Box Clever

Monsay Whitney

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781848426948
• eBook ISBN: 9781780019291
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'Ever had the feeling you're going round in one big circle? It's like I can't stop recycling my ex-boyfriends. Ten years back and forth between a trio of arseholes and nothing to show for it except a baby, an Argos ring and a beat-up nose.'

Marnie is stuck in a women's refuge, trying to escape toxic relationship patterns, just wanting to do the best for herself and her daughter. But how do you get out of a rut when everyone you know is a liability?

Box Clever is a moving, truthful and darkly comic play, which premiered at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a production by nabokov and The Marlowe, Canterbury, in Paines Plough's pop-up theatre, Roundabout.

'Monsay Whitney is a writer of ferocious honesty, rare imagination and extraordinary humanity. She has the potential to become a startling and significant figure in British Theatre' Simon Stephens

The actor – or actors – is/are present on stage during entrance of the audience – acknowledgement, pleasantries. Then –

MARNIE sat, slumped, still, staring ahead, deep in thought, chewing gum. This goes on for some time until she removes the gum and disposes of it in paper. She replaces the old gum with new gum. Two of them. Continues chewing.

JOANNE. Miss McCabe? Marnie? They’ll be ready for you shortly.

MARNIE (to JOANNE). How long are they gonna be?

JOANNE. No more than five minutes.

MARNIE. I can’t do it.

JOANNE. Well. Er. Er? We’ve been over this –

MARNIE. I’ve had a think about it and. There must be someone who can help. Someone’s gotta be prepared to help us. This is a joke. I’m just not talking to the right people.

JOANNE. We’re helping as much as we can.

MARNIE. This ain’t help! This ain’t helping us.

JOANNE. I know it’s frustrating, when we don’t get what we want –

MARNIE. We haven’t done anything wrong!

JOANNE. Nobody’s saying you have –

MARNIE. You’re not listening to me.

JOANNE. But it will be better for you if –

MARNIE. What was I s’posed to do?

JOANNE. For both of you, if –

MARNIE. Keep my mouth shut? Bumble along like I don’t know nothing?

JOANNE. Calm down.

MARNIE. Like you have? Like everyone else has?

JOANNE. The alternative is –

MARNIE. Yes I know the fucking alternative! I’m not fucking thick!

JOANNE. Stop. Just. Stop.

MARNIE. You’ve failed her. You’ve failed that little girl. Twice.

JOANNE. So you keep saying.

MARNIE. I’m not doing it.

JOANNE. We’re going round in circles again.

MARNIE. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it.

Lights fade.

Lights come up – MARNIE’s in her bedroom. She has a dressing gown over her clothes.

(To audience.) September the 8th.

AUDIO. You have twenty. Seven. New messages. First message received on. September. Second. At two. Fifty. Seven. A.M.

LIAM. It’s Liam. Pick up the phone. Where are you?

Silence.

I know where you are anyway.

MARNIE. Goron then, where am I?

LIAM. Hammersmith, probably. Staying with Connie.

MARNIE. Ha! I think. I’m closer than you think, ya cunt.

LIAM. I’m not gonna chase you. Look, Marnie, I need a favour.

MARNIE. I call them The Three Musketeers.

LIAM. I need a bath, Marnie. I ain’t had a bath since you left.

MARNIE. Let me draw you a picture: first there was Danny. I’m eighteen. I’m a bit of a needy div. In fact, so needy, is the eighteen-year-old me, that I’m actually under a psychiatrist for it. And the psychiatrist’s got me pumped up on these antipsychotics they call Olanzapine – what make you well fat. I mean, in hindsight, Danny must be pretty fucked up himself, to go out with me in the first place. We split up. We get back together. I have a kid with him later on down the line. Which makes him fucking impossible to get rid of nowadays. Not that he’s ever been a father to her. And that’s about all Danny contributes to this story.

AUDIO. Nine. Thirty. Six. A.M.

