. You know, another woman. I wouldn’t blame him, I wouldn’t blame her. Not as long as I was told. Providing I know, that I’m told – all right. Providing I feel able to say to people – ‘Yes, I am well aware that my husband is having an affair with such and such or whoever …it’s quite all right. I know all about it. We’re both grown-up people, we know what we’re doing, he knows I know, she knows I know. So mind your own business.’ I’d feel all right about it. But I will not stand deception. I’m simply asking that I be told. Either by him or if not by her. Not necessarily now but sometime. You see. (A pause. EVELYN is expressionless.). I know he is, you see. He’s not very clever and he’s a very bad liar like most men. If he takes the trouble, like last Saturday, to tell me he’s just going down the road to the football match, he might at least choose a day when they’re playing at home. (She lifts the tablecloth and inspects the sandwiches.) I hope I’ve made enough tomato. No, I must be told. Otherwise it makes my life impossible. I can’t talk to anybody without them … I expect them, both of them, at least to have some feeling for me. (She blows her nose.) Well. (The doorbell rings.) Excuse me …

COMMENTARYAbsent Friends, like so many of Ayckbourn’s best early plays, is a comedy of modern manners. Behind the surface humour is a shrewd analysis of suburban mores, disillusion and despair. Ayckbourn is skilled at creating situations and characters that have both comic and sad elements which reveal the pain of everyday life and blighted relationships. The put-upon women in Ayckbourn’s plays are presented with understanding and compassion. In Absent Friends the issues of death and deceit are given a laughable gloss. This is a darkly hilarious play.

Diana launches into her monologue with the ‘expressionless’ Evelyn as her audience. This is a one-way conversation. Diana is a compulsive talker. She volleys a torrent of words against an unyielding wall of silence. Notice how she keeps trying to redefine what she says, peppering her speech with phrases like ‘I mean’ and ‘What I’m saying is really’. It also becomes an exorcism for her: a way to expel the demon fears and anxieties about her own inadequacy and her husband’s infidelity. Like so many of Ayckbourn’s heroines she has a palpable fear of sickness and death, divorce and adultery. Her frame of reference seems entirely culled from the pages of women’s magazines. To the outside world she wants to maintain the illusion of a happy marriage; keeping up appearances is vital for her even if her marriage is in reality a sad sham. Diana’s neurotic insecurity and constant self-deprecation hints at the breakdown she will experience later in the play. She suspects Paul’s adultery and fears losing him. Ayckbourn portrays Paul as a vain, egoistic and selfish man, but in Diana’s eyes he has all the qualities of a suburban hero. When Diana opens the play with this speech it is not clear whether she knows for certain that it is Evelyn who is having the affair with Paul. You might want to consider how knowledge, suspicion or ignorance of this crucial fact might affect your delivery of the speech. Is Diana just talking randomly to anyone within earshot or directing her words specifically at Evelyn with a menacing intent? There is a significant age difference between the two women: Evelyn is younger, trendier, heavily made-up and expressionless. Diana, who changes expressions and tone throughout the speech, might be measuring herself against this sphinx-like rival. Despite all the sadness revealed in the speech, the actor should follow Diana’s example and keep up a resolutely chatty and cheerful exterior.

After the Fall (1964) Arthur Miller

Act I. A bare stage.

Holga (30s) is a German archaeologist. She is a calm and independent woman. But the past haunts her. Here she reminisces about the war.

HOLGA.It was the middle of the war. I had just come out of a class and there were leaflets on the sidewalk. A photograph of a concentration camp. And emaciated people. It was dropped there by British Intelligence; one tended to believe the British. I had no idea. Truly. Any more, perhaps, than Americans know how a Negro lives. I was seventeen; I lived in my studies; I planned how to cut my hair differently. It is much more complicated than it seems later. There were many officers in my family. It was our country. It isn’t easy to turn against your country; not in a war. There are always reasons – do Americans turn against America because of Hiroshima? No, there are reasons always. (Pause.) And I took the leaflet to my godfather – he was still commanding our Intelligence. And I asked if it were true. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘why does it excite you?’ And I said, ‘You are a swine. You are all swine.’ I threw my briefcase at him. And he opened it and put some papers in and asked me to deliver it to a certain address. And I became a courier for the officers who were planning to assassinate Hitler. … They were all hanged.

[QUENTIN. Why not you?

HOLGA. They didn’t betray me.

QUENTIN. Then why do you say good faith is never sure?] (After a pause.) It was my country … longer perhaps than it should have been. But I didn’t know. And now I don’t know how I could not have known. I can’t imagine not knowing, now.

