Tuesdays at Tesco's

Emmanuel Darley, Matthew Hurt, Sarah Vermande, Matthew Hurt, Sarah Vermande

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781848422254
• eBook ISBN: 9781788500050
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro britannico

A touching one-person play about a person's true identity, the first English-language adaptation of Emmanuel Darley's hit play, Le Mardi à Monoprix.

Every Tuesday, Pauline loyally spends the day with her father, tidies his home, does his ironing. Then they go to Tesco. Every Tuesday.

All eyes are on Pauline when they go shopping. Before she became Pauline, her name was Paul. And to her father she remains Paul, despite all appearances to the contrary.

Emmanuel Darley's French-language play, Le Mardi à Monoprix, was a critical and commercial hit when it premiered in Paris in 2009, and went on to be nominated for a Molière, France's national theatre awards.

This English translation, Tuesdays at Tesco's, by Matthew Hurt and Sarah Vermande, was first performed by Simon Callow at the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won an Edinburgh Fringe First Award and a Herald Archangel Award.

She moves forward.

Staring at each other.

This goes on for some time.

PAULINE

Everybody stares at me on Tuesdays. Everybody.

Stares at me out the corner of their eye as if discreet but not at all actually.

Tuesdays are the days I spend there helping him out his cleaning and his washing. His ironing.

Him plonked in his armchair giving orders lifting his feet.

He says No effort the doctor said take it easy so there.

He says It’s like that. I’m old. That’s all.

He watches. He points. He keeps an eye on everything.

He says Where did you learn to hoover?

He hardly says very much, though. He stays sat there quiet as midnight and I don’t know what he’s thinking.

I talk to myself. I ask questions that hang in the air dangling.

Tuesdays that’s that. I spend the day there doing this and that dusting and all sorts. I shake out the tablecloth I change the sheets. I empty the bin.

I give things a wipe. Give the place a good airing too.

I busy myself around him in front of him at his feet and he doesn’t move he doesn’t help me. I’m in his house as myself me as I am now and I wonder what’s he thinking.

I am like I always am I am dressed like this as I always am not going to put on an apron no I won’t play chambermaid enough as it is.

He says Here comes the Domestic Goddess again he says that but it’s no joke. It’s got teeth. Regular he says it. It’s his refrain you might say.

Him still sat in that dressing gown you wouldn’t believe how long he’s had it he stares at me.

I could say to him Don’t sit there watching me go and have a wash but I don’t I ask How was your week?

On Tuesdays yes every week without fail I am there I go there that’s how I’ve arranged it.

Hasn’t been long. Only a few months.

Since Mum passed away and by himself he is.

Unwilling to do anything. Unable to do anything. Saying She did this. Took care of that.

Has never done a bleedin’ thing I say jump you ask how high is how he was at the time all the time she was still here. So of course helpless he is.

What else to do? No one but me he’s got and my life is somewhere else in a town a way away a train to get there.

Neighbours of course but well not easy grumpy old bear so well.

Have to.

What else to do.

Couldn’t let him forget himself not eating not drinking and dirt and slovenliness setting in.

Every Tuesday I go there taking the first train and then in the evening the return journey. More I simply cannot. My own life. A day pinched from the rest so there you are.

I wake him up breakfast and the curtains to draw I have the key I come in not making too much noise sometimes he’s still in bed and I hear him say Who’s this what do you want as if he didn’t know me at all sometimes he’s already up and he watches me come in. He’s in his armchair watching me approach.

Each times he watches me as if it were the first time. He watches me the same his look saying Good God what’s that? Doesn’t say Good morning or How are you today no. Says with his eyes How is this possible?

Can’t get used to it.

Spent some time without going home to that town where alone now and forever more he is.

Home I say. Despite all this time just slipped out.

I say home when I go back to his house. I suppose I could say go back home. I lived a long time there in that town. It’s the town where I lived for a long time as a child. Some there remember me as a child I mean.

I remember the day when as I am now I came to them. Her and him. The two of them alive still not just him with his solitude.

I remember that day.

The first time one comes changed like that transformed as myself me it’s quite something to go by streets and places you used to know. Everything looking at you people walls bricks. Reading your features. No that’s not right isn’t features just the face? From head to toe rather. Studied from every angle turned over kicked around desperate to find the little something that’s wrong. Always have been myself me as I am now but well inside so now and forever more the local folk ogling my outline the folk who knew me from before. Trying to piece it together. Her and him sitting side by side at the dining-room table w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Tuesdays at Tescos
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information