Monday 10 March 2014

Act I Scene V

[This is the final scene of Act I, and it appears to have slipped back into the realms of pantomime again. We did tend to do a lot of those, didn't we? Not to worry... get through this and there'll be a cabaret show for you next episode! By the way, I found myself laughing aloud (Allowed!) when I read the Famous Psychologists 'sketch' for the first time in twenty-odd years. But maybe that's just meeeeeeee... Have fun!]
 
...And Ruth Creased The Yellow Curtain
ACT I SCENE V

(In the Old Library: It is The Golden Age of Psychology - Enter Jeff The Oatmeal Stranger and Narthor Moriarty Of The Moles)

JEFF THE OATMEAL STRANGER: As Mozart once said, "Another year, another pair of trousers." ...I say, Moriarty! Isn't that a Fender Precision typewriter?

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: Yes! Umberto Fettuccini gave it to me for Christmas! I think his Auntie whittled it out of a Ford Capri... or was it a Cortina?... or a Kazoo?... or a Continental Controvertible?

JEFF THE OATMEAL STRANGER: I see it's got Go-Faster Keys and Turbo Caps-Shift... Hey!... And Overdrive Spacing! What'll it do?

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: Well... It'll make little letters if you put some paper in it... but I've run out of paper! We'll have to go out and catch some trees, to make some more...

JEFF THE OATMEAL STRANGER: But surely you could just go down to the stationers and buy some?

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: It's against my principles to write on anything I haven't killed myself...

JEFF THE OATMEAL STRANGER: Sounds a bit cruel to me... I'm concerned!

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: No, no! It's all quite painless... If I didn't do them in, they'd only get a foreign deer rub up against them and get Dutch Elk Disease... or fall over one day and get their twigs caught in a drain...

JEFF THE OATMEAL STRANGER: How can it be painless?... Hitting the poor things with an axe, until they fall to their magnificent knees, sobbing and grunting and clasping at themselves to staunch the flow of sawdust... their very life-granules ebbing away...

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: No no no! Remember... Trees aren't very bright... remember how the Spaniards get cork off Cork-Oak Trees? They just say, "Your table is ready, Mr Cork-Oak, may I take your overcoat?"... No, what I do is, I stun it first with a length of railway line, then have-at-it with a cheese grater... Remember, "you get peppier paper from traumatised trees!"

JEFF THE OATMEAL STRANGER: Okay! Let's go out there and get the bastards!

(Exit Jeff The Oatmeal Stranger, waving an axe. Enter "The Minimal List", an avant-garde musical troupe consisting of First and Second Plastic Buckets, a heavenly chorus of various sized saucepans, Alto and Tenor Sabboons, Finger Cymbals, Violin, Viola and The Solent. They gather round Narthor's writing-desk, like cheap-suit serenaders in a bistro, and perform a four-movement piece called "The Skimmington Prelude"... and it is very nice. The Solent steps forward and addresses the audience)

THE SOLENT: (over FX sound of sea) I am the Solent Sea...

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: (interrupts) Could you get closer to the microphone?

THE SOLENT: Ahem...
I am the Solent Sea,
As old as the hills,
But wetter...

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: No, still too quiet...

THE SOLENT: Shall I start again?

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: No, it's alright... Take it from 'wetter'...

THE SOLENT: ...But wetter.
I am wind blown spume
Haven to pollock
And sub-aqua enthusiast,
From Keyhaven to Langstone,
I stream in tidal fashion.
See the school of mackerel
Swimming close to the surface,
Eating things
And keeping a wary eye open
For the propellors of cabin cruisers...

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: (addresses The Solent)
Oh! Solent Sea!
Spume-laden ex-river,
Oft traversed by hovercraft and fish,
Punctuated by shoals and banks, buoys and gulls,
Strange sounding foghorns with strange sounding names,
Like, for instance, the Nab Tower,
Protected from southerly gales
By the Isle of Widget
And northerly gales
By places such as Eastleigh and Shedfield...
But listen, for it sings its own song,
For those willing to hear...

