The Seven Pomegranate Seeds

Colin Teevan

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350301184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Playwriting

Seven contemporary stories grounded in prominent, mythical origins. Persephone, Hypsipyle, Medea, Alcestis, Phaedra, Creusa and Demeter: the women of Euripides' plays are reimagined as people of today in an unexpected fusion of celebrity, inappropriate desires, historical police investigations and missing children. A severed maternal bond threads each story together, charting a journey through rage and redemption, towards a compelling conclusion. This revised edition of Colin Teevan's haunting monologue cycle was published to coincide with a new production at Rose Theatre, Kingston, in November 2021.

1

Persephone in Yorkshire

I.

Summer,

And the Girl –

Not me, you must understand, another girl,

Another time, another world,

Where it was always summer –

And the Girl had no need of sanctuary:

A place of safety, bounded by stones,

Set apart from the world of men.

The world was haven to her.

Barefoot across the moors,

Through the tall grass, and corn, and wild flowers

She ran free.

The birds were her friends,

She gave them names:

‘Sea Spray, Sweet River, Hidden One.’

And lineages:

‘You are the daughters of the dark ocean

That flows between this world and the next.’

And like a bird the Girl darts this way and that –

I see her now –

As if following the threads of glinting webs

Woven between the heads of golden corn

That lead to the spider’s secret store.

The Girl follows the threads around her head,

Her own secret store of stories.

And if a story takes a turning for the worse,

Or a character she herself has conjured up, shocks her

With a sudden, incomprehensible capacity for cruelty,

Or worse, she shocks herself

With the feelings that she harbours in her skinny breast,

She shouts:

‘Pax!’

And like a starling changes tack

Seeking out another story thread,

That wipes all memory of previous thoughts dead.

Her mother said:

‘Your imagination will be the death of you,

You must watch out,

There are more things in this world than birds to worry about.’

‘But I danced this world into being,

And now this world dances just for me.’

She gave her mother a quick peck upon the cheek,

‘Why should I fear for anything? I have you

And the bread you put upon my plate.’

And with that the Girl was up and off,

Across the garden, out the gate,

And up to the moors once more.

‘Your shoes, child, you forgot your shoes!

And don’t forget what I have said to you!

Please don’t lose . . .

Your way.’

II.

The afternoon burned red and gold,

The ochre earth was cooked and cracked with heat,

Even the corn was weary

With the day-long effort of straining towards the sun.

Upon a mound the Girl sat down

And rubbed her blistered feet.

Her friends, the birds, still flashed around her:

‘Sea Spray, Sweet River, Hidden One.’

Tireder now,

She watched them as they chased

Flies from flower to flower

For one last feed before they slept.

That’s when the thought occurred to her

She’d pick some flowers for her mother:

‘Dog-rose, thyme, lavender . . .’

She made a basket of her dress:

‘Poppy and –

How strange to see this time of year?’

She had to shade her eyes from the lowering sun –

But it was, yes!

Narcissi –

A hundred heads sprouting from a single root.

Their sweet smell hung in the evening air and

For what seemed like a whole setting of the sun, she stared at them.

Then, slowly, the Girl –

This other girl,

Not me, you must remember –

Slowly, trembling, she stooped

And reached to pick . . .

Later she would blame herself;

If she hadn’t looked at it so long,

If she hadn’t stood there making a basket of her dress,

Revealing all,

If she hadn’t wanted more than anything

These strange, unseasonal flowers . . .

But as her hand touched a stem,

The stems and heads seemed to become

So many fingers of some giant hand

Coming from beneath the ground,

Closing in a massive fist around her fingers.

It gripped her small hand tight,

And, though she pulled with all her might,

And shouted:

‘Leave me!

Leave me alone whoever you are!’

The earth beneath her feet seemed to drain away,

And cracked then cleaved then yawned open wide.

And though she shouted:

‘Pax! Pax! Pax!’

The story still took a turning for the worse.

With a rush of air

That sounded like a hundred ghostly horses breaking loose,

She fell down,

Down,

Down into the heart of a burial mound,

And the long dead ancient world below.

III.

Night time, it’s late,

And the Mother stands by the garden gate.

She thinks she hears a distant cry

Of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• A Rose Original Production
• A Note From the Director, Melly Still
• A Message from Rose Theatre Artistic Director,
• Niamh Cusack
• Shannon Hayes
• Colin Teevan – Writer
• For the Rose
• Contents
• The Seven Pomegranate Seeds
• 1 Persephone in Yorkshire
• 2 Hypsipyle in Washington
• 3 Medea in the Midlands
• 4 Alcestis in Covent Garden
• 5 Phedra of the Fells
• 6 Creusa in Shoreditch
• 7 Demeter
• eCopyright