From: Actors & Their Roles

(The following is an excerpt from my new play Actors & Their Roles. You are more than welcome to either comment at the bottom of the page, or email me directly at hlohearn@gmail.com. And yes, the play is available for both community and professional groups. Cheers!)

Scene Four- Halfway to Morning


(Late at night. On the lawn between Harold and Louise’s summer cottages.  Harold is seated. Louise enters, carrying a bottle of champagne and a glass.)

LOUISE: Can’t sleep?

HAROLD: What? (realizes it is Louise) No. You too?

LOUISE: Obviously.

HAROLD: You never could sleep on your first night here. Never knew why. So quiet. Well... except for the goddam crickets.

LOUISE: It’s too quiet. Not at all like New York. Strange thing about New York. The noise actually becomes quiet. When you grow accustomed to traffic, planes, an ambulance here and there, the occasional shooting...it all becomes nothing. Then you come here and there’s nothing quite so noisy and annoying as the lap lap lap of waves against a sandy shore.

HAROLD: And the crickets.

LOUISE: Goddam crickets.

HAROLD: Goddam bugs with cute names. Jiminy Cricket. Silly sports with impenetrable rules. Cricket cricket. Sounds like croquet with the rickets. HAH! I like that one.(pause)

definitely an inspiration....

 

LOUISE: So what’s your excuse?

HAROLD: For?

LOUISE: For being awake at 3AM. I have the crickets. What’s yours' Harold?

HAROLD: Oh. Well, I suppose I’m still on Los Angeles time. 3AM here, midnight there and I suppose I feel I should be at a party somewhere. Being all witty and engaging, laughing my ass off at the same joke I heard three times last week. Sometimes I hate being an actor. It would be all so much easier if I were a … gas station attendant or sold mutual funds.

LOUISE: Really?

HAROLD: Oh hell no.

LOUISE: Then - Harold - so long as we’re here having a fine selfish wallow, let’s call this a party. (Pour some champagne into his glass)

HAROLD: Louise! You’ve just poured champagne on my scotch!

LOUISE: Oh Harold, you’ve mixed scotch and champagne before.

HAROLD: Yes but...consecutively, not concurrently!

LOUISE: Well, we’ll give it a name and then everyone will think it’s terribly fashionable. (takes Harold’s scotch bottle and pours some in her champagne glass) I christen thee --- Scampain!

HAROLD: Scampain?

LOUISE: Not good?

HAROLD: No. Sounds disgusting. The accent falls on the pain.

LOUISE: Scampotch?

HAROLD: Well...

LOUISE: Better?

HAROLD: Only slightly.

LOUISE: Will it do?

HAROLD: Not much choice, is there really?

LOUISE: Quite limited. Better than calling it crickets.

HAROLD: Definitely. Then we’ll go - reluctantly - with scampotch. At least it wasn’t champagne and gin - the choices would be either ‘chin’ or ‘jampain’. Neither one appealing.

LOUISE: We must be grateful for the small mercies the Lord bestows upon us. Amen.

HAROLD: Christ, are you that drunk Louise?

LOUISE: No, I don’t think so, but I defer to your expertise in such matters.

HAROLD: Then do pass the bottle so I can wash this ghastly taste out of my mouth.

LOUISE: Save some for me. (Passes the bottle. Glasses refilled)

HAROLD: (rises) Cheers!

LOUISE: Cheers! (they clink glasses and drink)

HAROLD: No flies out tonight.

LOUISE: Save for the crickets.

HAROLD: No. True. But it seems to me there used to be. When we first started coming here.

LOISE: That was when we came in June. Now that we come back to Canada in July, we pass the worst of the fly season.

HAROLD: I defer to your expertise in flies. (pause) Louise?

LOUISE: Yes, Harold?

HAROLD: Why in hell do you always time your visit to coincide with mine? It’s been 12 year since the divorce and here we are still vacationing together like we’re Harold and Marion Cunningham.

LOUISE: I’m shocked by that.

HAROLD: By my implication?

