The Mighty Walzer

Howard Jacobson, Simon Bent

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783198344
• eBook ISBN: 9781783198351
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Oliver Walzer is shy, bookish, Jewish. He doesn't know how to talk to girls. But he can slice, flick and spin a ping pong ball better than any teenager in Manchester. Oliver channels his frustrated adolescent lust into the game he loves. That is until the heartbreaking Lorna Peachley and the prospect of a place at Cambridge take his eye off the ball.

ACT TWO

Enter OLIVER.

Walks to centre stage.

Silence.

OLIVER: Sabine Weinberger.

Enter SADIE and JOEL from opposite sides.

SADIE: No –

OLIVER: Sabine Weinberger.

JOEL: No –

OLIVER: Sabine Weinberger.

SADIE: No, don’t – don’t even think it.

OLIVER: You don’t know what I’m thinking.

SADIE: I’m your mother, I gave birth to you didn’t I? We’re umbiliacally connected, I know what you’re thinking before you think it. You’re too young for thoughts like that. No good will come of it, you mark my words – she’s got a reputation.

OLIVER: For what?

SADIE: Never you mind.

OLIVER: I’m not a child.

SADIE: Who says?

JOEL: And her bust is too prominent for a girl that age.

SADIE: How do you know?

JOEL: You told me. Listen to your mother Oliver, she’s right.

OLIVER: Like you you mean?

JOEL: Do as I say not as I do.

Exit JOEL and SADIE.

OLIVER: (Softly.) Sabine Weinberger. I wanted her to do unspeakable things to me – what they were I knew not yet – I wanted her and the more they said I couldn’t the more I wanted it – thank God for table tennis –

Enter SHEENY.

SHEENY: Me to serve.

OLIVER: We didn’t stop.

(They play.)

I became the North West’s champion ping pong player, fuelled by unfulfilled lust – I needed distractions –

SHEENY: We’re in another league now –

OLIVER: I could sexualise anything, even a door knob.

SHEENY: The burning issue uppermost in every ping pong player’s mind at the moment is whether to sponge or not to sponge –

OLIVER: Not in my mind it’s not.

SHEENY: Try not to think about it.

OLIVER: I can’t.

SHEENY: It’s not the Akiva club anymore – this lot we’re signed up to are the Stern Gang of ping pong, when they’re not practising they’re out strangling enemies of the Israeli State with their bare hands. We have to go into town and get new bats.

OLIVER drops to knees and writhes in agony.

OLIVER: I was blighted – it could strike at any time, without warning – I couldn’t pass a woman in the street, any woman, without being consumed by an overwhelming urge to jump on them. And they all became Sabine Weinberger. Talk some more ping-pong.

Honk of horn.

SHEENY: All very well talking about going to town and getting new bats –

OLIVER: Oooh!

SHEENY: But when do you get time if you’re a gaff worker and a gaff worker’s son? What you need is to go out, get yourself a bit of goyishe k’nish.

Enter JOEL.

JOEL: You’re driving.

SHEENY: When do I get a day off?

JOEL: When pigs can fly. Start the van.

JOEL throws bunch of keys to SHEENY.

Exit SHEENY.

OLIVER: Sabine Weinberger.

JOEL: keep your hands off her.

OLIVER: I haven’t been anywhere near her.

Enter SADIE.

SADIE: Her mother thinks they’re better than us, they come from a long line of rabbis.

OLIVER: The Weinbergers aren’t religious – she works Saturday’s in Alec Watson and Mitchell’s sports shop in town.

SADIE: How the mighty are fallen. Nobody respectable works on a Saturday unless you call being a rabbi a Saturday job.

JOEL: He’s got his eye on her.

OLIVER: She’s not my type.

SADIE: Not your type, not you’re type, you’re too young to have a type.

JOEL: You don’t, you never, not with one of your own kind, you want to do some exploring find yourself a good non- Jewish girl to do it with.

OLIVER: But not a good Jewish girl.

SADIE: A good Jewish girl won’t let you – he’s going to throw his life away and there’s nothing we can do –and you were such a loving child, it’s all my fault, I’m to blame.

JOEL: For what?

SADIE: Everything.

Enter SHEENY.

SHEENY: The van won’t start.

JOEL: Nishtdogedacht –

OLIVER: Suddenly pigs could fly.

SHEENY: The engine’s brown bread.

JOEL: That’s it you’ve got the day off.

Exit JOEL.

SHEENY: Come on I’ll take you to the kardomah.

OLIVER: The kardomah.

SHEENY: But first we do the bats, we go to Alec Watson and Mitchell’s sports shop in town. There’s somebody I want you to meet.

OLIVER: Sabine Weinberger.

SHEENY: Sabine Weinberger.

Exit SHEENY.

SADIE: No don’t.

OLIVER: It was too l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Charaters
• Cast
• Act One
• Act Two