Banana Boys

Evan Placey

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780017891
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Evan Placey's Banana Boys is a play about the challenges of being on the school football team – and secretly gay.

It was commissioned and produced by Hampstead Theatre's heat&light company in 2010.

Scene One

Hampstead Heath, overlooking water. CAMERON and CALUM hold hands.

CALUM. On three.

CAMERON. Do we jump on three or after three?

CALUM. I don’t know.

CAMERON. Well you have to decide.

CALUM. Oh just jump whenever. One, two –

CALUM turns to the ‘audience’, speaks to them as if he’s pitching a film. Throughout the rest of the scene, the boys go back and forth between pitching to the audience, and speaking to each other.

That’s how it opens.

CAMERON. That’s how it would start.

CALUM. The movie of our lives. Who’s gonna play us?

CAMERON. Casting later.

On the edge of a cliff, water crashing below.

CALUM. It’s not a cliff

CAMERON. It’s like a cliff

CALUM. It’s Hampstead Heath

CAMERON. But they’re eight and it seems like a cliff.

CALUM. Danger.

CAMERON. Risk.

Calum and Cameron.

CALUM. Cam and Cal.

CAMERON. Zoom in on the edge of a cliff

CALUM. A Heath.

CAMERON. A summer that’s so hot you feel like a runaway

CALUM. A pioneer

CAMERON. The summer Cameron learns to ride his bike.

CALUM. Though you’re not very good.

The summer Calum learns to spit over a metre in front of himself.

CAMERON. The summer they discover this spot here, the cliff, their secret spot on the Heath.

CALUM. They can be anything.

CAMERON. They can talk about anything.

CALUM. Why the latest Batman movie was crap.

CAMERON. Whether Playstation 2 or Xbox is better.

CALUM. Why Pepsi is far superior to Coca-Cola, despite widespread public opinion to the contrary.

CAMERON. Cal and Cam

CALUM. Cam and Cal.

CAMERON. Think Stand by Me but without the crazy murderous dog that they spend all summer avoiding.

CALUM. Cameron, that’s The Sandlot.

CAMERON. No.

CALUM. Stand by Me they go looking for the body of a missing boy in the woods. Sandlot’s the dog.

CAMERON. Right. Yeah.

CALUM. I’m right.

CAMERON. You’re right. Okay.

CALUM. Point to me.

CAMERON. Our film. It’s a summer so hot car alarms start going off for no reason.

CALUM. Teenagers restlessly wander the streets smashing beer bottles.

CAMERON. It stinks. North London stinks of car fumes, and dead grass, and cigarettes.

CALUM. It stinks of summer.

CAMERON. And we love it.

CALUM. They love it.

CAMERON. They discover home-made ice lollies

CALUM. They discover porn.

CAMERON. Thinking they’ve put in Spy Kids.

CALUM. What is in fact Spy Jizz.

CAMERON. And they laugh.

CALUM. Because the woman is moaning.

CAMERON. And the guy with the moustache kind of looks like Cal’s dad.

CALUM. And what does the word ‘jizz’ mean?

CAMERON. And it’s that summer they discover:

CALUM. They discover:

BOTH. The Banana Girls.

THE BANANA GIRLS appear, posed for a show, their backs to us.

CAMERON. Sandra, Georgia, and Mandy.

CALUM. They were fit.

CAMERON. A film. Three girls, three black girls, different classes, different everything, run off together from… Alabama? Atlanta?

CALUM. Really fit.

CAMERON. They run off together, away from their lives, from the prejudices of their towns, from the men they’re engaged to be married to who none of them like, who put them down because they’re girls, and they form a singing group, the three of them – travel from city to city, road-trip across the USA singing covers of famous girl-group songs: The Shirelles.

CALUM. The Chiffons.

CAMERON. The Supremes.

CALUM. The Exciters.

CAMERON. Well they lip-synced. But Cam and Cal don’t care.

THE BANANA GIRLS sing a line or two from ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ by The Chiffons. But they perform with their backs to us, as though the audience were on the other side.

CALUM. We were kind of obsessed with it, weren’t we?

CAMERON. Cal and Cam are obsessed with it. The film.

CALUM. And the girls have three things that bond them together:

As THE BANANA GIRLS say and act out the following (again with their backs to us) – a clip from the film – the boys mouth the words to the dialogue and act out the scene exactly the same as the girls, move for move.

GEORGIA. Honesty with ourselves.

MANDY. Honesty with each other.

SANDRA. And above all…

ALL THREE. LOVE!

CAMERON. Those are the rules.

CALUM. And we’re in love with them.

CAMERON. Cal and Cam are in love with them.

CALUM. We wanted to have sex with all three of them at once.

CAMERON. Calum, we were eight.

CALUM. Cam –

CAMERON. And Cal.

CALUM. No I just meant Cam. Like I’m talking to you.

CAMERON. Oh. What?

CALUM. Well it’s made me think… Just when do you think is the perfect time to… you know… do it?

CAMERON. Do what?

CALUM. Pippa and I. Like, was just thinking when should I… you know. The location’s gotta be perfect so she feels – and I keep getting mixed signals from her ’bout it. Is she saying she wants to?

CAMERON. How should I know? What does this have to do with –

CALUM...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Original Production
• Characters
• Author's Note
• Banana Boys
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information