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Peter LobdellLocation: Belchertown, MA
Email: ptlobdell@amherst.edu
Published in: Stirring V2:E2, Duct Tape Press, and in July an essay in a collection titled, "Method Acting Re-considered" by St. Albans Press.
A NIGHTCAP FOR REDCAPJEFF (in his 40’s) and MARY(in her 30’s) stand in front of a large (free standing) glass sliding door upstage left. Lighting effects can be thrown upon the glass. Behind them a simple living room with a sofa, chairs, and coffee table oriented on an angle. The space is small. Surrounded by black. There is space upstage in the black that can be used with the proper lighting to create the "black magic" poltergeist effect at the end of the play. The set has at least two foci — the slider upstage and the food and drink downstage. The characters move about almost continuously. They are drinking wine. In the course of the play they become wonderfully and extraordinarily intoxicated — a transcendent physical and emotional place of great freedom and expression. No slurring or stumbling that is not caught and transformed.
JEFF
What a beautiful night.
MARY
Yes.
JEFF
More wine? Encore du vin?
MARY
Yes.
JEFF
Here, love. It’s so bright tonight. Where’s the moon? Oh, there. Nearly full. Well, a toast to the moon — to mania, to paradox, to cool warmth, and to light in the middle of the night.
MARY
You’re getting just a bit tipsy, my dear. How about to the moon. Just the moon. Our moon on our snow in our backyard through our trees.
JEFF
Right.
(They drink and he refills their glasses)
JEFF
On moonlit nights like this the woods seem inhabited to me. You know fairies, goblins, trolls, elves — the little people.
MARY
Dear, on moonlit nights like this you tend to get lit.
JEFF
Don’t trample upon my fancy. I’m shocked at your lack of poetry. More wine?
MARY
I’m fine.
JEFF
Look over there. At the stupid mound.
MARY
Oh, how beautiful --- how strange. Why is the mound glowing like that? Nothing else is glowing.
JEFF
Except me, according to you.
MARY
Maybe me too. Look. Isn’t it weird? It’s glowing. It’s hot. Light’s shining from it. It’s like something’s happening.
JEFF
Well put.
MARY
Whatever. Look, goddamit!
JEFF
Ok. I’m looking.
MARY
Well?
JEFF
The moon’s glistening off the snow and ice covering our idiotic mound of topsoil. Maybe one day we will get it bulldozed into a garden.
MARY
Ok. Then why isn’t the rest of the snow glowing. Moon light everywhere. But it’s only glowing there. Why, Mr. Wine Man?
JEFF
Why? Why, it’s the angle of the moonlight. It’s the nature of the ice on the mound. It’s the refraction of the window. It’s ...
MARY
The poverty of your sense of wonder, my darling. That mound glows with a fairy party. A celebration of the full moon by timeless sprites who will dance and carouse and sing ignorant of your scientific ramblings. Just what is refraction?
JEFF
When light is deflected from its normal straight path when passing obliquely from one medium like air through another like glass or in this case maybe ice because the velocity of the light is different in the different media. Okay?
MARY
Light bends as it slows down?
JEFF
Sort of.
MARY
Sort of?
JEFF
Yeah.
MARY
I’m going out there. See if I can catch a bent ray of light — or a fairy. Coming?
JEFF
You’re joking.
MARY
No. Come on. Let’s peek inside the mound. Check out the inhabitants.
JEFF
Let’s have a glass of wine first. You hungry?
MARY
I’m curious.
JEFF
Curiosity ...
MARY
Don’t you dare say it.
JEFF
"Four be the things I’d been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt."
MARY
You don’t have freckles. And not an hour ago you made me feel very much loved so what’s this crap?
JEFF
It’s Dorothy Parker. A wiseass for all occasions.
MARY
Are you going to come out there with me?
JEFF
I very much doubt it.
MARY
Why?
JEFF
I have this chardonnay. I have our cozy house. I’m just feeling comfortable.
MARY
Come on.
JEFF
No.
MARY
Let’s get naked and then bundle up and go out there. Naked in boots and big coats. We can have a huge naked hug on the magic mound and catch moonlight on our pubes.
JEFF
And slip and break our bare butts on an icy rock.
MARY
I’m serious.
JEFF
So am I.
MARY
You have no sense of adventure.