COMMENTARY:Miller’s After the Fall is a play about how guilt preys heavily on innocent minds. Within the framework of the play the Second World War represents a fall from grace. Anyone touched by those times, whether in Germany or elsewhere, has been compromised. So it is with Holga who reveals how she first became aware of evil as a young student in Nazi Germany.

Holga’s speech discloses the clear memory of a moral and political turning point in her life. A chance encounter with a leaflet outside a school yard sets off the chain of related incidents that grow into a plot, in which she is involved, to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Although Holga does not describe the photograph of the concentration camp her reaction to it justifies everything that follows. Try to imagine or find the kind of image that would have this impact. Notice how calmly Holga relates her transition from innocent ignorance to knowledge, from passive indifference to active involvement. Although the speech seems very neutral and matter-of-fact, it is also an admission of collective guilt and a confession. Holga speaks slowly and simply. Her command of English is precise and functional. She has a rational, scientific mind (she is an archaeologist) so she speaks clearly. The actor must find a way to convey her quiet passion and strong compassion. She concludes her speech on a note of uncertainty. Despite all that she has experienced she realizes there can be no moral victories.

Antigone (1944) Jean Anouilh

Scene I. Set without historical or geographical connotations. Vaguely Greek but more modern.

Antigone (20) is the daughter of the late King Oedipus and lives with her older sister, Ismene, in the house of their uncle, King Creon. She is engaged to Haemon, Creon’s son. Her two brothers Eteocles and Polynices kill one another in a duel, each trying to gain control of Thebes. Creon orders that Eteocles is to be buried with full honours and declares Polynices a rebel, forbidding his burial. Antigone, believing it is her duty to honour Polynices, buries him herself with all the appropriate rituals but she is caught by Creon’s guards. In this scene Creon offers to murder the guards and suppress all news of her crime if she agrees both to maintain silence about it and obey him. She responds to his offer with this speech, revealing her uncompromising integrity.

ANTIGONE. (softly). And what will my happiness be like? What kind of a happy woman will Antigone grow into? What base things will she have to do, day after day, in order to snatch her own little scrap of happiness? Tell me – who will she have to lie to? Smile at? Sell herself to? Who will she have to avert her eyes from, and leave to die?

[CREON. That’s enough. You’re crazy.]

I won’t be quiet! I want to know what I have to do to be happy! Now, right away, because now is when I have to choose. You say life’s so wonderful. I want to know what I have to do to live.

[CREON. Do you love Haemon?]

I love a Haemon who’s tough and young … A Haemon who’s demanding and loyal, like me. But if that life of yours, that happiness of yours, are going to pass over him and erode him – if he’s not going to turn pale any more when I turn pale – if he won’t think I must be dead if I’m five minutes late – if he doesn’t feel alone in the world and hate me if I laugh and he doesn’t know why – if he’s going to become just a conventional spouse and learn to say yes like the rest – then no, I don’t love Haemon any more!

[CREON. That’ll do. You don’t know what you’re saying.]

I know what I’m saying, all right! It’s just that you don’t understand. I’m speaking to you from too far away now – from a country you can’t enter any more, with your wrinkles, your wisdom and your belly. (Laughs.) I suddenly see you as you were when you were fifteen! Helpless, but thinking you’re important. All life has added are those furrows in your face, that fat around your waist!

[CREON (shaking her). Will you shut up!]

Why do you want to shut me up? Because you know I’m right? Don’t you think I can see it in your eyes? You know I’m right, but you’ll never admit it because you’re trying to defend that happiness of yours – like a dog crouching over a bone.

[CREON. Your happiness as well as mine, you fool!]

You disgust me, all of you, you and your happiness! And your life, that has to be loved at any price. You’re like dogs fawning on everyone they come across. With just a little hope left every day – if you don’t expect too much. But I want everything, now! And to the full! Or else I decline the offer, lock, stock and barrel! I want to be sure of having everything, now, this very day, and it has to be as wonderful as it was when I was little. Otherwise I prefer to die.

Translation by Barbara Bray

COMMENTARY: Anouilh’s modern version of Antigone was a conscious attempt to cloak in myth the dilemma facing the French people during the World War II occupation by the Nazis. By camouflaging his ideas behind a well-known classical tale, the dramatist was able to explore freely the moral ambiguity posed by collaboration with the enemy. In this play Antigone prefers to die rather than compromise her integrity in a morally corrupt world. Today the play is frequently revived. The conflict and debate between Antigone and Creon have lost none of their impact or relevance. As with all Anouilh’s plays it provides actors with well-crafted roles and eminently speakable dialogue that forces the audience to listen.

