Jonathan Gems: Three Plays

Jonathan Gems

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781870259101
• eBook ISBN: 9781783198450
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Susan's Breasts "Gems's piece is a bitter dissection of the heroin generation, where bright young things attempt to maintain their rigid codes of personal freedom and loveless sex … Sparky, sexy, sterile Susan is the object of Gems's despair, and the object of desire for her predatory he-admirers – a loutish intellectual, a wise-cracking, good-time restaurateur, and a film-maker with acute semiotics-disease. It is only the old-fashioned romantic love professed by Lemon, a Romeo-cum-seer, which makes the eponymous breasts swell with maternity. Sharply observed and often carrying a charge of rich comic irony." – Time Out Naked Robots "An extremely well-written evocation of life in the style-conscious world of popular music." – The Sunday Times The Paranormalist "The climax of The Paranormalist has Denholm Elliott in spotlit levitation above a bickering family in a suburban living room. Dishevelled in baggy cardy and slippers, Elliott gives an affectionate and authoritative portrayal as an English eccentric. It's a brilliant performance in an exhilarating new play which interweaves drawing-room farce with a witty use of the paranormal." – Time Out

NAKED ROBOTS

INTRODUCTION

In 1979 I wrote a play called The Tax Exile about a middle-aged man who suffers from decency, honesty and integrity and is destroyed by his family and the government who don’t.

I asked the director, Nancy Meckler, what to write next and she said: “Write a play about the tax-exile’s kids”. She knew that the tax-exile was my father and the kids were me and my friends. So I wrote about me and my friends and this became Naked Robots.

When I started showing the script around, everyone rejected it on the grounds that the characters were disgusting and the situations unbelievable. I was baffled. This was my life!

But I was lucky. Trevor Nunn, boss of the Royal Shakespeare Company at that time, read it and declared it was as important a new play as Look Back in Anger had been in the fifties. Suddenly everyone wanted to produce it.

I began to rehearse replies to interviewers’ questions and to worry about the corruption which fame bestows. But unfortunately Naked Robots did not rocket me to stardom, and I lived to write another day.

Since then the play has been produced in America, Germany and Norway and plans are currently being made to turn it into a feature film.

J.G.

Naked Robots was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre and first performed on 14 January 1981 with the following cast:

DESNA, Trudie Styler

NUDY, Raad Rawi

GEMMA, Catherine Hall

RAY, Philip Davis

POPPY, Lynda La Plante

Director, John Caird

Designer, Ultz

Fashion Consultant, Jean Colette Seel

Make-up and Styling, Jordan, George O’Dowd and Simon Turner

Lighting, Michael Calf

Music, Nick Bicât

Song Writing, Jonathan Gems

Sound, John A. Leonard

Stage Manager, Michael Townsend

Deputy Stage Manager, Nick Fiveash

Assistant Stage Manager, Simon Hooper

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

The set is of a warehouse room converted for domestic living. It is obvious that the occupants have little money but lots of style and imagination. Against one wall is a bed made of ten double mattresses piled on top of one another. Among the items in the room are a tailor’s dummy, a clothes rail bulging with exotic high-fashion garments and a large “ghetto blaster” cassette player. There are three doors: to the hall, to the kitchen and to the workroom. When the lights come up, DESNA, a beautiful middle-class Englishwoman of 24, is facing the audience. She is rehearsing for an audition.

DESNA: This is a song I wrote about a month ago. We recorded it on a couple of Revoxes so the quality isn’t all that stunning. I left off the vocal track cause I thought you’d like to see how I perform.

She presses the “play” button on the cassette player. It blasts out a dance tune.

DESNA: (She sings.) The first kiss was fantastic.

His skin was plastic.

His hair was nylon.

His legs were elastic.

Then I met a real boy – real boy –

There’s nothing like a real boy – real boy –

When I met my real boy – real boy –

I didn’t want steel boys anymore.

He was the best I’d ever seen.

His skin was white, his lips were green.

All I needed was a diagram.

And I built myself a perfect man.

Enter NUDY from hall. He is carrying a large pile of fabrics. He is an extremely attractive Israeli of 28. DESNA stops the tape.

NUDY: Hi.

DESNA: Hi.

They kiss. It is awkward because the fabric is in the way. NUDY crosses to the workroom.

DESNA: Hey, guess what? Joe Norton came into the restaurant.

NUDY: (Impressed.) Joe Norton?

NUDY exits into workroom and deposits fabrics

NUDY: Did you play your tape?

DESNA: Yes. He liked ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Susan’s Breasts
• Naked Robots
• The Paranormalist