JEFF
I have no sense of balance.
MARY
You’re not that drunk.
JEFF
Oh yeah? Just watch.
(Jeff opens another wine bottle and fills his glass. The two get progressively high — not slurring drunk, but increasingly vocal, imaginative, emotionally labile, and physically expansive.)
MARY
How many’s that?
JEFF
I’m not counting. You?
MARY
I don’t want to drink wine with anyone who won’t play with me naked on a fairy mound in the moonlight.
JEFF
Suit yourself.
MARY
Please, Jeff. Humor me. I don’t know why I want to go out there except that mound’s glowing and look, we don’t have to get naked, but ...
JEFF
I can’t hold my glass properly with mittens.
MARY
Then leave it here. We’re just going out for a second.
JEFF
I’m staying right here, Mary. Love, I’m scared of the damn thing.
MARY
What?
JEFF
I’m scared of that glowing thing out there. It doesn’t make any sense. It shouldn’t glow like that. Nothing else is glowing. Not the slope, not the snow in the woods, not the walk. Just the damn mound.
MARY
So let’s go take a peek.
JEFF
Mary, it’s an ice cocoon for a troll spider. We go out there and the mound will crack and a hairy arachnid claw will sweep us inside. We’ll be hung upside down in the glowing depths of that mound. We’ll stare and gibber and drool in the unnatural heat of the cocoon. We’ll sweat and drool and the spider will drink from our puddles. Then it will suck our juices very slowly. We’ll shrivel and shrink, but we won’t die. The spider will lay a single egg on your tongue and one on mine. The taste will make us gag. When the eggs hatch we will feel the little hairy spiders pull themselves down our throats leg over leg.
MARY
You really are silly. It’s not horrible. It’s a skylight to an underground villa belonging to a fairy fashion designer. She has a gala ball every thousand years in show off her new line of snowflakes. She invites the entire population of New England sprites, pixies, elves, gnomes, banshees, boggarts, bogeys, henkies, lubbard fiends, goblins, mermaids in wheel chairs, seal maidens, seelies, selkies, tatter foals, yarthkins, will o’ the whisps, and wilkies. Very occasionally, perhaps, once every thousand thousand years she invites a mortal couple. But only if this mortal couple have just made love and still, even if ever so slightly, stink. A wiff of sex secures the invitation. So if we shuck our clothes, bundle up, and visit, the mound will open wide and the fairy laughter will embrace us. We will be taken in and bathed in a chrystalline pool with polished copper pipes. We will be wrapped in fairy furs, wined, dined, and have elven poetry read
in our honor. You see, the water we bathed in will be distilled for our scent. The gallons and gallons of water will be reduced to one drop of pure essence of our love. The fairy queen will arrive just as this drop is caught in a diamond dish. She will grant us eternal joy and drink the drop to ensure the immortality of the
realm. We will be forever blessed and the fairy kingdom will be renewed for another thousand millennia.
JEFF
Mary, look at the mound now. The glow is pulsing. Isn’t it? Am I drunk or is the light moving?
MARY
You’re nicely plastered, darling and the mound’s . . .
JEFF
The glow is moving.
MARY
It’s moving.
(She goes around the room turning off lights the better to see the glow from the mound. The glow pulses on the large glass slider upstage.)
JEFF
We’ve become infected by the glow. We’re having visions.
MARY
Enchantment.
JEFF
I’m terrified of spiders and you’ve read way too much Yeats. We suffering moon mound glow fancies.
MARY
Glamour.
JEFF
What?
MARY
When the faires cast a spell. Before fashion got the word, glamour meant the enchantment of fairies on humans.
JEFF
That’s most helpful.
MARY
The light is moving in that mound, I swear. I’m beginning to be scared too.
JEFF
(takes the bottle, drinks two quick glasses, and opens another)
This is a experiment.
MARY
Another?
JEFF
I prying open my mind. I’m casting off my moorings. Bacchus against Puck. Avoid panic and fortify my senses.
MARY
Jeff, it’s blinking!
JEFF
One if by land and two if by sea.
MARY
Jeff, quick!
JEFF
(He joins her at the window and they are lit by a slowly pulsing light through the slider.)
Holy shit.
MARY
(She begins to sing in a wavering voice of fear.)