(The Solent and Narthor exit - Enter several Famous Psychologists. They arrange their seats in rows and, as each psychologist speaks his lines, he must put up his hand and then stand, as if asking a question at a seminar. There is general background chatter and coughing throughout.)

ALEXEI RUPERT VON STILT 1805-1937: I am world-renowned for my pioneering work on the the thought patterns of albino gerbils... Using a series of mirrors to refract the image of the Lump of Gerbil Food, or 'LGF', I discover that Gerbil B is less confused than Gerbil A when hungry...

PROFESSOR MAGNUS FELSWICK 1811-2063: As Queen Victoria's personal psychosurgeon, I instigated the school of thought known as "Always Wear A Bucket Or Box On Your Head". This later became known as "Headonism". Queen Victoria was a keen Headonist - her battered cardboard box is on display at Osborne House. I consider myself to be a right dingo, many people agree. I also invented the self-buttoning shirt, which probably shortened the Crimean War by several years...

ALEXEI RUPERT VON STILT 1805-1937: Thomas Edison once wrote, "I wish I had a bicycle!"... but that's another story!

PROFESSOR MAGNUS FELSWICK 1811-2063: There's more to this than meets the bus!

STEFANO YACHTBREATH 1715-1855: I am the most famous of all Italian hypnotists! As a child, I would entertain the family by putting the central heating system into a deep mesmeric trance... See my business card! It says that I can hypnotise bees, sailors, food mixers and members of the landed gentry! - No Job Too Small - You've Tried The Rest, Now Try The Best! I once cured Marie Curie of a fear of tractors...

PROFESSOR MAGNUS FELSWICK 1811-2063: If God had meant us to fly, he would have given us better hats! Joan Collins once said that!

ALL PSYCHOLOGISTS: (in unison) But who's sheeeee?

NEVILLE SCROTUM 1816-1895: I, the former Sir Neville Scrotum of Dundee, was the first psychologist in Scotland to perfect the Colour Perception Niagulator, an ingenious machine allowing the operator to understand the meaning of colour and to smoke a cigarette at the same time! ...I discovered, after much research, that "I don't like green because it's yukky!"... and you should never trust a rockhopper penguin! Benny from Crossroads once said that!

ALL PSYCHOLOGISTS: (in UNISON) But who's heeeee?

MADAME JILL BLAVATSKY 1502-300BC: I took the Freestyle Psychoanalysis Championships in Paris by storm! My radical ideas on peach therapy are totally without equal, to this day. I am convinced that all mental problems develop in the womb because of the non-availability of clothes...

(Mr Cracknell now stands and walks to the front of the stage, dragging with him a blackboard - it can be on wheels, if you want.)

MR CRACKNELL 1989-?: Hello! I'm Mr Cracknell... I do feel it's so important to know each other's names and to establish some sort of rapport... We'll be exploring Abyssinian Algebra and Boolean Needlework... and in the run up to Christmas, we'll be analysing signatures of squid together... So... I'm Mr Cracknell, as I say... and you're Terry... Goanna... Rickmansworth... and Petunia... and I'm Mr Cracknell... (turns to blackboard) I'll spell that for you.... M... R... C-R-A-C-K-Nuh-Luh... (turns to audience) Okay, students, now... what's my name?

ALL PSYCHOLOGISTS & AUDIENCE: Joseph, King Of The Herrings!

PROFESSOR MAGNUS FELSWICK 1811-2063: But you were arrested, whilst on a caravanning holiday in Rumania!

ERNST PIPE 1822-1888: I read Comics at Prague University...

MAXIMILIAN DU PRÉ 1861-1922: I am the far-seeing patron of the Dualistic Cardiganism Movement! I once sold Marcel Proust a plastic tomahawk... I thought it might make a good subject for a series of novels... René Descartes once said, "J'avez un cardigan bleu, therefore Je suis un cardigan bleu!"... but I proved him wrong!

ERNST PIPE 1822-1888: That's philosophy, not psychology!

