Twilight Song

Kevin Elyot

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781848426818
• eBook ISBN: 9781780019192
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

A moving, bittersweet play from the writer of the classic comedy My Night with Reg.

Set over a series of summer evenings in the 1960s and the present day, Twilight Song traces one family's hidden liaisons over half a century.

A mysterious stranger turns up in their past and present – could he be the missing piece of the jigsaw they've been yearning for? Hilarious and heartbreaking, Kevin Elyot's evocative final play proves how powerful our past can be in the present.

Twilight Song premiered at Park Theatre, London, in 2017.

Scene One

A grey drizzly afternoon in May, unseasonably dark. A barely discernible veil of mist shrouds the untidy room which seems to have seeped in from outside. A Bose radio/CD player stands on a table next to the 1920s mahogany gramophone cabinet. SKINNER (late forties), smartly suited, at the French window, looking out at the rain; BARRY (mid-fifties), watching him.

SKINNER. Live alone, do you?

BARRY. No. With my mother.

SKINNER. Where’s she then?

BARRY. Dunstable.

SKINNER. Just the day for Dunstable.

He looks around.

Been here long, have you?

BARRY. Getting on for fifty years or more.

SKINNER. Fifty years, eh?

BARRY. All my life, actually.

SKINNER. Suffered any slippage?

BARRY. Well, I’ve had a few problems but –

SKINNER. Subsidence?

BARRY. Oh, I see. Yes, this whole area – you can’t move for cracks.

SKINNER. Very nice though. You couldn’t be better located.

BARRY. You think so?

SKINNER. Almost recession-proof.

BARRY. Well –

SKINNER. Believe me.

BARRY. Right.

A gurgling of water pipes from upstairs.

SKINNER. It used to be part of the Great Forest of Middlesex, you know.

BARRY. Had it?

SKINNER. Oh yes, I’ve done my homework. A case of having to now we’re getting a bit more international. Americans love a little snippet like that: the Great Forest of Middlesex.

BARRY. I never knew there was one.

SKINNER. Of course it hasn’t existed for years. Chopped down by Henry the Third.

BARRY. Henry the Third?

SKINNER. In the thirteenth century.

BARRY. Why would he go and do a thing like that?

SKINNER. Robbers, so they say.

BARRY. Really?

SKINNER. The place was swarming with them.

BARRY. Good heavens.

SKINNER. Ah well, plus ça change.

BARRY. Yes, quite.

SKINNER. That’s the trouble with royalty: think they own the bloody place.

A sudden grating, cranking sound.

BARRY. That’ll be the fridge. We’ve been meaning to get a new one but…

SKINNER. Your compressor needs replacing.

The sound continues.

BARRY. It’ll stop soon.

They wait. It stops.

That’s better.

SKINNER. Not that I’ve got anything against the present incumbent, God bless her. She’s a diamond: solid, reliable, just like my Audi. I just wish she’d chill out a bit, know what I mean? Always looks like she’s got a knob of ginger stuck up her arse.

BARRY. Can I get you anything?

SKINNER. Not while I’m on the job.

BARRY. No, of course.

SKINNER. What’s she doing in Dunstable then?

BARRY. My mother?

SKINNER. Yes.

BARRY. She has an appointment.

SKINNER. An appointment in Dunstable, eh?

BARRY. She has one every Thursday.

SKINNER. Hospital, is it?

BARRY. Not exactly. In fact, she’s doing pretty well, considering. I think I’ll conk out before her what with this and that, and my heart’s not too clever – that’s what did for my dad. Have you got a mother, Mr Skinner?

SKINNER. Skinner, please.

BARRY.…Right.

SKINNER. No, I haven’t. She died when I was a baby.

BARRY. Oh dear.

SKINNER. Didn’t know anything about it, did I? Then my dad upped sticks and we went down under. He’d got a bit of money, see – I’m not sure how – and went through it like a tit in a trance. Ended up in Wagga Wagga.

BARRY. I’ve not heard of that.

SKINNER. About as exciting as Swindon on a wet Sunday.

BARRY. I thought you had a little twang.

SKINNER. Eh?

BARRY. Your accent, just a hint of… whatever.

SKINNER. Yeah. Clings like crabs.

BARRY. Were you there for long?

SKINNER. I was back here like a shot once they let me out of youth offenders’. Dad had drunk himself to death, see, and I went a bit off the rails.

BARRY. What had you done?

SKINNER. This and that, but I’m well-reformed now. I learnt all sorts in there: plastering, life skills, and a few positions even the Christian Brothers never got round to.

BARRY. You were taught by the Christian Brothers?

SKINNER. I’d swing for those cunts, pardon my French. Let your hair down, do you, Mr Gough?

BARRY. I’m sorry?

SKINNER. On a Thursday, when your mum’s in Dunstable?

BARRY. Not exactly. I’m not the hair-letting-down type – although I used to… let it down. In fact, I let it down quite a bit… and even now, if I think about it, once in a while… I’ll let the odd lock… drop.

SKINNER. You’ve got to live for the here-and-now, haven’t you? No use putting it off.

BARRY. That’s what Mother says. ‘You’re letting it slip away, Barry. One simply has to get on, get a grip.’ She says it quite a lot, actually.

SKINNER. Sensible woman, your mother. Yeah, I can imagine you’re a bit of a goer on the quiet.

BARRY. Well, I wouldn’t quite say that…

SKINNER. Always the quiet ones.

BARRY. And I wouldn’t say I’m that quiet.

SKINNER. So what do you do, if you don’t mind my asking? Or are you one of the idle rich?

BARRY. No I’m not. I was given early retirement.

SKINNER. Happens a lot now, doesn’t it?

BARRY. Yes. I worked in a pharmacy, the same one nearly all my life. The years I gave to that place… Mother wanted me to be a doctor but I never quite cut the mustard. I thought I’d made a fair enough compromise but she of course didn’t, and all the time what I secretly wanted was to be a dancer.

SKINNER. Oh yeah?

BARRY. Then it transpired I had Policeman’s Foot.

SKINNER. Nasty.

BARRY. It is. Intermittent, but very painful.

SKINNER. I once had a mate who wanted to be a bouncer.

BARRY. Really?

SKINNER. Yes, but he had Doorman’s Knob.

BARRY. It’s hard, isn’t it? Thwarted ambition.

The water pipes gurgle again.

I sometimes think about getting a little job but it’s not that easy, and the older you get, well… That’s why I’m curious about the value in case we have to downsize.

SKINNER. So what do you do with yourself all day?

BARRY. Oh, I keep myself busy. Go out… stay in. I do see the odd exhibition or… friend, although… it’s strange now wandering around London. It’s full of memories: a restaurant, a park, a corner. That’s where I did such-and-such with so-an’-so all those years ago, and of course they’re not there any more. All dead...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Characters
• Twilight Song
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information