The Hallway Trilogy

Adam Rapp

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781559364164
• eBook ISBN: 9781559364324
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Adam writes like nobody else, his fierce poetic power as inescapable as the doom that waits for his characters…his touch is that of a master in the making.—Marsha Norman

Multi-talented artist and provocateur Adam Rapp shocks and disturbs, weaving themes of love, suffering, and redemption throughout this alarming yet heartening critical examination of societal change. Spanning one hundred years in one Lower East Side tenement hallway, this series of connected plays begins in 1953 with Rose, in which a young, troubled actress searches for affirmation from the one person who has shown her a bit of kindness—the great playwright Eugene O'Neill. Fifty years later in Paraffin, an unhappily married couple is thrown together with a paralyzed war veteran, a bungling super, and other lost souls searching to connect during the 2003 blackout. Nursing dramatizes a horrifying future in 2053, when the hallway becomes a museum in which the financially desperate are injected with obsolete diseases for the amusement of a public that doesn't know what it means to suffer or to love.

Packed with searing dialogue and harrowing narratives, The Hallway Trilogy bristles with humor and contains some of Rapp's most sensitive and mature writing (New York Times).

PARAFFIN

CHARACTERS

DENNY KELLEN, thirty

MARGO KELLEN, Denny’s wife, pregnant, thirty

LUCAS KELLEN, Denny’s younger brother, late twenties

MARTY KUBIAK, sixties

KEVIN O’NEILL, the super, mid-thirties

RAHEL LEVY, Israeli woman, late twenties

IDO LEVY, Rahel’s husband, Israeli, thirty

LESHIK, polish, late twenties

DENA PASZEK, Margo’s friend, thirty

CORY, young friend of Marty’s, African American

SETTING

A third-floor hallway of a pre-war tenement apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, 2003.

The third-floor hallway in a tenement on the Lower East Side. Three apartments span the upstage wall. A stairwell right, with a window. An apartment extreme stage left. Pushed against the wall is an old upright piano. A piano bench on top of it. The hall is illuminated by an overhead fluorescent light.

A beautiful summer day, August 14, 2003. Ten A.M.

Denny, thin, thirty, is lying on his stomach, unconscious in the hallway. He wears skinny black jeans, no shirt, one two-tone, vintage buckled leather shoe, no socks. He is pasty, filthy. His hair is shaggy, unkempt. His fingernails are painted black. His chest has been cut. One of his arms is twisted oddly behind his back. It looks as if he’s been thrown from a speeding car.

From the street, the sound of a car alarm. The sound of a distant siren. A Spanish radio commercial dopplering by.

From an apartment, the sound of a morning TV show like Regis and Kelly.

Marty Kubiak, an overweight man in his sixties, enters from the stairwell. He is neat in appearance, wearing nice shorts and a summer shirt, carrying a hatbox. He covers his nose, his mouth. He sees Denny, approaches him, bends down, briefly assesses him, steps around him, knocks on a door. Moments later, Denny’s wife, Margo, thirty, opens the door. She is tired. She wears boxers, a T-shirt. She is barefoot. She is six-and-a-half-months pregnant.

MARGO: Hi, Marty. What’s up?

MARTY: Your husband’s in the hall again.

(Margo looks into the hall, sees Denny, crosses to him.)

He doesn’t appear to be conscious. Should I call an ambulance?

MARGO: I’ll take care of it. What’s that smell?

MARTY: I think he might have done a number two.

MARGO: Jesus, Denny. Sorry, Marty.

MARTY: It’s obviously not your fault.

(Margo exits into her apartment, returns with a cylinder of air freshener, sprays the seat of Denny’s pants.)

If you need anything, don’t hesitate to knock on my door.

(Marty keys into his apartment, closes the door.)

MARGO (To Denny): Denny, Get up.

(No response. She prods him again.)

Denny . . . Get up, Denny.

(Still no response. She exits into her apartment with the cylinder of air freshener, leaving the door open, returns with a pitcher of water, douses him. He wakes with a start, quickly curls into a ball, terrified, hands clasped over his head, crash position, as if he is about to be beaten.)

Denny, it’s me . . . Denny!

(He looks up, disoriented.)

It’s almost 10:30. Aren’t you supposed to meet the truck?

DENNY: Jesus, the truck. The fucking truck! Fuck!

(He pushes himself up off the floor, manages to sit.)

MARGO: Rough night?

DENNY: Pretty rough, yeah.

MARGO: Where’d you go after the gig?

DENNY: Out.

MARGO: Out meaning where?

DENNY: Mars Bar. Niagara. The usual.

MARGO: Did Piano’s pay you?

DENNY: Yeah.

MARGO: Good crowd?

DENNY: It was packed.

MARGO: What’d you guys make?

DENNY: Three hundred somethin’.

MARGO: Where’s your cut?

DENNY: I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Rose
• Paraffin
• Nursing
• Epilogue
• About the Author