HARRY "SQUARE EARS" PEABODY 1851-1952: I am a chiropodist from Bradford! I have square ears! Whilst cutting toenails in my small surgery, I discovered Atonal Limbristic Aestheticism, a simple method of thinking without using the brain... I've got more intelligence in my big toe than all t'bods on Bradford bloody Council... A post-mortem will confirm this!

HENRY WALPAMURE 1901-1959: As an eminent Dublin psychologist and anthropologist, I got together with a group of six like-minded individuals and set about disproving the theory that "an infinite number of apes armed with typewriters would eventually write a script for Hamlet". After a week locked in my shed, dressed as pantomime gorillas, with only a month's supply of bananas and bamboo shoots, all we managed to come up with was "tHe cAt sAt oN ThE maT", "Qwertyuiop" and "SUNDAY SPORT EXCLUSIVE: DIRTY DEN BIT MY BUM SHOCK!"... I think that proves my point, as I later reiterated in an interview with Pathé News...

ERNST PIPE 1822-1888: That's not psychology either!

DOKTOR MIMMLING 1827-1895: I have a brilliant mind, but a duff body... At school, I was known as "Old Lavatory Brush Head & Pipe-Cleaner Legs"... This was later shortened to "Toilethead"... I am an expert in aversion therapy... I cured a man of nailbiting... by simply saying to him "Stop biting your nails."

ATTILA THE HUN, VERY OLD: I was a brilliant psychotherapist before I had a nervous breakdown... then I took up fisticuffs. I have been described as the Father of Psychiatry, the Brother of Microsurgery, the Uncle of Astral Projection, the Cousin of Kentish Hop Farming and, of course, the Friend Of A Friend Of A Friend Who Knew A Bit About Tickling Trout... I, Dr Hun, did, in fact, invent the psychiatrist's couch, my favourite group is UB40 and I have a dog called Nipper... I believe that people are not insane, just stupid...

LEWIS PASTURE 1806-1881: I am the eminent cellist!

MADAME JILL BLAVATSKY 1502-300BC: I think therefore I break wind! Elkman Van Noonan said that!

ALL PSYCHOLOGISTS: (on unicycle) But who's heeeee!?

(Exit all dem psychologists, happy in the knowledge that it's still The Golden Age Of Psychology! Enter Enthusiasm The Cushion, Sealiner The Corrosive, False Insect The Pantomime Cockroach, The Child's Toy Knitted Insect and Yet Another Cockroach. They each wear a choice of diving suits, wellies, souwesters, capes, Kagouls, false noses, carrier bags and umbrellas. They are booed, panto-villain style, by the audience)

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: You're so elaborate, you're knitted! Javelin books tie up Bad Heng's gog-curtains, brass stipendary! Oleography fond cat farewell of trock... Don't tock with lights fitted, gifted fart of nobody's only fork-ed load! By the way, who drew your nose?

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Refinement is the parent-disposal unit of a mail-order cistern... Smoke screams and stub them out in a psychiatrist's Crunchie! Tilted carvings relate to dawn parsonages and fizz like a hick ballista!

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Chocolate Barton, between the pages of a three-week shopwreck!

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: The kite obtains secret knowledge!

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Come into the study, Maureen, I have an interesting bolus to show you!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Felt Snakes seem maternal, when you send them to Harvard! Disappear up a canyon of mortality... Vomit wallpaper onto linoleum surroundings...

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Little brown jug don't, Isle Of Thee!

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: It's a sane rabbi delirium, a bubble on the sunlit wallpaper of Time, Cigartha!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Equate with a slap-happy carabineri! Restaurants bathe in the reflecting sandals!

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Pour me another telescope, bartender! I want to see the Crab Nebula in colour this time! In America, you can have your eyes nailed to a very long pole... and then the pole is raised into the air and you can see for miles! It's a trip, man... it's ten dollars a go... it's a killer, man...

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: ...And the ass egored!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Girder up your loins... but not in the cinema! What a water wanter?