Antigone is a modern young woman. She is angry and challenging not only towards her uncle – a father surrogate – but towards all notions of authority that block free will and happiness. The emotionally charged knowledge that both her brothers are dead and that her own life is in the balance must influence each of her words. Her entire speech is about individual liberation and living without imposed limitations. Unlike her precursor in classical Greek tragedy, who was driven by religious principle and a sense of justice, this Antigone is a selfish, wilful and stubborn individualist. Her goal is her own happiness. Antigone hammers away at Creon and even takes some glee in the fact that she can arouse his anger. You might notice how she preys on Creon’s age and paunch. Even though a dictator, Creon sounds perfectly reasonable. He is not a butcher, never speaks of concentration camps or cruelty. He wants an orderly state of affairs. Antigone can see his blind spots. She uses her mocking, sarcastic speeches to castigate and cross-examine Creon, and provoke his anger. Notice how she hurls his own words and phrases back in his face. As she finally says she would ‘prefer to die’ and just say ‘no’ than be denied happiness by living according to Creon’s dictates.

The Balcony (1956) Jean Genet

Scene 5. Irma’s room, an elegant boudoir with lace hangings, dressing table and gilded mirror.

Irma ‘is about forty, dark, severe-looking, and is wearing a black tailored suit’. She is the Madame of a brothel and has been going over her accounts. She is talking to one of her girls, Carmen, explaining how she realizes her clients’ fantasies.

IRMA. They all want everything to be as real as possible. … Minus some...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes to the Actor
• 1. Absent Friends: (1974) Alan Ayckbourn
• 2. After the Fall: (1964) Arthur Miller
• 3. Antigone: (1944) Jean Anouilh
• 4. The Balcony: (1956) Jean Genet
• 5. The Bald Prima Donna: (1950) Eugene Ionesco
• 6. Blithe Spirit: (1941) Noël Coward
• 7. Blues for Mister Charlie: (1964) James Baldwin
• 8. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: (1955) Tennessee Williams
• 9. Cloud Nine: (1979) Caryl Churchill
• 10. The Cocktail Party: (1950) T. S. Eliot
• 11. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg: (1967) Peter Nichols
• 12. East: (1975) Steven Berkoff
• 13. Faith Healer: (1979) Brian Friel
• 14. The Glass Menagerie: (1945) Tennessee Williams
• 15. The Good Person of Sichuan: (1939–40) Bertolt Brecht
• 16. Happy Days: (1961) Samuel Beckett
• 17. Hello and Goodbye: (1965) Athol Fugard
• 18. The House of Blue Leaves: (1971) John Guare
• 19. Huis Clos [In Camera/No Exit]: (1944) Jean-Paul Sartre
• 20. Icarus’s Mother: (1965) Sam Shepard
• 21. The Iceman Cometh: (1940) Eugene O’Neill
• 22. Jumpers: (1972) Tom Stoppard
• 23. La Turista: (1967) Sam Shepard
• 24. The Lark: (1953) Jean Anouilh
• 25. Long Day’s Journey into Night: (1940) Eugene O’Neill
• 26. Look Back in Anger: (1956) John Osborne
• 27. The Maids: (1947) Jean Genet
• 28. The Misunderstanding: (1944) Albert Camus
• 29. Napoli Milionaria: (1945) Eduardo de Filippo
• 30. Old Times: (1971) Harold Pinter
• 31. Otherwise Engaged: (1975) Simon Gray
• 32. The Plough and the Stars: (1926) Sean O’Casey
• 33. Pygmalion: (1912) Bernard Shaw
• 34. The Room: (1960) Harold Pinter
• 35. Roots: (1959) Arnold Wesker
• 36. The Ruffian on the Stair: (1964) Joe Orton
• 37. The Rules of the Game: (1919) Luigi Pirandello
• 38. The Ruling Class: (1968) Peter Barnes
• 39. Saint Joan: (1924) Bernard Shaw
• 40. Saved: (1965) Edward Bond
• 41. The Sea: (1973) Edward Bond
• 42. Sexual Perversity in Chicago: (1974) David Mamet
• 43. Spring Awakening: (1892) Frank Wedekind
• 44. A Streetcar Named Desire: (1947) Tennessee Williams
• 45. Summer and Smoke: (1948) Tennessee Williams
• 46. Ubu Rex: (1896) Alfred Jarry
• 47. A View from the Bridge: (1955) Arthur Miller
• 48. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: (1962) Edward Albee
• Play Sources
• Acknowledgements