Six Characters in Search of an Author (NHB Modern Plays)

Headlong Version

Luigi Pirandello

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780014159
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Pirandello's classic play updated for the twenty-first century.

Blurring the border between fiction and life, between the stage and the world outside, Six Characters in Search of an Author exploded onto the stage in 1921 as one of the unique achievements of twentieth-century drama.

Updated and recontextualised in this vertiginous new version, it becomes a dark parable for a media-obsessed age and an exhilarating exploration of how we define art, ourselves and 'reality' in the twenty-first century.

'exhilarating... stunning' - The Times

'madly ingenious... gives a remarkable new lease of life to Pirandello's seminal play' - Independent

'brilliantly inventive... gets to the heart of Pirandello's meaning while making the old play seem fresh to a modern audience' - Daily Telegraph

ACT ONE

A large projection screen. On it, a film of a bleak Danish landscape, which gradually becomes a suburban town. We pass a large, nondescript house, to one side a clutch of pine trees. The camera lingers for a moment, then moves on down a street, past shops and houses, until it arrives at the driveway of a large institutional building. We see a car pull up outside. ANDREW gets out with his PARENTS. A NURSE leaves the building and moves quickly to the car with a wheelchair. ANDREW is very frail as they help him into it.

PRODUCER (voice-over, mid sentence with film)….the drive from Copenhagen airport takes over three hours, but the waiting is at long last over and Andrew arrives at the clinic.

Cut to a middle-aged woman with a Danish accent talking to camera.

LULLY. The final session is always an intense moment for both the patient and all our team at Dignitas.

We see the family move through a waiting room. In the background we see another family, dressed in black, also waiting. The hospital is very clean – pine and pot plants. Occasionally we see outside through huge glass windows.

(Voice-over.) I wake on these days with a, how d’you say, a… felag…

PRODUCER (voice-over). Sharper?

LULLY (voice-over). Yes. Exactly, a sharper sense of life itself, no? Those days when we are all more in focus – the vividness of the colours in the sky here, the crisp bite of the air.

We see ANDREW sitting at the end of a corridor with his MOTHER, but at a distance and in shadow.

It is a special moment every time. We prepare the room, the bed linen, the lighting, yes, even the injection itself with great consideration and – tenderness, you understand? Even more so for a child, of course. We dream of our perfect wedding, so also we plan our perfect end. This is what we offer, even in cases as tragic as this.

We see a NURSE place a needle on a bedside table. ANDREW’s schoolbag next to the bed. A longer shot of the door to the clinic room. Now ANDREW’S FATHER looking at a graveyard. Cut to ANDREW’s empty bedroom in Macclesfield, his toys on the floor. Cut back to Denmark and a sudden flock of birds on the horizon. An Arctic hare sits upright in a field. The camera pans mournfully to the sky. Cut back to LULLY, dabbing at her eye. Tears.

I’m sorry. (Looking away.) I’m so sorry…

Image freezes. Lights rise on a large modern space, empty. Perhaps it used to be an office, perhaps we see snow falling through a window. In one corner, in darkness, a couple of temporary walls stand, a small film set. To the other side, a temporary editing desk has been set up, with monitors, cables, a control panel and, slightly incongruously, a fishtank. Gathered in front of the screen are the PRODUCER, her EDITOR, an ACTOR and an ACTRESS. The EXEC sits to one side. All wear fleeces and Puffa jackets. Around them are the remains of takeaway food – pastries, sushi and coffees.

Pause.

PRODUCER. So…

EXEC. Oh… I wonder if…

PRODUCER. Actually, wait. Stu, just lay the track on so Bob can get a better sense of…

EDITOR. Sure. Any bit in partic…?

PRODUCER. No, just the theme.

The entire film plays again on the monitors, this time softly scored with a spare, plaintive piece of music. If one looks closely the second family in black are absent from the film this time.

ACTOR (about the score). That’s lovely.

ACTRESS. Isn’t that the Renault Espace theme?

EDITOR. I don’t think so.

The segment finishes again.

EXEC. Okay. So, what’s your concern?

PRODUCER. Well, look.

The EDITOR gets up another piece of footage on a separate screen. It is the unedited LULLY interview.

LULLY. It is a special moment every time. We prepare the room, the bed linen, the lighting, yes, even the injection itself with great consideration and – tenderness, you understand? Even more so for a child, of course. We dream of our perfect wedding so also we plan our perfect end. This is what we offer, even in cases as tragic as this. (She stops mid-sentence, blinks and then giggles. She dabs at her eye.) I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I… (She laughs again and fiddles at her eye.) My lens… my contact lens has come loose. There. Better now. Sorry, what was I saying?