"Holy, holy, holy
Merciful and mighty
dum de dum de dum dum dum"
JEFF
(pulling her away from the slider)
Mary?
MARY
(still singing)
Hymns, holy songs of protection!
"Only thou art holy"
JEFF
"We three Kings of Orient Are
dum de dum we travel so far
Field and mountain
MARY and JEFF
"Silent night, holy night
All is calm
All is bright ... "
(At that line the light in the window becomes blinding and they both yell and run to hide downstage the sofa. The light suddenly goes out. The stage is black.)
JEFF
Wow.
MARY
Wow.
JEFF
When I was about five years old I used to believe there were monsters under my bed. I had to sleep with my face to the wall — real close, nose to wall close — or they would get me. That went on for some time. One night I woke up and I had shifted in bed and I was lying on my back. There was a light coming from under my bed. I was terrified. I couldn’t move. I could see the ceiling in the light. Shadows.
MARY
Jeff, do you feel a draft?
JEFF
Yeah, I think so. Let me get a light.
MARY
Careful.
JEFF
I’m fine
(A crash as he knocks over a tray.)
Damn.
(He turns on the standing lamp. The slider is wide open. The curtains are blowing in a wind through the slider.)
MARY
Shut that damn thing, Jeff.
(She moves very cautiously about, looking for signs of an intruder. She gets one wine bottle, gives it to Jeff, and opens another. She swigs from the bottle.)
JEFF
(He shuts the slider.)
Why me? What are you doing?
MARY
What you said — avoiding panic. We’ll bash it or toast it. We’ll pour it a libation. Sacrifice our Latour to it, or shove a bottle up its nose.
JEFF
Wherever. Look, Mary, this is ridiculous. There’s nothing out there. Just the light on the snow on the mound. And that slider — it slid. In the wind. A gust, I guess.
MARY
Jeff, please.
(She has gone up to the slider and takes a long swig from the bottle as the pulsing light begins to shine once again.)
It’s in the house.
JEFF
What’s in the house?
MARY
Don’t, just don’t get stupid and logical. It’s in — a gnome, or a boggart, maybe a bogey, a henkie, or God forbid, a lubbard fiend.
(Bottles at the ready they stand back to back and slowly search the room, always touching — in tight orbit.)
MARY
Have you ever heard of a Boobachod? He’s a bogey. Can be dangerous. Hates teetotallers ...
JEFF
We’re safe there.
MARY
And ministers. Maybe the hymns weren’t such a good idea. A Boobachod took a dislike to a Baptist preacher — I read it in Campbell — it jerked away his stool when he prayed, rattled the fire tongs, grinned in at the window, and finally scared the preacher out of town by appearing as his double.
JEFF
That would get me packing — to meet another you. What are we looking for?
MARY
A Bogey.
JEFF
A bogey?
MARY
Right. Or maybe a Bogle.
JEFF
Here Humphrey. Humphrey Bogey. Here Bogey, Bogey.
(She drops her bottle of wine and becomes rigid. Her physicality is changed, but not into some Frankenstein or monster. Cooly rigid and unobtainable.)
JEFF
Hey, darling, watch it! That there’s the fourth to the last bottle. Mary? Mary? What’s the matter. Are you alright? Mary. Okay, joke’s over. Let me get you a glass of wine — from the rescued bottle. Here.
(She takes the wine and very deliberately and simply pours it over Jeff’s head)
JEFF
What the hell? Oh that’s very funny, Mary. What’s got into you?
(Jeff grabs her by the shoulders. With a sudden, precise blow of her forearms, Mary knocks his arms away. She walks to the slider and opens it wide. The wind blows the curtain and the light from the mound gets brighter. She reaches out towards the light.)
JEFF
You’re scaring me, Mary. Let’s close the slider and call it a night.
MARY
(out into the light)
Tianoch, glee nai foganoth. Tianoch, Boobachod nai sli foganoth. Lep glee heathu. Rangi glep gee thuhea. Boobachod gee pel nothga.
JEFF
Holy shit.
MARY
Rapture.
(Jeff staggers back and finds a bottle which he upends swallowing a mighty daught. She closes the slider and the light subsides. As she turns she is completely herself. The possession is suspended. She sits in a chair.)