LIAM. It’s me again. Is this it then? You’re gone?

MARNIE. Then there was Liam. I find him in a squat party on the Arden Estate. I’m twenty now. I’m still fucking baffed about life, but I’ve brushed up on the art of seduction. Here we are, sitting on a wall, waiting for his bus, the morning after the night we met. I’ve got one eye up here and one eye down there, buzzing off of six-and-a-half White Doves, and he gives me the most stunning sapphire-and-diamond, white-gold eternity ring you’ve ever seen. I mean it just blows me away. He took it back a couple months later, cos it actually was a family heirloom, belonging to his nan and that. And she clocked it was missing.

Liam’s banged up till Christmas. He’s home a couple of months and he leaves me for a bird he was in care with. Amy, her name is. He’s to-ing and fro-ing back and forth between us for a bit. Course, Amy’s gone and got herself up the duff by him. I’ve ended up in a nuthouse over it. Liam says he can’t be with someone mental. Which is, you know, nice of the cunt.

It’s at this point the winner in me comes out fighting. This shit’s gone on almost two years. Well no fucking more. I have a bright idea. I reckon I’m gonna just sniff coke till I die. I give it my best shot. Didn’t die, sadly. I ain’t that fucking lucky. Did manage to balls up almost every aspect of my life though, which is, you know, a skill in itself.

Maybe I should get some help. Or kill myself. Or go on holiday.

AUDIO. Ten. Seventeen. A.M.

LIAM. Why you ignoring my calls for? Answer the fucking phone, you slag.

MARNIE. And then, like an angel through my window, there was Stevie. I’m twenty-two. And this is it. This time. The real deal. I sit myself down and have a word with myself; Marnie, do not fuck this up. Don’t fuck it up. I’m not good at taking direction so I talk to myself twice to ram it home.

There’s this gaff in Stepney called ‘The Fridge’. They call it the fridge cos it’s fucking chilly in there. It’s basically just a hall. With chairs in. Where they hold meetings and everyone sits around eating biscuits, talking about how much they love drugs but how they can’t take them no more. We call it recovery. Anyway, I’m there because I’m like a raving fucking cokehead who keeps tryna do herself in. And Stevie’s there because he’s just got out of prison and he’s had a pipe with his uncle after eighteen months off the white and ended up on his mum’s doorstep crying out for his dad, who died of a brain tumour when he was fourteen. And he knows if he don’t change real quick he’s going straight back in the shovel. He makes me a cup of tea. And he smiles at me. I feel double lovely. And I just know this is gonna be something special.

Then he makes the old boot next to me a cup of tea. And he smiles at her. Slag.

I ask him where he’s from. He says:

STEVIE. Bermondsey.

MARNIE. It’s like this, right. When they founded London, evolution was still proper backward. They didn’t know about flood banks and the river used to flood South of the Thames. So what they did, was, they stuck all the prisons and all the mental hospitals and anyone they weren’t keen on, down there, in all that slush, with the hunchback rats, and basically just left them to it. Society, as it was at the time, meant that, like kids would leave home, marry someone local and move round the corner from their families. So naturally, over time, the prisoners and the mental patients procreated. Then their children procreated with one another. And so on and so forth. Have you ever looked into the eyes of someone from South East London? Normal people don’t just develop the mental attributes and criminal capacity that make up a South Londoner. That shit’s intrinsically bred. Stevie ain’t wrapped too tight.

LIAM. Hello?

MARNIE (to LIAM). Liam?

LIAM. Have you listened to my voicemails?

MARNIE. Yeah.

LIAM. So? Are you anywhere near Hackney?

MARNIE (to audience). I tell you one thing about this geezer. He’s got some fucking nerve.

LIAM. Are you close?

MARNIE. He says.

LIAM. Not close, close. But could you drive here? I’ve been on a mad one. I ne...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Dedication
• Characters
• Box Clever
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information