Immaculate (NHB Modern Plays)

Oliver Lansley

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781780012452
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A laugh-out-loud comedy first seen at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, published alongside an extensive UK tour by Les Enfants Terribles in 2006.

You're young, free and single and haven't had sex for the last eleven and a half months, then one morning you wake up pregnant and to make matters worse the Angel Gabriel is on your doorstep claiming parentage...

'Genuinely a laugh a minute, with some real strokes of comic genius' Metro

'In a Fringe which is filled with comedies, this has to be one of the funniest' British Theatre Guide

ACT ONE

The scene is set with dramatic music. A Classical Greek CHORUS, dressed in black and wearing masks, enter. (Note: the CHORUS are played by the actors who portray MICHAEL, GABRIEL, LUCIFER and REBECCA.)

The CHORUS speak. They physicalise each action with a succinct and precise movement; it should be slick and stylised.

CHORUS.

Upon this stage a tale we bring to you
Of devils, angels, infants and a womb
The womb of whom upon our story rests
A female, young, with fire in her breast
Her life, not one of solitude but vice
Indulgence presiding over sacrifice.
Yet still her form was chosen as the host
To a child whose being mattered more than most.
Her unasked task was just to incubate
A child they say had greatness as his fate
But prepared for such a role our muse was not
And less than happy was she with her lot
And added to this growing mount of fear
The father of said child was less than clear.
A claim is staked from dark and one from light
And one from mortal, present on the night
And so begins our tale with her reception
Of the unexpected news of its conception.

The CHORUS exit and a single light comes up on a phone which sits on a column. As the light comes up, the phone begins to ring. After a moment, a voice shouts from offstage.

MIA (offstage). Fuck off.

She continues to curse at the ringing phone from offstage. A toilet flushes as lights come up on a small room. It is functional with little in it.

The phone continues to ring persistently as MIA continues to shout abuse at it from offstage.

Fuck off . . . I’m coming . . . Alright . . . OK . . . hang on for Christ’s sake!

MIA bursts onto the stage. She is clearly heavily pregnant and dressed in comfortable tracksuit-style clothes. She is holding a pregnancy test. She answers the phone. She is slightly frantic.

WHAT?

Yes . . . YES, I’ve just done it . . .

I’ve got it here . . .

I’m looking at it now . . .

Well, it doesn’t say anything yet . . .

I don’t know how long . . . five minutes?

She picks up the home-pregnancy-test instructions and reads the back.

The pack just says a few . . .

Well, I don’t know . . . three . . . ?

She disregards the instructions.

This is ridiculous . . .

I can’t be – it’s not possible . . .

No literally . . .

Biologically . . .

No . . . literally, I literally haven’t had sex since Michael . . .

I know . . .

I KNOW . . .

Well, there’s definitely something in there . . .

I can feel it moving around . . .

So how do you explain the massive fucking bulge I’m hiding under my sister’s jumper?

. . . Because my sister is fatter than me and my jumpers won’t fit . . .

. . . Yes, I’m sure it’s not just gas . . .

Looking at watch.

Three and a half . . .

OK . . .

She stares at the test.

I can see something . . .

Something’s happening . . .

It’s a line . . .

It’s a blue line . . .

What the fuck does a blue line mean?

She desperately fishes around for the instructions and reads them frantically. Suddenly she stops moving and stares forward.

. . . I’m pregnant.

Fuck.

She puts the phone down.

Beat.

(To audience.) That was my friend Rebecca on the phone, she’s three years younger than me and has never had a boyfriend for more than seven months . . .

The idea of having children abhors her, she says the mere thought of a small, bald, wrinkly human being crawling out of her delicate feminine area is enough to make her avoid sex for ever . . .

She has nightmares about it . . .

Fields of hundreds of tiny babies with the faces of her mother and father, all screaming at her and shitting their pants, while she runs around desperately to try and change their nappies, but the cycle of shitting is so constant from the many, many babies, she can never keep up and there is a constant stench and never-ending, screeching howls from the many soiled, screaming, wrinkly little monsters . . .

At this point she wakes up in tears, covered in a damp sweat and rings me . . .

Who is always fast asleep, to say . . .

She picks up the phone. REBECCA appears in the doorway upstage left, holding a phone, shrieking.

REBECCA. I had it again, those little bastards won’t leave me alone . . . I can’t bear it . . . the stench, the screams, the dead, shark eyes of my mother laughing at me as she shits all over my . . .

MIA. Calm down, you don’t have to have children . . .

You’re on the pill, you use condoms, you’re protected, have a bloody hysterectomy if you want, then you know you’re safe . . .

It is a preventative problem, they don’t just appear in your womb from nowhere, demanding to be bred.

She puts the phone down, REBECCA exits. MIA turns back to the audience.

Well, they don’t . . .

At least that was my understanding . . .

But this isn’t about Rebecca, this is about me . . .

Who is, as you can see, pregnant, heavily.

Now, I don’t have Rebecca’s inherent fear of babies, I don’t mind babies; in fact, I’d even go as far to say I actually quite like babies, and I probably did intend to have one . . .

At some point,

Or at least I assumed I would,

At some point,

When I was happily married in my own house, with a gingham apron . . .

And an Aga and . . .

A dog . . .

I don’t have any of those things . . .

But I am pregnant, heavily . . .

Which is odd to say the least.

You see, I haven’t actually had sex since I broke up with my ex, Michael.

. . . He claimed that we were both ‘changing, but we weren’t allowing each other to move on, that everything else in our lives was progressing but we were forcing each other to stay as the people we knew, which apparently weren’t the people that we were any more . . . ’

. . .

Which is bollocks, HE was changing and the new HIM wanted to be single . . . Prick.

MICHAEL suddenly bursts through the door upstage left.

MICHAEL. God, you’re so unreasonable, see this is why . . . this is what happens . . . you’re the only person that can make me like this, I’m not like this any more.

MIA. What? No, Michael, I...