MARY
God, Jeff, aren’t you taking this casting your moorings experiment a bit far? Oafish excess is not stylish.
JEFF
Mary? What’s going on? Mary? You were just at the open door chanting some — I don’t know — incantation. You poured wine on me and you hit me and ...
MARY
What are you talking about? I’ve been sitting here watching you drink.
JEFF
What about Humphrey Bogey? What about the slider and the light from the mound?
MARY
Come on, Jeff! You get sloppy drunk and babble about troll spiders in the mound and pour wine all over yourself and I’m supposed to find that fun?
JEFF
Wait a minute here — let’s just pause a moment — let’s take a little time out here. You’re playing a joke on me. A complicated, devious joke. Getting me back for setting fire to the driveway last summer. You got me. Fair’s fair. You got me good. I was terrified. Either you had lost your mind, or I had lost mine, or we were invaded by the wee people from the mound and I was too drunk to know which. Still am. Hooooooooo! You got me good.
(He laughs and within the laughter watches Mary intently — although clearly he’s seeing her double — to determine if he’s got the right read. Mary is quiet.)
JEFF
Hooooooeeeeee. I bet I looked a sight. That was genius! When you were calling out to the mound! Wow! "Tiamfeltburger, flopdoodle, bang." I nearly passed out. I did pee my pants. I did.
(Mary rises and goes upstage of the couch as he is speaking. She stiffens again — possessed in the same fashion. Slowly, without any effort she rises up behind the couch. She is levitating, growing larger and larger as the light from the slider shines on her again. Jeff is terrified. He stands. She reaches out one arm towards him. A fireball erupts from her hand directly at him. Jeff faints or passes out. He drops like a stone. Mary drops her pose and falls over onto the couch laughing. She is possessed with triumphant laughter. She can’t stop. Her lines are spoken through the laughter whenever she can get a breath.)
MARY
Oh Jeff, look at you. My God! Oh sweet Jesus. Are you all right? Oh, poor baby, you’re breathing. My darling Boobachod, I got you good! Yes, oh yes, oh, baby. GOOD! Here you go, baby Boobachod.
(She places a pillow under his head, still erupting in laughter. She won’t get over her triumph until the blackout. She covers him up with a blanket.)
MARY
Nighty night, little Boobachod. Don’t let the bogles bite.
BLACKOUT
(The scene is the same. Jeff is curled up on the floor, covered with an afghan from the couch. Mary is off. As the scene opens she comes in through the slider coiling a long electric cord. She brings in a large lighting unit. It is clear she has created the mound’s light. She is humming "Silent Night".)
MARY
Lover? Jeff, dear, wake up, Boobachod. Time to climb to bed. Come on, Jeff. That’s it. Hey —
JEFF
Whoa, God, what time is it?
MARY
Late, darling. About 3.
JEFF
Wow — I’ve had such a dream. Oh, God, 3 am — damn early for a hangover.
MARY
Baby, I’m sorry
(She begins to laugh.)
MARY
You went for the entire onion, the whole ticket, hook. line, and sinker. I’m sorry. I never thought. I .... Boobachod!
JEFF
Yeah! Yeah! That was the name in the dream — Boobachod — holy shit.
MARY
Holy shit. Oh, Jeff. Are you all right. Headache? Numb tongue?
JEFF
I’m ok. Got to get some wine.
MARY
Wait Jeff, we’ve had enough. We’ve had too much enough. Let’s go up. Come on, baby.
JEFF
No, Mary, I’ve got to put some wine out.
MARY
Out of the bottle and into your belly, don’t you mean?
(Jeff staggers up and moves about the space eccentrically. He’s reliving parts of his dream, checking out spots where the fairies of this dream played with him. Where they told him secrets, revealed possible futures, and made him make promises.)
JEFF
Come on, Jeff! You’re out of your mind. Beddy Bye! Follow me. Just one foot then the other. Just like this. Here, boy.
JEFF
Whooops. I remember you laughing. You were laughing at me. That wasn’t part of the dream. That was on the way there. Mary.
MARY
Yes.
JEFF
Tonight. The first part.
MARY
What was the first part?
JEFF
Where the mound was glowing. We were drinking in a civilized fashion. Then you goofed on me. You set me up and pulled the lever and you dropped me into the shit.