The EDITOR stops the tape. Pause.

EXEC. I see.

PRODUCER. I mean, it’s nothing new, is it? But in the current climate… after Fincham and everything, this whole ‘trust’ business…

EXEC. Hmm.

PRODUCER. And I’m sure she did have misgivings as well. That the deaths genuinely affected her.

EXEC. Hmm.

PRODUCER. You see, without it we lack a personal response. The whole thing starts to become a bit arid – intellectual positions, pro-life versus pro-choice, etc., etc….

EXEC. Hmm, hmm.

PRODUCER. …rather than a people piece.

Pause.

EDITOR. Shall I show Bob the, the…

PRODUCER. The, the, the reconstruction, yeah… with the guys.

The EDITOR brings up another section of tape. Again, LULLY speaks to camera.

LULLY. Of course, our first patient was, well, things were different then, we were just starting and I only had myself and Hans to prepare the barbiturates, but the essence was the same. Zer gemütlich, yes. The attention to detail in the moment. So.

We see a reconstruction of this first preparation, with the ACTOR and the ACTRESS playing LULLY and HANS.

ACTOR (whispering supportively to the PRODUCER). Looks great, J.

ACTRESS (moved). You were right about the wig, you know. It would have been too…

On the monitor we cut back to LULLY, the camera showing an elderly HANS next to her.

LULLY (after a smiled beat). Quite a journey, my friend. Quite a journey together.

HANS nods gently.

HANS. It is as the poet Shakespeare says… ‘To be or not to be…’ (He chuckles.) This is the question, no?

Tape stops.

PRODUCER. I mean, that Hamlet thing is probably a red herring, but… you can sense a weight with them…

EXEC. Hmm, hmm.

PRODUCER. And we spoke to her… the doctor… after Andrew’s funeral and she was totally choked up…

ACTRESS. Oh God, that was so sad, wasn’t it?

EXEC. Do you have that on tape?

PRODUCER. No. They wouldn’t let us film in the church.

EXEC. Hmm.

EDITOR (helpfully). We could use a cut of some snow melting?

Beat.

PRODUCER. Alternatively, we add some overdubbed text. That’s why Fiona’s here. Her accent is rock solid.

EXEC. Hmm.

PRODUCER. Fi, can you…

ACTRESS. Sure. The second paragraph?

The ACTRESS speaks in LULLY’s accent while more footage of the family and the Dignitas clinic plays. She is careful to time key words to time-coded bits of the film, the EDITOR semi-conducts her.

Finding an end is one of life’s deep conundrums. We all seek the elegant closure of a great novel or a magisterial symphony – the dying fall – but life is often more random, spiteful even. The lingering cancer, the twilight of dementia, the slow wasting of the faculties – there is no resolution here, merely painful white noise. This is not a clean page break to life’s treasured narrative, but rather a meandering series of commas and hesitating, unfinished sentences. The pen misplaced, the…

PRODUCER. I mean, that’s not how it would be, of course.

EXEC. She said all this?

PRODUCER. Well, it’s from an article actually, but it’s still her words. Or at least in translation – we know how alienating subtitles can be for British audiences.

EXEC. Hmm. Hmm.

PRODUCER. I mean, we’d make it more conversational. Or not? Maybe it works like that.

EXEC. I don’t know how comfortable I feel about this, though. After all the recent fuss…

PRODUCER. No, I realise…

EXEC. I mean, we can’t just cover our cuts like that any more.

EDITOR. It’s not covering, just selecting. I mean, it’s basic Eisenstein.

EXEC. Sure, I know that, but it could get us in shit with Ofcom.

Beat.

ACTOR. Eisenstein?

EXEC (thinking while spooling through the script). Hmm. Hmm.

EDITOR (quietly to the ACTOR). You show an old lady in a rocking chair, you cut to a man walking through the woods, then cut to a kettle boiling. Tension. We make up a story even if nothing links them at all.

EXEC (absently). The old ‘active audience’.

ACTOR. Right.

EDITOR. This is it without the cutaway.

He runs the film which jumps abruptly to LULLY’s tears.

ACTRESS. That’s just wrong.

EDITOR. It’s what Watson would do; show the cut.

EXEC. You don’t have any more footage of the boy himself, do you?

The EDITOR keeps spooling back.

PRODUCER. No. We don’t. The mother became very emotional and started to attack the father, saying it was his idea and stuff, and then he really just shut down and… but we still feel we’ve got something really…

EDITOR. …Really…

An anxious pause.

EXEC. It just… Look, here’s the thing: (Suddenly passionate.) the thing is, I suppose, that at the moment we just don’t seem to have anything, well, edgy enough. I mean, there’s a great idea here, but without the family stu...