Dennis Kelly: Plays One

Debris; Osama the Hero; After the End; Love and Money

Dennis Kelly

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781350371804
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781849433143
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Features the plays Debris, Osama the Hero, After the End and Love and Money.

The four plays in this first collection by Dennis Kelly are linked by their characters' desperate need to believe that there is more to life than the often brutal worlds in which they find themselves. Kelly's remarkable debut Debris finds humour and pathos in a spectacularly dysfunctional family unit. The harrowing Osama the Hero shows a group of neighbours taking ill-defined revenge on an odd-ball teenager in a climate of fear. In After the End a woman discovers she has been rescued from Armageddon by a paranoid ex-colleague with a nuclear bunker in his garden. And in a fractured narrative Love and Money portrays a marriage driven to brutal destruction by financial pressures.

AFTER THE END

Characters

MARK

LOUISE

After the End was first produced at The Bush Theatre, in a Paines Plough / Bush Theatre co-production, on 28 July 2005, with the following cast:

MARK, Tom Brooke

LOUISE, Kerry Condon

Director Roxana Silbert

Designer Miriam Buether

Lighting Design Chahine Yavroyan

Sound Design Matt McKenzie

Beginning

MARK and LOUISE. A 1980s nuclear fallout shelter with a wheel-hatch in the ceiling, but in the present day. Bunks, table and chair, toilet area off and large metallic chest under the beds.

Pause.

MARK: I'm carrying you. I can't find my way because the streets, the houses, the houses were gone, the buildings were rubble, so I couldn't be sure and I'm panicking, I'm scared, there's bodies everywhere and just, the only sound is things burning and I can see the cloud rising and there was fires inside the, the cloud, inside it, beautiful, just unbelievable just, and I got to the junction and I thought ‘Is this the fucking Junction?’ there was no land marks, this is my fucking road and I've lived here for years but I didn't know if this was my fucking road even though I've lived here for years and I put you down next to this burnt lump, this body, charred, completely, like burnt wood, you know when it gets charred and it's cracked and you can break off a piece of charcoal, no skin, no clothes and her hands were almost ash, there was bits of her blowing away and I put you down next to this. And I'm clambering over the rubble trying to get higher to see if this is the fucking junction because if this isn't the fucking junction we're fucked, we're really fucked, the cloud is the only thing I can see above the fire and smoke and rubble and it's like it's rising with me and I'm thinking, okay, we've survived the blast, miracle, we've survived the fireball, miracle, but when that cloud starts to fall we're fucked, we're fucked, we're fucked unless we're in here. And then I see next door's…pattern on his drive, on his patio, it's a pattern, irregular sort of, it's a pattern but in the bit you walk on –

LOUISE: Crazy paving.

MARK: Yes, his crazy, yes, paving, his, yes, and I go back to you and I get there and the body is lifting itself up. It's pushing itself up. It's trying to push itself, but it's crumbling. It's pushing itself up and its fingers are crumbling and it's pushing itself up on its palms but its palms are crumbling, but it's still pushing itself and a bit by the elbow breaks off and I can see meat and bone and I run. I run off. I ran off and left you there.

LOUISE: But you came back.

MARK: Yes. I saw the crazy paving and I came back. And I picked you up. And I brought you here.

Beat.

LOUISE: Thank you.

MARK: You're welcome.

Silence.

LOUISE: But I'm starting my new job on Monday.

MARK: Yeah, well that's –

I think that's probably…

Yeah, no.

* * *

MARK is pulling cans and supplies out of the metal chest, talking to LOUISE over his shoulder. She sits staring at him, lost in thought.

MARK: Chilli…

Chilli…

Chilli…

Baked beans, baked beans with sausages…

Chilli…

Tuna…

More tuna, with mayonnaise, I don't think that's very –

Chilli…

She gets up and comes...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• DEBRIS
• OSAMA THE HERO
• AFTER THE END
• LOVE AND MONEY