ENTHUSIASM THE CUSHION:
Squelch! I looked down and felt sick to my stomach!
In horror and disgust, I reeled uncontrollably!
I tugged at the string, tied round my trouser leg...
I vomited boiled egg and flesh chutney,
Onto the chrome floor of the reception toilet...
I vomited up the insides of my legs
And then had a glass of SeaWeedAde...
And vomited some more...

SEALINER THE CORROSIVE: My robot fell in half, to reveal a sleeping Warwickshire - all mists, daisies and zebra factories!

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Let's go to town on an Astrolabe! We'll meet The Son Of The Shrimp, the soloist of prunes, the artist in stone chains at Lemur Gulch!

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Under the Sign of the Tattooed Priest, I met a shimmering hitman... He was carrying a subway under his hat and led a solar-powered Womble-tank into the draves!

(The spotlight turns to green - We are now supposed to be under the sea.)

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: These new diving suits are really comfortable!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Yes! Professor Ninepin has come up trumps once again...

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Look over there! A school of dolphins!

(Three more people in wet-weather apparatus pass by, smoking klerns.)

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Aren't they graceful?

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Yes! The acrobats of the sea...

(Mr Cracknell makes a noise with his blow-out tickler)

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Did you hear that strange sound? ('Phweeeep!') There it is again! It's coming from over there, behind that outcrop of coral...

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Let's swim over and investigate!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: It's rather menacing... I'm frightened! Who knows what disgusting beast could emit such aquatic bellows!

(blow-out tickler 'phweeeep!')

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Stick together, team! Anyone got an underwater cigarette?

(Enthusiasm The Cushion walks across with a packet of fags)

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Thanks Larry!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: (finally notices Mr Cracknell) Look over there... by that shoal of octopusses!

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Good grief! It's enormous!

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Look at the size of those fangs!

MR CRACKNELL: Do not be afraid, land folk! For, though I am of fearful expression, I am as gentle as a water lamb...

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: That's a relief!

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Phew! Yes...

(They all shake hands)

MR CRACKNELL: Very pleased to meet you... I'm Mr Mackerel, King of The Fishes... The Atlantic is my kingdom... I'm the legendary "Big Fish"!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Um... Is it okay to collect sponges on your property?

MR CRACKNELL: Yes! Carry on! They're a menace round here... dratted things... they soak up all the water, you know! And take a few squid back with you... They make splendid, hard-wearing work boots... Now... Look into my enchanted crystal... observe the wonders of my realm...

(He is hoisted away on panto-wire, leaving behind him a bucket of water with "Mr Cracknell's Mackerel's Enchanted Crystal" written on it. As if by magic, the others apparently no longer believe themselves to be under the sea.)

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Oh David! Here comes The Gurple Pang!

ENTHUSIASM THE CUSHION: Put up the electric fence!

SEALINER THE CORROSIVE: Reinforce the glittering panes!

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Strengthen the windswept portcullis!

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Board up the blackcurrant door!

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: It's The Brash Glirren Purr!

THE CHILD'S TOY KNITTED INSECT: Tabby Cat sings R'n'B, Tibby's on bass, Ginger wields the sticks like a furry dervish and Eric, the jet-black persian, lances lead-runs, like orgasms of glittering mercury, into space!

ENTHUSIASM THE CUSHION: Go bite on a killer moth! Fly dead kites with rope bollards! Grapple with polypropalene bats... Ignore these literary stum.

SEALINER THE CORROSIVE: Ghost tigers in the sand... Josef Reutermann passes notes in the liquid glass firmament. The grass wilts, as the hosepipe plays with itself in the potting shed... But Ssshhh! Here comes the Altered Predator!

(The Altered Predator enters, passes from one side of the stage to the other and then exits again)

YET ANOTHER COCKROACH: Alternate pictures of Raviatiors carry over-trait saviours into the Cosmic Seas, where glove puppets recite the abbreviated thoughts of Jean-Paul Georgianringo.

