Schmucks

Roy Smiles

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786825162
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

A struggling comic Joe Klein, mourning another failed night at comedy, finds himself in the middle of the New York blackout of 1965. Two comedy greats Lenny Bruce and Groucho Marx find themselves in the same diner. Groucho has got old and jaded. Lenny is fighting for the right to free speech and a longtime heroin addiction. As they wait out the dark they struggle for the comedic soul of young Joe. While Joe falls for the damaged but feisty waitress Mary. Schmucks was first staged at Battersea Arts Centre in 1992 with William Marsh as Lenny Bruce and David Mayberry as Groucho Marx.

Act One

Darkness.

In the darkness we hear rain, heavy rain. Pounding down on the windows and streets of Greenwich Village, New York City, in the Fall of 1965.

The lights rise on a diner. It is not a dive as restaurants go but has seen better days.
It is three o’clock in the morning. There is only one customer.

There are three booths; the seats blue leather and upright. A long chrome lunch counter runs down the right side of the stage. Five stools in front of it at intervals; a doorway behind leads to a kitchen; there is a second door on the customer side of the counter: which leads to a lavatory, a dukebox stands beside it. A phone hangs on a wall beside the front door.

The customer is JOE KLEIN. He sits half asleep in a booth; he’s twenty-six years old and has been failing as a comedian for quite some time. Tonight he’s bombed again; he’s been heckled off stage by a hundred snarling strangers.

He’s Jewish, dark haired and over-anxious. Dressed in a blue serge suit that went out of fashion several years before; his tie loosened on a white shirt that hasn’t seen an iron in months.

A waitress: MARY LENAHAN watches him from behind the lunch counter. An
Irish-American redhead, good looking, twenty-five or so but looks older due to the hardness of her life. She glances over to where JOE sits, picks up a coffee pot and walks over to his booth.

MARY. You awake?

JOE sits up with a jolt.

JOE. Yeah, I guess.

MARY. Only you were kind of - slumping.

JOE. I like to slump, what can I say?

A pause; MARY stares out of the window.

MARY. Listen to that rain - they’ll be building an ark.

JOE. A flood would improve this city’s personality.

MARY. You’re telling me.

JOE. Where did all the people go?

MARY. Home, why don’t you?

JOE. It’s too depressing to go back to.

MARY. I know that feeling. Where I live the roaches beat up the cats.

MARY laughs, JOE stares.

MARY. So - you want some coffee?

JOE. Sure, why not? Maybe the caffeine will kill me.

MARY pours JOE a coffee.

MARY. Hey - lighten up - it can’t be that bad.

JOE. Take it from me: it is.

MARY. What’s the matter, your parents die in a mining disaster?

JOE. You ever met Jews that mined? (Beat) They wouldn’t be able to pick for the whining.

MARY. (Laughs) That’s funny.

JOE. Now I get laughs.

MARY. Why the doom and gloom?

JOE. I’m a comedian it’s part of the gig.

MARY. A comedian?

JOE. Yeah, like Bob Hope, without the mansion.

MARY. You been on television?

JOE. (Worried) It’s only a matter of time.

MARY. With that face you look more like a mortician.

JOE. I am a mortician. I just found out, my act’s the corpse.

MARY. I don’t get you.

JOE. I bombed tonight.

MARY. Say what?

JOE. ‘Bombed’ is a technical description. It means dying horribly on stage, in front of a significant number of unsmiling strangers. I bomb a lot, more than a lot. They call my act the ‘Luftwaffe’.

MARY. There’s always tomorrow.

JOE. Tomorrow doesn’t worry me, next Sunday worries me. I’m playing the Sullivan Show.

MARY. The Sullivan Show, everyone watches the Sullivan Show.

JOE. On a good night, only fifty million people coast to coast.

MARY. That’s a good thing, right?

JOE. Not with my act. It’s a bad thing, a very bad thing.

MARY. How about a Danish? Things always look better on a full stomach.

JOE. Napoleon conquered Europe on a full stomach. The bastard still wasn’t funny.

MARY. Hey - language - you happen to be talking to a lady.

JOE. Sorry.

MARY. Pardon me I’m sure.

MARY starts to walk away. JOE is apologetic.

JOE. I’ve had a bad night.

MARY. Haven’t we all?

MARY exits through the door to the kitchen.

JOE. Way to go, Joe: strike two.

JOE stares around the empty café then out at the rain. Sighs to himself:

JOE. Saturday nights were never supposed to be like -

At this moment the lights dramatically go out in the diner. As do the lights outside in the street.

JOE. What the hell?

JOE stands and looks out the window. This is the beginning of the great New York blackout of 1965, when the North-East coast of America and parts of Canada suffered a huge power outage t...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Schmucks
• Act One
• Act Two