LOUISE: That you would pick a metaphor from television.

HAROLD: I've worked in television.

LOUISE: Not sitcoms though.

HAROLD: Blame it on the scampain. Or the skip-hootch, or whatever this...is.

LOUISE: I believe I will. Now as to your implications...

HAROLD: That you come back each year because you realize our divorce was a horrible mistake?

LOUISE: Such a truly horrible mistake.

HAROLD: Our divorce.

LOUISE: No, your implication. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.

HAROLD: You’re quite sure?

LOUISE: Yes my darling. When  you abandoned me on that wretched tour - in Sudbury of all places -

HAROLD: I believe it was Sault Ste. Marie -

LOUISE: Is there really much of a difference?

HAROLD: Not really, no. One of them has a link. One of them has no trees.

LOUISE: Well, not that I expect you to give a shit, but I cried my eyes out the first week, but when I gathered myself enough and called Max to find a lawyer, from that moment on I’ve never looked back on my decision with the slightest shred of regret.

HAROLD: I see.

LOUISE: Why? Have you?

HAROLD: Had regrets? (thinks) Regrets, I’ve had  a few.

LOUISE: Why Harold, I never thought you’d admit it.

HAROLD: (now starting to sing ‘My Way’) But then again too few to mention. (laughs)

LOUISE: Honestly, you have the most distasteful inability to take any situation seriously. You are the most completely childish...unevolved! man I have ever met.

HAROLD: You used to describe me as being whimsical.

LOUISE: I was young then. I thought Porky’s was wit. I was young physically as well as mentally. Now I see that what I once saw as roguish charm was instead some accident of permanent and unrepentant puberty. (does some gesture of satisfaction) There!

HAROLD: Then...I toast the confidence of your perceptions. (they toast again) Cheers.

LOUISE: Chairs.

HAROLD: But getting back to my original question, why do you come here at the same time every bloody year? Are you just trying to pretend you’re on hiatus, as Amanda says?

LOUISE: Wait...why is the onus of the time frame on ME? Why should I change my vacation time to accommodate you? It’s bad enough that I agreed to take the guest house in the settlement -

HAROLD: Which you have expanded to the size of Windsor Castle -

LOUISE: Ot's barely the size of a Windsor salt shaker. Besides, July is the best time for me to rest, before the new stage season -

HAROLD: Not that there’s anything wrong with summer stock -

LOUISE: Everything is wrong with summer stock. Parks are intended for dog walks and lunchtime romance, not Hedda Gabler in a tent. So therefore it suits my schedule to be here now. What, may I ask, is your excuse?

HAROLD: Well, Amanda’s here.

LOUISE: Amanda lives here darling. You could visit her on Labour Day, Christmas Day, Arbor Day and Saint Swithin’s Day if you so chose.

HaAROLD: As It happens, I choose summer.

LOUISE: Which, even though this is Canada, lasts longer than the two middle weeks of July.

HAROLD: All right, you win. Amanda’s completely wrong about my motives. I come here each year because I have  realized the shallow circus parade my life has become and the only way I can live out my remaining years of happiness is by reuniting with you in matrimonial bliss. (bats his eyes, fetchingly)

LOUISE: Oh how nice. So you brought a girlfriend with you as a token of your affection. What? Do you assume I enjoy human sacrifice? How quaint. You shouldn’t toy with my emotions like that Harold. It took me far too long to rebuild myself after the last time you hurt me. And I mean “the last time” in every sense.

HAROLD: I apologize.

LOUISE: How weak. But what the fuck, it’s halfway to morning. So accepted. You miserable  bastard. (brightens) Cheers!

HAROLD: Poetry becomes you. Cheers. (the glasses are empty) Anything more left in that bottle? (checks) No. Pity.

LOUISE: It’s getting late anyway.

HAROLD: Very (checks watch) Good God.

LOUISE: What time is it?

HAROLD: Almost four.

LOUISE: Oh dear. they’ll be sending out a search party for us.

HAROLD: Well not far too look really - the lawn between two cottages. Besides, I doubt if anyone knows we’re missing. Not me anyway.

