Goodness

Michael Redhill

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN:
  9781552451632
• eBook ISBN:
  9781770560826
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

This remarkable autobiographical play by the award-winning author of Building Jerusalem and Martin Sloane, is a Russian-doll-like play: concentric stories enveloping each other. A writer is told, in confidence, a terrible tale of murder and injustice and he promises never to repeat the story. Goodness is the writer breaking his word.

Recently divorced, Michael Redhill goes to Poland to get away frm his life and to do some research on the Holocaust. Thwarted by witnesses unwilling to talk, he returns home via England, but in London is introduced to someone who can tell him a 'real' story of evil. Through this reluctant witness, Redhill learns of a genocide. He encounters, through the memory of the storyteller, an alleged war criminal, about to be put on trial. But this is an old man with Alzheimer's who can no longer remember the time his crimes were allegedly committed. Has his guilt dissolved with his memory? Could he be pretending to be ill in order to escape punishment? The witness conjures for Redhill the war criminal's passionate and beautiful daughter, who will defend her father at all costs. There is also the prosecuting attorney, who has much in common with the old man whose destruction he seeks. As well as an uncomfortable attraction to his daughter. Each is drawn to the other. All is witnessed by a female prison guard – the one who tells the playwright, years later, what really happened in the quest to give a nation some closure. Everyone's story is compelling, and the ending is as unexpected as it is shocking.

Who do we believe? A prison guard still wounded by history? A writer suffering from heartache? A dying war criminal? What is our responsibility? Who does memory serve? Did the past really happen? And if it did, who has a claim on it?

Goodness is a play about what happens in the gaps between experiencing, telling and hearing.

Act One

Darkness onstage. Under this darkness, multiple voices.

SONG: ‘Tobela’ (Zimbabwean)

Chorus:

Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena (Pray to God)

Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena

Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena

Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena

Horiyatsa	(Look around / pay attention)
Hamuzani waka	(To what is happening)
Tobela	(Pray)
Ayitobela Murena	(O Pray to God)

Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena

Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena

Horiyatsa	Look around / pay attention)
Hamuzani waka	(To what is happening)
Tobela	(Pray)
Ayitobela Murena	(O Pray to God)
Iyo-o / Iyo-o / Iyo-o	(a soothing sound)
Ayitobela Murena	(O Pray to God)

Lights up. There are six people onstage, five of whom – JULIA, STEPHEN, TODD, ALTHEA, YOUNG ALTHEA – are looking at MICHAEL, whose nose is buried in a notebook. He’s writing. After a moment:

MICHAEL: (remembering the music) That was it. (to us as well as the other five characters) Sorry, I just have to get this down. (He finishes, holds up the notebook.) I’m trying to write a play … although, if you can hear me, I guess it’s finished. Even though right now I could throw it through a window. (pause, realizing) You’re sitting in a theatre at this very moment, aren’t you? Somewhere, in the future, you’re in a dark room, and it just got quiet, and you have no idea what’s going to happen to you. You’ve paid your money, you’re in your seat and … you’re staring at the playwright. Although it’s not me, I have to say. I’m being played tonight by Jordan Pettle. That’s a little lie in the form of a person. You’re in good hands with Jordan, by the way. He’s an excellent actor, a trained actor, who’s been in many Canadian plays of repute. You probably saw him in Waiting for Godot. A Jewish Estragon – imagine. For Godot, We’re Waiting. But he was fantastic. So thank you, Jordan. You have my trust, and my gratitude.

Now, this is a true story. I want to be upfront about that. And I’m a real person. You can look me up in the Toronto Yellow Pages, under ‘ghost writers’: I write bumpf for corporations and pap for cash. But apart from myself there are real people in this play who probably don’t know they’re in it, and so I’ve changed their names. I don’t strictly have their permission to write about them. Although I’m sure you won’t have a problem with that – the reason why I’ve decided to. One of the people I’m referring to is my ex-wife –

Julia, as Joanna, tears the notebook from Michael’s hands.

JOANNA (JULIA): What the hell do you think you’re doing?

MICHAEL: My divorce was really the first domino to fall in a series of … I found out she was having an affair.

JOANNA: You read my diary?

MICHAEL: Oh, you feel betrayed?

JOANNA: I feel invaded.

MICHAEL: (suddenly shouting) YOU SLEPT WITH COLIN!

JOANNA: It figures you’d have to read someone else’s diary to know what’s going on in your own life.

MICHAEL: (to us) He was my best friend.

COLIN (STEPHEN): Hey pal.

MICHAEL: BACK OFF.

COLIN : (to Michael) Where do you get your ideas? (Stephen, as Colin, laughs mildly. Then, as an aside to Julia) Hi, hon – I put the laundry on the bed.

JOANNA: (to Stephen) Thanks, sweetie. (She looks in Michael’s book, then says, honestly) ‘Bumpf’ and ‘pap.’ That’s good. (She hands him back the book.) Am I going to be in your play? Your horrible ex-wife?

MICHAEL: No.

JOANNA: Prick. You got what you deserved.

She backs away with Stephen.

MICHAEL: I had a little depression after my breakup. Okay: I could barely move for eight months. I’d get up in the mornings but before I could make it to the bathroom, I’d have to lie down again. I grew a beard and got fat. My shrink said,

THERAPIST (TODD): How does it feel?

MICHAEL: How does it feel?

THERAPIST : You should get away from your life for a while. Focus on something else.

MICHAEL: Like what.

THERAPIST : Go on a trip. Try to have some fun.

MICHAEL: Where am I going to have ‘fun’?

THERAPIST : Just go somewhere. Get away from yourself. God, you’re depressing, you know that?

MICHAEL: (to us) He never really said that. Although he might as well have. Useless … Anyway, I took his advice.

Blackout.

SONG: ‘Szerelem’ (Hungarian)

Szerelem szerelem	(Love, love)
Átkozott gyötrelem	(Wretched suffering)

Lights up. He turns the notebook to us. There are pictures taped to two pages.

MICHAEL: These are my mother’s grandparents and seven of their children. All of them were killed in 1941, in the town square of Ustrzyki Dolne, in Poland, by the Einsatzg...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Act One
• Act Two
• On the production and this text
• Thank you