MARY
Oh my beeeautiful Boobachod,
JEFF
Don’t call me that. Shhhh. Don’t even breathe that name for a bit. Please.
MARY
OK. Now are we to bed or .......
JEFF
We have to talk.
MARY
I was afraid of that. But please, Jeff, no more wine.
JEFF
Oh yes, more wine. It’s been ordered.
MARY
Not by me.
JEFF
By Redcap.
MARY
By a redcap? No, Jeff, we’re to bed. Have a drink on the train in your sleep.
JEFF
I just did — in my dream. And I’ve got to buy a round tonight. For Redcap. Before first light.
MARY
What’s a redcap? Another Jeffism for nightcap?
JEFF
Redcap is a good fellow, but he is also a sort of reformed, maybe retired, border goblin. He re-dyes his cap in human blood. That’s bad. But he seems pretty ok just now.
MARY
Now?
JEFF
Let me just get everything sorted out. You played a joke tonight?
MARY
(dissolving into laughter)
Didn’t I? Oh, baby, if I had only videotaped it.
JEFF
Sure tops the driveway.
MARY
You bastard.
JEFF
Come on. You just got me back big time. At least I controlled the fire. Never came close to your car.
MARY
What do you mean, Jeff?
JEFF
Fairies are real. You woke them up. What was it? Some sort of lighting rig out there?
MARY
Yes, and Jeff, I’m serious. We are going to bed. I am anyhow.
JEFF
And rising up over the couch?
MARY
Electric lift and goodnight. I’m going to bed.
JEFF
Mary. Please. Give me five minutes. We need to talk.
MARY
Don’t be poor loser. I got you. But you’ve gotten me before. Let’s sleep it off.
JEFF
The time you had me arrested for smuggling.
MARY
Searched and detained. But you raised such a fuss. How about the time you blew up in the restaurant?
JEFF
And I made a terrrific segue into "Happy Birthday"? Mary, this isn’t altogether such a good joke.
MARY
Whimp.
JEFF
After the fireball — by the way how did you do that?
MARY
Flashpaper.
JEFF
Nice. I passed out.
MARY
You sure did.
JEFF
I fell into Faery. The fancies are real. The mound is inhabited. You just woke them up. I have had about a week there. God, my hangover is from Faery, not from here. That explains the timing.
MARY
You’re serious?
JEFF
Yes.
MARY
Who’s Redcap?
JEFF
He’s the guy I hung out with. He took me to all the haunts. They are mostly after- hours-clubs-like fairy hangouts.
MARY
I thought you said I woke them up.
JEFF
To us. They had forgotten. We forgot them. They forgot us. For them it seems the world is just as amusing without people.
MARY
And now.
JEFF
They remember the old ways.
MARY
And Redcap?
JEFF
In his time he has been a particulary nasty brownie. A goblin actually. God, can he drink! He’s not so bad now. His cap is pink.
MARY
Describe him.
JEFF
He’s a short, thickset old man. A belly. Ass crack as he bends over. He has skinny arms, but very nasty claws for nails. Big teeth. Some broken, some missing, all discolored. Scary teeth. Bristly beard and bad eyes — very red. Lots of hair. And can he ever drink.
MARY
Nice try. You’re just taking me for a ride and dosing your hangover with our Latour.
JEFF
I have to put a glass out before dawn.
MARY
And naturally it has to be the last glass.
JEFF
Precisely.
MARY
I’m going to bed.
(The mound begins to pulse with light again.)
JEFF
Mary, darling, look.
(She looks, turns back to him incredulously and bursts into laughter.)
MARY
YOU CRAZY SON OF A BITCH! How did you work it? Wait! My stuff.
(She runs to where she has stashed her effects. She drags them out. Turns to the window again.)
MARY
Hats off.
JEFF
I wish I could take credit. This is your doing.
MARY
Enough already. Jeff, I surrender. You are the master. I thought I really got you, but you have gracefully recouped. Touché. How did you do it?
JEFF
Redcap. He’s reminding me I owe him a round.
MARY
I give up. I surrender absolutely and unconditionally. Jeff, turn off the light, please.
JEFF
I can’t, Mary. Redcap is real. Boobachod (whispered) is real. Faery is real.