LOUISE: What about your - what is her name again?

HAROLD: Miss. Daisy. Buchanan. I doubt if Miss Buchanan misses me.

LOUISE: I see. (pause) I take that back. No, I don’t see. Why wouldn’t she miss you?

HAROLD: The relationship between Daisy and myself is not what you assumed.

LOUISE: (restrains a chuckle) Oh dear, poor Harold.

HAROLD: I accept your undoubtedly heartfelt and sincere pity - testicle-crushing though it might be - But yes, it’s true. The silly girl completely misinterpreted my intentions. She thought that a still-handsome - if I do say so myself and I do - male actor such as myself invites a very pretty novice actress up to myself up to his isolated lakeside property for two weeks of theatrical study that nothing of a sexual nature was on my mind.

LOUISE: (laughing) How naive!

HAROLD: It’s ruining my faith in human nature. When I return to Los Angeles (pronounced Los Ang-el-eez) I shall write a stern letter to the President or Chancellor or whatever the hell he is of UCLA informing him that the university must really better instruct their young coeds in the ways of the world.

LOUISE: Offer a course in Horny one-oh-one?

HAROLD: If necessary, as evidently it is.

LOUISE: Stop Harold! I’m going to pee myself!

HAROLD: I always did bring out the best in you. But I say piss on the whole situation! She had the effrontery to say to me - not three hours ago - when we were curled up on the sofa, fire at full roar, Amanda discretely off to bed, my balls hot coals, she said to me- she said to me! - ‘Oh Harold I wish you could read me a bedtime story the way Daddy used to!’ If I had the - rapidly cooling - balls to do it I’d have said, ‘Of course my dear. How about the one where Little Red Riding Hood meets Lady Chatterley’s Lover on her way to Grandma’s House of Prostitution?’

LOUISE: I wish you had.

HAROLD: I’m sure you do. Sleeping Beauty and the necrophiliac! The Bawdy House at Pooh Corner! … But I didn’t say a word of it. I just gave her a kiss on the forehead and sent her off to bed.

LOUISE: With a cup of hot chocolate?

HAROLD: I longed to lace it with arsenic.

LOUISE: Better luck next time.

HAROLD: Thank you. You’re well-entitled to your laughter with your young Lord Byron, or Lord Buckley, or Eugene O’Neill at your beck and call.

LOUISE: (more sober) Well, this may make you feel better. That situation is not what you think either.

HAROLD: What? Is he blind? You’re still one of the most beautiful women on the planet.
 
LOUISE: “Still” ...and  “one”

HAROLD: (pause) I understand.

LOUISE: Yes. Yes you would. (pause) I need his play Harold. I need the role.

HAROLD: Things are bad in New York? Max not doing his job?

LOUISE: No. Max does his best, bless his heart. They just don’t write the kinds of plays anymore that I do best. You know what I mean. Plays with...words.

HAROLD: Oh yes. I do know. Being in television I’ve had less meat than that coyote in the cartoons.

LOUISE: And you can’t just do revivals year after year after year. You become a museum piece trotted out each spring at the Tonys to present a lifetime achievement award to Angela Lansbury. (pause) I hate that bitch. God damn Cabot Cove. Isn’t everyone there dead by now? Anyway, or so, in order for me to be cast in the kinds of plays they do produce now - the ones where everyone is a cartoon character brought to half-life, I need an ‘in’ with the author, don’t I?

HAROLD: (considers a long time ) So...............and I say this with the gentlest of spirits - truly - truly truly truly Louise …........... you’re willing to be the punchline of the old joke about sleeping with the writer.

LOUISE: (steely-eyed and instant) Yes.

HAROLD: Poor, dear Louise. (rises to hug her)

LOUISE: No. No Harold. No sympathy, no pity, because no regrets. I look back at our divorce with no regrets, my career past - no regrets - my current life - no regrets. I do what I need to do. Il deum still muove. (exits)

HAROLD: The Earth still moves. But look what they did to Galileo.