Mark Colvin's Kidney

Tommy Murphy

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781760621247
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro

A premiere Australian play based on actual events, showing just how startling real-life can be.Mary-Ellen Field is a successful Australian business consultant in London—until she's accused of betraying the secrets of her supermodel client to the press. Her life comes crashing down: her job, her health and her standing in society collapse. When it emerges that her client's phone had been hacked by reporters, Mary Ellen sets out to defiantly restore her reputation.But along the way, her ideas of redemption change—she's been interviewed by a journalist on the other side of the world, and his story puts everything into a new perspective.

Mark Colvin’s Kidney was first produced by Belvoir at the Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, on 1 March 2017, with the following cast:

BRUCE FIELD / SENIOR PHYSICIAN
DAVID / PRIEST / IRANIAN OFFICER	Peter Carroll
WILLIAM COLVIN / JUNIOR PHYSICIAN
MARTIN / BBC RADIO JOURNALIST / TOM
CHARON / KANE	Kit Esuruoso
MARK COLVIN	John Howard
MARY-ELLEN FIELD	Sarah Peirse
PROFESSOR ZOLTAN ENDRE
JOHN COLVIN / CARL / LUCAS
BBC RADIO STUDIO GUEST / EMAD	Christopher Stollery
ELLE MACPHERSON / MICHELE
CASSANDRA / BBC RADIO JOURNALIST
NURSE SUNITA / FRENCH PARISHIONER
AMERICAN OPERATOR / WAITRESS	Helen Thomson

Director, David Berthold

Set Designer, Michael Hankin

Costume Designer, Julie Lynch

Lighting Designer, Damien Cooper

Composer and Sound Designer, Nate Edmondson

Projection Designer, Vexran Productions

Movement Director, Scott Witt

Stage Manager, Luke McGettigan

Assistant Stage Manager, Keiren Smith

The following is based upon actual events.

The play makes use of surtitles to display the source of quoted material, the translation of lines spoken in foreign languages and occasional scene settings.

The authors of the quoted correspondence have approved its use in this script. Messages, emails, transcripts and tweets are unabridged unless stated otherwise. Please note that the BBC Archives have not retained the broadcast of the ‘Today’ program on 9 August 2006, depicted in Act One Scene Four.

CHARACTERS

MARY-ELLEN FIELD, 63, an Australian businesswoman in the UK

PROFESSOR ZOLTAN ENDRE

ELLE MACPHERSON, 41, the supermodel

CARL, a US security guard

MARTIN, a US therapist

DAVID, a sex addict

BRUCE, Mary-Ellen’s husband

CASSANDRA, a Tory MP

TOM, a young Tory staffer

MARK COLVIN, an Australian journalist originally from the UK

SUNITA, a renal nurse

EMAD, an Iranian man

CHARON, a Hutu refugee in Goma (near Rwanda)

LUCAS, a London lawyer

FRENCH PRIEST

MICHELE, Mark’s wife

JOHN COLVIN, Mark’s father

WILLIAM COLVIN, Mark’s son

WAITRESS, who morphs into an anaesthetist

SENIOR PHYSICIAN

JUNIOR PHYSICIAN

BBC RADIO JOURNALISTS

KANE, ABC cadet journalist

FRENCH PARISHONER, SECURITY GUARD, CLUB MEMBER, LONDON TUBE ANNOUNCER, IRANIAN OFFICERS, DINERS

SETTING

Sydney, London and briefly Goma, Saint-Félix, Tehran and Washington.

/ indicates a point of interruption in a line of dialogue.

This play went to press before the end of rehearsals and may differ from the play as performed.

ACT ONE

SURTITLE: ‘The following is based on a true story’

SCENE ONE: NEPHROLOGY

SURTITLE: ‘Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, 2012’

MARY-ELLEN FIELD is a brightly dressed, blonde 63-year-old. PROFESSOR ZOLTAN ENDRE is a small man with a large moustache, spectacles and a colourful bow tie. His desk is untidy with papers and files. ZOLTAN is flanked by two male colleagues—a SENIOR PHYSICIAN and a JUNIOR PHYSICIAN.

ZOLTAN: So I might as well start by asking … Are you mad?

They laugh. MARY-ELLEN does not.

This is the organ with the highest blood flow and workload. It releases hormones...