Shipwreck

Anne Washburn

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786827364
• eBook ISBN: 9781786827371
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Arte e politica

From across the room I saw the President, torchlight playing across his visage.
And the violins began, and the low rumble of the timpani.
I screamed. I ran.
An old farmhouse upstate. Snow is falling. Mountains are falling. Something is breaking apart. You are formally invited to dinner with the 45th President of the United States. Anne Washburn ( The Twilight Zone, Mr Burns ) returns with a sinister and sensational new play, directed by Almeida Artistic Director Rupert Goold.

ACT IV

MARK: Did I go through a brief period, after college, where I pretended I’d been raised by black folks in a black community? Yes I did. It was exhausting.

By candlelight, no longer tapers but thicker stubbier candles. They have switched to the living room.

(As this act progresses, the candles will grow progressively dimmer.)

Entering, and an announcement.

JOOLS: The bourbon is gone.

ANDREW: Gone? Where did it go to?

JOOLS: No –

TERESA: It’s all drunk up isn’t it. You drunk all of it up.

JOOLS: No it evaporated away.

JIM: That’s not usually what happens to alcohol

RICHARD: (Slightly electrified.) That bourbon??

JOOLS: Yes the one we have.

RICHARD: That’s actually very good bourbon

JOOLS: It was.

RICHARD: It evaporated??

JOOLS: We left it uncapped. In the cupboard. I guess science did the rest. Science and time.

RICHARD: Uncapped. We left it uncapped. Why would we leave it uncapped? That doesn’t seem, that doesn’t seem realistic to me.

JOOLS: We might have had too much of it. I think it was you, actually. I remember

I remember you, on that couch, and you said, another pour?

And I remember I said no because what a lot I had had

and you drifted off in the kitchen with it and

I never saw it again

RICHARD: Well but. Damn.

ANDREW: Vodka? Gin?

JOOLS: No no we don’t have, we haven’t been here enough to to accumulate bottles of things so

JIM: (Speculatively, testing this out, knowing the answer is not welcome.) A beer, in the back of the fridge.

RICHARD: No.

TERESA: (This is mostly not a serious question.) Cooking sherry?

ALLIE: Rubbing alcohol.

ANDREW: Sobriety. So painful.

Brief pause.

So we were going to have eaten this great this delightful dinner

JOOLS: And only half cleaned up.

TERESA: Only half cleaned up because we would have drunk all this nice wine

JIM: The dishes in the sink

RICHARD: Scraped. Stacked. The chicken I would have carved the rest of the chicken away the meat in the fridge in a glass tupperware dish

JOOLS: The gratin, the rest of the greens in the fridge

RICHARD: The carcass out on the counter – no don’t throw that away, I’ll make stock

JOOLS: The pie tin – waiting to be rinsed, recycled the pink dessert plates scattered around

TERESA: Shards of purple, a melted puddle of vanilla, debris of crust

YUSUF: The body alone on the counter, ribs gleaming in the moonlight, waiting

RICHARD: And then I thought we would all tromp out and look at the moon on the icy lake.

JOOLS: In this cold?

RICHARD: We have spare parkas.

JOOLS: Two spare parkas.

RICHARD: It’s glorious to be freezing cold, in your city coat, if you’ve never looked at a moon reflecting off the ice of a lake in the middle of winter.

ANDREW: (Measuring out a respectful pause, then moving forward with the question.) How is that any different than looking at, like, a snowy meadow.

JOOLS: It’s about, it’s about

RICHARD: There are all of the reversals what you forget, living in the city, is that night is normally very dark, if the moon isn’t out, and the woods are dark and the lake is dark

ALLIE: (I kind of love how you’ve taken on the responsibility of explaining country life to us)

RICHARD: So when you have snow in the woods and the meadow and the lake is ice

JOOLS: And the moon is full

RICHARD: And everything which used to be in darkness is lit up and glowing. And the lake –

JOOLS: More like a pond really

I think it’s really a large pond

RICHARD: The lake is luminescent, and you walk on the water.

You stand on the ice and all around you the world glows.

JOOLS: Until it all cracks beneath you and you plunge under and die.

TERESA: Is the moon full tonight?

RICHARD: It’s full tonight.

TERESA: Somewhere above us. Above all this driving snow.

RICHARD: Sure.

JOOLS: We were never going to go. That was never going to happen. We would have eaten our fill of the wonderful meal. We’d have lots of lovely wine in us

ANDREW: It would, in fact, have been very nice. We wouldn’t have wanted to move. We would have been in a lovely torpor.

TERESA: And now we’re not in a lovely torpor, but there’s a snowstorm.

ALLIE: The snowstorm would be so great if we were in a lovely torpor

ANDREW: And if there was a proper breakfast waiting for us in the morning – I’m sorry I don’t say that as a reproach, I’m just stating a larger truth

JOOLS: Allie is right. We weren’t ever going to do the right thing. Let’s be realistic. People never do bestir themselves at the right moment.

Long pause.

TERESA: Is that true? I’ve seen you bestir yourself. From time to time.

JOOLS: Mitch McConnell says let the people decide and we’re not on the streets, we were never going to make it out to the lake. Not after that dinner, and that nice wine. Why didn’t you bring wine? Isn’t that what guests do for a weekend at a country home, they bring wine?

YUSUF: We were going to pick up the tab for dinner.

JOOLS: Oh. My god, really?

ANDREW: Yes we thought that might be a nice gesture.

JOOLS: That would have been a really nice gesture that place is expensive.

YUSUF: We know, we looked it up online.

ANDREW: And we didn’t have time to swing by and pick up wine. And there was nothing in our stash we felt like gifting.

YUSUF: (Simply.) And we’re rich.

ANDREW: So.

ALLIE: I knew that but how rich, just out of raw curiosity. 1% rich?

ANDREW: Yes. I looked it up. Yes.

YUSUF: But only just.

ANDREW: Not far past the cut-off and mind you we’re in the in the real lowlands of the 1% there’s a steep a very steep rise not long after us. We’re treat our friends to a nice dinner because we’re too lazy to find wine/ 1% not

YUSUF: Busy

ANDREW: Too busy to find a nice wine not chopper owning 1% not offshore investments globalistically controlling the world 1% those are the people you want to pursue with torches not

ALLIE: Not you.

ANDREW: Not us.

ALLIE: Good to know.

YUSUF: There’s a little bit of offshore. Let’s be honest about that.

ANDREW: Oh – is there? He handles ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Act I
• Act II
• Act III
• Act IV