Iphigenia in Splott

Gary Owen

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781783198924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'What gets me through is knowing I took this pain, and saved all of you from suffering the same.' Stumbling down Clifton Street at 11: 30 a.m. drunk, Effie is the kind of girl you'd avoid eye contact with, silently passing judgement. We think we know her, but we don't know the half of it. Effie's life spirals through a mess of drink, drugs and drama every night, and a hangover worse than death the next day - till one night gives her the chance to be something more. This powerful new adaptation of the enduring Greek myth drives home the high price people pay for society's shortcomings. Winner of Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards 2015

1

You lot.

Sitting back, taking it easy, waiting for me

To – what? Impress you? Amaze you? Show you what I’ve got?

Well boys and girls, ladies and gents – I’m afraid not.

You have got it back to front, arse about tit, and your up side

Is definitely down. See I know what you think

When you see me pissed first thing wandering around. You think –

Stupid slag. Nasty skank.

But guess what? Tonight

You all are here to give thanks

To me.

Yeah I know it’s a shock.

But you lot, every single one

You’re in my debt.

And tonight – boys and girls, ladies and gents –

I’ve come to collect.

You all know me.

I strut down the street, and your eyes dive for the ground

Face on I’m too much for you to handle

The second I’m past your head snaps up

To catch an eyeful of this firm yet juicy arse –

– and it is, so don’t even bitch.

That’s my flat, on the corner.

My nan remembers when it used to be a shop – like almost every house on the block,

Oooh, she says, it’s not like how it was. I say Nan: wake up love.

Everything changes, everything moves on.

Nan loves to have a moan about the world, the way it’s gone,

Course when she moans about how the world has gone,

What she’s really moaning about – is me. My life.

Cos I live my life a million miles an hour, do what I like, when I like, and

Oh look, I’ve got – this¹ – for you, if you can’t deal with it

Nan says, this place used to have everything you need

Shops are gone, bingo hall burned, pubs closed, doctors shut,

STAR centre getting pulled down and more flats thrown up.

She says we used to live. You could live here and live well.

Now they’re stacking us up, and we’re supposed to just exist.

I say Nan you’re such a moaning old trout I swear

Nan scowls at me she is up and out

Says – I’ll tell you what young miss –

It is eleven thirty-five in the morning and you have taken drink!

Nothing good can come from living like this.

I say to Nan: if you don’t like the way I live

Maybe you shouldn’t come round no more. How’d you like that?

Nan grumps off,

Slaps down a couple of tens on the table as she waddles by

And I should

I should

Pick them up go after her stuff them down her throat

But

I let the money sit.

I let her shuffle down the stairs

I let the front door slam because

I need those notes.

See the only way I get through the week is a cycle of hangovers.

And I’m not talking, bit of a baddy head here.

I’m talking proper, brain-shredding three day bastards.

I’m talking hangovers that start, you’re under a table at Chicken Cottage,

You’ve already chucked so much you’re just heaving big empty sick-flavoured burps, till

Some secret trapdoor springs open in your guts

And this thick green gloop shoots out your gob

This sour liquorice juice, pints and pints of it,

Where the hell was that tucked away? And you wake

In a stranger’s bed, or a bathroom floor, or police cell.

But you wake,

Your muscles ache, your throat’s sore, teeth fizzing from all that acid

In your puke the night before. You wake and you know

– that’s half the week sorted!

Because you’ll be day one in bed, crying and wishing you were dead,

Onto the settee for day two, sweating into your duvet, eating twenty pee noodles, watching whatever shit comes on Dave ja vu.

And on the third day you rise, and put yourself back together; start with a scalding hot bath mid morning to lift the shit from your pores then a ten hour programme of sanding down surfaces, picking, plucking, painting before you’re ready to go again.

But last night I didn’t get there. Last night, don’t know why, don’t know what,

I just didn’t have the commitment to getting absolutely totally fucked and now

Disaster. It’s Monday morning, and I’ve got a brain functioning on full power.

That is not natural, it is not normal

And it is definitely not safe.

I am going to need those notes from Nan,

So tonight I can put right last night’s wrong, get totally fucked

And wipe myself out for the rest of the week.

So I let the woman walk.

I don’t stuff those grimy tenners back in her face.

Sometimes you’ve just got to take it.

But still,

Even if I’ve got an escape from real life tonight

That leaves me with a day to get through

My body buzzing, all this energy and fuck all to do with it.

This means one thing.

Trouble. In the end for me

But before th...