MARY
You played so perfectly tonight. You made me laugh. You wouldn’t come out the mound naked with me, you stinker, but what a night! Please don’t push now. I’m too tired to play. Tell me in the morning about the light. I’m so tired you can see through me.
JEFF
Alright, Mary.
MARY
Are you coming?
JEFF
Soon. I’ve got to put out the glass.
MARY
I love you, you maniac.
JEFF
You mean lunatic.
MARY
Whatever. (exits)
(Jeff goes over to the slider and opens it. The wind blows the curtains. The light gets brighter and brighter. Mary enters like a crazed pinball machine — exasperation, exhaustion gone ballistic, deep fear. She’s seeking shelter and she’s pissed.)
MARY
The whole damn forest is lit. You are lit. Stop it. Enough. Jeff, Jeff, I can’t. Jeff. Please, damn you. Enough. The light’s too much. I’m scared. Stop it. Make it stop.
JEFF
I can’t, love. I can’t. I told you. Redcap and the gang are partying.
MARY
OK. Jeff. Prove it!
(He goes into "INCOMING" mode. He grabs Mary as objects begin to fly about the space. He upturns the coffe table and they take cover between the table and the sofa. These poltergiest effects must not swing. The object moves on a flat or rising trajectory. It’s scarey. Black magic effects are used upstage to have certain objects hover, revolve, and behave impossibly.)
JEFF
Oops.
MARY
You mean ....
JEFF
What I said.
MARY
Wow. So?
JEFF
Well, at dawn everybody crashes.
MARY
All the sprites, elves, gnomes, banshees, boggarts, bogeys, henkies, lubbard fiends, goblins, mermaids in their seaweedy wheel chairs, selkies, tatter foals, yarthkins, and wilkies?
JEFF
And Redcap and (whispering) Boobachod. But’s that’s bad.
MARY
Bad.
JEFF
Redcap’s drink. I haven’t put it out.
MARY
That’s important.
JEFF
Oh yes.
MARY
And . . .
JEFF
I was there a week. I ran up some tabs. Redcap and I, well, we became buddies. He told me that centuries ago he made friends with a human. Redcap had various bogles take care of that guy and his family. They all lived together. Faires in and out. All the housework was done by the bogles. All the repairs by the brownies, and those folks were lucky. Real lucky. Today lottery wins would be regular events for those folks — prize wagons every month. They were fairy-blessed.
MARY
And . . .
JEFF
I ran up some tabs.
MARY
And . . .
JEFF
This Redcap can be nasty. I mean, that cap of his really stinks. His relationship with that human those centuries ago didn’t work out. The old man who was Redcaps’s friend thought he was dying. He waited up late next to the alcohol left out for Redcap. Redcap arrived and said "Howdy" in that way of his and the old man said, "I"m dying. I want to thank you." Redcap killed him in that instant. Faires don’t take well to empty words like that. The old man knew it. But he didn’t expect it.
MARY
Holy shit.
JEFF
Yeah. I ran up some tabs.
MARY
Cut to the chase.
JEFF
Redcap bet me that I would forget to leave a glass of the Latour I was bragging about out for him tonight. This very night. Before first light. And I bet him I wouldn’t forget and if I did leave the wine out I would win the wager and . . .
MARY
And?
JEFF
He would become my friend..
MARY
If you forgot?
JEFF
Don’t ask. Anyway he looked me in the eye with such a red look. He took his cap off. He spit on it. He lifted it to my face and said, "Bet ya. Hit that spot with your spittle. I did and the deal was made.
MARY
Looks like the all clear’s sounded.
JEFF
Care for a drink?
MARY
Of course.
JEFF
What time is it?
MARY
We’re still OK.
JEFF
A toast.
MARY
To —
JEFF
Never saying "Thank You"
MARY
Amen.
(They toast and fill a glass. They take it to the slider open the slider and are bathed in light. They put the glass out and the light goes out. They are in black.)
MARY
Amen.
JEFF
I’m curious.
MARY
Curiosity killed the cat.
JEFF
You wouldn’t let me say it.
MARY
Let me turn on a light. What are you doing?
JEFF
Seeing if Latour is suitable goblin-quaff for my good friend Redcap.
(Returns with an empty glass — he throws the glass triumphantly to the floor.)
JEFF
Hallelujah!
FADE TO BLACK