Yen (NHB Modern Plays)

Anna Jordan

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781780015644
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Anna Jordan's Bruntwood Prize-winning play, Yen explores a childhood lived without boundaries and the consequences of being forced to grow up on your own.

Hench is sixteen, Bobbie is thirteen. They're home alone in Feltham with their dog Taliban; playing PlayStation, streaming porn, watching the world go by. Sometimes their mum Maggie visits, usually with empty pockets and empty promises. Then Jenny shows up.

Yen won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, and was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2015.

This new edition published alongside the Royal Court Theatre production in January 2016.

'[a] brutal but tender study of brotherhood... the dynamic range of Jordan's writing is extraordinary... achieves the uncommon feat of being difficult to watch yet easy to love' - Guardian

'very impressive... [Jordan] has a great ear for dialogue' - British Theatre Guide

'bring[s] to mind Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur... [asks] lots of necessary and potent questions' - Exeunt Magazine

Scene One

Present day. An estate in Feltham. 10 p.m. A living room which has been made into a bedroom. HENCH sits on the end of an open sofa bed in the middle of the room and BOBBIE lies face down on it. Next to the sofa bed an old armchair. Everything is tatty and worn, apart from a collection of shiny equipment: a flat-screen TV, PlayStation, laptop and some speakers. Both boys are bare-chested and barefoot. BOBBIE wears some dirty tracksuit bottoms. He is a little pudgy, rosy cheeks, bright eyes, at the first flush of adolescence but quite physically strong and bullish. He has a rash at the top of his back. HENCH is anything but hench; painfully skinny, very pale, perhaps the suggestion of some acne. He wears scruffy jeans. They are watching hardcore pornography linked from the laptop to the TV by HDMI. The room is dull and dark, but the TV flickers and lights up their faces. We hear grunting, moaning, a few words, a couple of yelps; indecipherable between pleasure and pain. The boys’ faces are transfixed but blank. After some moments BOBBIE leans down by the side of the bed, not taking his eyes off the screen, and comes back with a pint of milk in a glass bottle. He downs quite a lot of it and does a little burp after. He puts the milk down and runs over to a window. He looks out.

BOBBIE. She’s still there.

HENCH. Is it?

BOBBIE. Yeah.

HENCH glances briefly towards the window, and then back to the TV.

What a skank.

Hench?

Beat. Nothing from HENCH. BOBBIE leans out of the window.

Piss off, you skank! –

HENCH. Shhhh, man! You’ll wake the dog.

Beat.

BOBBIE. What does she want?

HENCH. I dunno, do I?

BOBBIE. Maybe she wants to fuck you.

HENCH. Fuck off.

BOBBIE (looking out). She’s got reeeeaaaaalllly small tits, man. I need a sniper scope just to see ’em.

Beat.

Hench?

No response from HENCH. BOBBIE runs towards the bed and jumps on it three times, annoying HENCH. Then he flops down next to him and looks at the screen.

Not like those, bruv. (Pointing.) One of those is bigger than your head.

HENCH. They’re fake innit.

BOBBIE. Is it?

HENCH. Yeah!

Beat. BOBBIE ponders this.

BOBBIE. I would want a girlfriend with fake tits.

BOBBIE rests his chin on HENCH’s shoulder.

HENCH. Get off, man.

BOBBIE (still watching). Can a man’s arsehole go like that?

HENCH. Like what?

BOBBIE. All big, like that?

He makes a circle with his hands.

HENCH. S’pose.

BOBBIE. Oh my DAYS!

HENCH (irritated). A man’s arsehole can basically do whatever a woman’s arsehole can do innit?

BOBBIE. Is it?

HENCH. Yeah! How do you think gays do it?

BOBBIE. Gays are dirty.

HENCH. Yep.

BOBBIE. I fucking hate gays.

Beat. BOBBIE thinks.

Do you think my arsehole would do that?

HENCH. DON’T even think about it!

Beat. BOBBIE runs round in front of HENCH.

BOBBIE. Can you scratch my back?

HENCH. No. MOVE.

BOBBIE. But I got an itch! And it’s a bitch! (Thinks for a sec.) Oi. Hench. (Like Jay Z.) ‘I got 99 problems but an itch ain’t one!’

HENCH picks up a large bottle of Lucozade from the side of the bed and has a swig.

Don’t drink the Lucozade!

HENCH. She’s not coming!

BOBBIE. In case she does though and she needs it.

HENCH (like he’s stupid). Bob, she’s all loved up with Minge-Face Alan. Rolling his fags. Washing his socks. And you know what they smell like.

BOBBIE. Like sick.

HENCH. Right. So she ain’t coming, is she?

Beat. BOBBIE looks sad.

She never washed our fucking socks.

BOBBIE. We haven’t got any socks.

HENCH. We used to.

Beat.

BOBBIE. She might want a break from it all.

HENCH. What and you reckon she’d come here? It’s hardly a Premier fucking Inn is it?

BOBBIE. What if she comes round and goes low and has a hypo and DIES cos we’ve got nothing to give her! That would be you then, that would, you would have killed our mother.

Beat. HENCH sighs and puts the Lucozade down.

Ah fanks, bro. Here.

BOBBIE fetches the bottle of half-drunk milk from the side of the bed.

Have some milk.

HENCH. I don’t want your fucking milk, do I? What d’you nick milk for?

BOBBIE. It was off a doorstep.

Beat.

Might make you stronger.

HENCH. Fuck off.

Beat. BOBBIE thinks. To make amends he runs up to the window. He pulls his trousers down and presses his bare bottom against the glass.

BOBBIE. HENCH!

No response from HENCH.

Hench. Bruv. LOOK!

HENCH glances. BOBBIE turns back and looks out of the window.

Oh.

He wanders back to the sofa bed but doesn’t sit.

She’s gone. She was waiting for you.

HENCH. You should show her your shrivelled little cock. Then she’d go and never come back.

BOBBIE slaps HENCH around the back of t...