FALSE INSECT THE PANTOMIME COCKROACH: Sleeveless yellow flowers try to make out with flight epistles... but flight epistles aren't having any of it!

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: (sings)
Trip out with a Tribune!
Tie up with a cone! Wrestle with a cake!
Make that sand-eel moan!

(Exit everyone except Narthor Moriarty Of The Moles)

NARTHOR MORIARTY OF THE MOLES: (addresses audience) Ahem! Madam... Sir Francis... etcetera... Les Theatres Des Stupidités regrets to inform you that our Royal guests have been stuck in traffic... I've sent out an usherette in her caravanette to rescue them, so there won't be any ice creams or Marmite toast, while we're waiting... But who's this I see in the audience?... that spare figure... that aquaduct nose... that, er, distinguished hair... It's Mark Knopfler!... and I wonder if he knows a song about fish?

(The Mole-Being Similar To Mark Knopfler mounts the stage, carrying a sign which says "Thirty Leagues To London")

THE MOLE-BEING SIMILAR TO MARK KNOPFLER: (sings to a briny guitar)
Big fish, little fish
Dancing in a row,
Even giant tuna fish
That'd 'ave yer 'ead off as soon as look at yer...

(Exit The Mole-Being Similar To Mark Knopfler - Enter The Evil Box and The Domino Principle Boy)

THE EVIL BOX: Ha ha! Look at Dick! He's vomited again! Ha ha ho ho! What a fool he looks! Isn't he a goody-goody?... always working for charity! I hate people like that! They should spend their time biting heads off chinchillas and spitting them at police stations... Ha ha ha! I think I will try to change his ways!

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE BOY: Oh dear! It's getting late! I should be helping the old people with their art lessons... Oh! How I wish I could stop throwing up my dinner... What would my parents say if they knew that I vomited at pantomimes?

(Enter The Parents - four of them, each sitting in a tin bath and wearing a Victorian diving suit)

FIRST PARENT: Oh golly!

SECOND PARENT: Fuckin' shave off!

THIRD PARENT: Bradshaw!

FOURTH PARENT: I don't belong here, I'm a pond!

(Exit The Parents. Oh, I don't know! Pull 'em on ropes or something!)

THE EVIL BOX: Don't listen to that crap, children! I'll tell you a really funny joke... When is a door not a door?... (make raspberry noise) Oh shit! Wasn't that amazing? Well well! Hello, Dick!

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE BOY: Hello, Evil Box! How's your matchstick model of the Severn Bridge?

THE EVIL BOX: I pissed all over it!

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE BOY: Oh fancy!

THE EVIL BOX: Okay Dick! You're a bright lad... How would you like to see the world? ...all expenses paid, with opportunities to look after sick animals...

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE BOY: Golly! That would be super!

THE EVIL BOX: Well come along-a me, lad! The world of fantasy and amazement awaits you! The superb vistas, the perfection of Mother nature's woodland areas, the sheer beauty of a young oyster defecating.

(The Domino Principle Boy and The Evil Box "fly" across the stage on wires. Narthor Moriarty stands side-stage and makes aeroplane noises, continuously, from now until the end of the scene. A headless man enters, takes away the chairs, table, typewriter and London sign and exits again. The Domino Principle Boy and The Evil Box hang motionless, centre stage.)

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE BOY: What strange air there is here... And those sounds... They're weird!

VOICES OFF: (echoes) Ointment! Hooligan! Gogor!

THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE BOY: I feel funny... I'm going to throw up! (emits pantomime vomit from great height) Oh! I don't know why, but I enjoyed that! What's come over me? This is like a horrible, evil nightmare! Ugh! I feel sick to my stomach! ("vomits" again) Golly! That was good!

THE EVIL BOX: Ho ho children! The magic Beano Gas is working a treat! Tee hee! Now to watch the fun!

(Lights down and curtain - End of all this strangeness and charm, to mention nothing of quarks. The audience may now be treated to... "THE HALF-TIME CABARET BIT"!)



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