Port Authority (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

Conor McPherson

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 99

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A wry, moving, funny play of how modern man faces up to the responsibility of love, woven in monologues, from the multi-award winning author of The Weir. A boy leaves home for the first time. A man starts a job for which he is not qualified. A pensioner has just been sent a mysterious package. Away from bar-room bravado, three men show us the reality of big dreams and missed chances, of loves lost and trouble found, of the messiness of life and the quirkiness of fate. 'Totally absorbing, often hilarious and, at times, heart-wrenchingly moving... An act of pure theatre' - Irish Times 'A work by a major writer... His sentences are better, his sentiments more developed and shaded than many Booker Prize-winners. He is terrific.' - Observer

Leseprobe

Conor McPherson

PORT AUTHORITY

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Characters

Port Authority

Afterword

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

PORT AUTHORITY

Port Authority was first produced by the Gate Theatre, Dublin, at the New Ambassadors Theatre, London, on 22 February 2001 and subsequently at the Gate Theatre on 24 April 2001. The cast was as follows:

KEVIN

Éanna MacLiam

DERMOT

Stephen Brennan

JOE

Jim Norton

Director

Conor McPherson

Designer

Eileen Diss

Lighting Designer

Mick Hughes

Characters

KEVIN, maybe twenty

DERMOT, late thirties? mid thirties?

JOE, seventy-odd

Author’s Note

The play is set in the theatre.

1

KEVIN

I moved out in the summer.

The house was in Donnycarney and four of us were going to share it.

My folks were not happy about it.

The mad thing was I could see their point.

It was kind of stupid.

I had no job and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

Moving out was like pretending to make a decision.

My dad gave me a lift down to Donnycarney.

With all my clothes in black bin-liners.

It was a bright Sunday afternoon.

I nearly said, ‘I’ll see you later.’

But this was supposed to be for good.

What a joke.

I was moving in with Davy Rose and a guy called Speedy.

I was mates with Davy.

To everybody else in Dublin he was Mad Davy Rose, hammered on Scrumpy Jack.

But I saw the normal side to him and he spoke to me about stuff and, you know?

Speedy was more Davy’s friend than mine.

Although I could hardly see how anyone could be friends with Speedy at all.

He always seemed to me to be unbelievably stupid.

He definitely had a learning disorder or something.

Mostly he was just out of it, but even sober I couldn’t make head nor tail of him.

It was like he was excited by being bored.

I had nothing in common with him.

He was asleep in the back garden when I went through.

Davy was sitting in an old deckchair, drinking cider and playing Billy Idol on his ghettoblaster.

He was in a state of agitation because he was in the process of being dumped by this girl with blue hair from Beaumount.

He was all distracted, talking about hopping on his bike going up to annoy her.

I didn’t want him to leave me on my own with Speedy so I made him come down to the off-licence with me and I got us more Scrumpy.

And we just went back and kept drinking.

Davy was searching through Speedy’s pockets for smokes and I was casually inquiring where Clare was.

She was moving in as well.

Everybody in Dublin was in love with her.

She was buds with me and Davy but she tended to go out with headbangers. Or lads who thought they were, anyway.

She was always with some spiky-haired crusty who you could see was from Dublin 4 or somewhere, putting on a bit of an accent.

They were all rich and spoiled and better looking than any of us.

Davy said he hadn’t seen her.

So we got fairly pissed there in the garden and then I went up to see which room was mine.

I had the bedroom at the back.

Davy had the attic conversion.

Clare had the bedroom at the front.

Speedy was in the boxroom.

We were all paying thirty quid, except Speedy who was paying twenty.

All was in my room was a bed and a chair.

I was in my sleeping bag all night lying there awake listening to hear if I could hear Clare come in but all I could hear were all the sounds that made me try to imagine I was still at home.

But it didn’t work.

In the morning I borrowed Davy’s bike and I went down to Kilbarrack to sign on and sort out rent allowance.

And when I got back it was just Speedy sitting there watching Richard and Judy.

He nodded at me and I sat down there near him.

But he was genuinely watching Richard and Judy.

I was nearly afraid to say anything in case he missed something.

He was eating Rice Krispies like he was on his way out to work in a minute or something.

As if, you know.

And he suddenly starts saying, still not looking at me, about how last Friday a guy from a band from Donaghmede had called down with this small goth girl who was a notorious slut.

And your man was in the back room with Davy jamming on these two bases that were in there.

And your one asks Speedy if he has any hash and he had so they went up to the boxroom and had a spliff and all of a sudden they got stuck into each other, having a sneaky ride.

And Speedy was trying to listen out to hear if he could still hear your man jamming with Davy and he wasn’t coming up. But your one was starting to make so much noise that Speedy just got too nervous so he just went into the jacks and pulled himself off.

And he said all this to me just like that.

And I was just sitting there staring at the side of his head, thinking that there was nothing he could ever say that could interest me beyond the terrible notion that I cared absolutely nothing for this fellow human being. And that if he died I’d feel nothing.

And we sat there in this room for a while until I could barely stand it.

Until I casually asked him if he knew when Clare was moving in.

But there was nothing about Speedy to suggest that anyone had just spoken to him.

And I was trying to decide whether to ask him again or just fuck off out or something and he just goes, ‘She’s here.’

2

DERMOT

Dinner. Friday night. O’Hagan’s house.

A kind of a welcome to the fold.

And the elation of a huge salary in an interesting job and having impressed these clean-shaven tailor-made suits was clashing with the embarrassment of having to present Mary to them.

Suddenly I was thinking about my wife.

It was alright when I was at Whelan’s.

All the wives looked the same.

Down at the Christmas do in the Old Sheiling.

We moaned about them at the bar.

The way they were squealing at each other.

Hysterical, at being out of the house.

Just a few weeks before I’d been looking for some old accountancy textbooks in the press in the bedroom and a load of chocolate fell out on top of me.

And I just didn’t even bother, you know that way?

She took up half the couch and watched EastEnders.

And I sat in the boxroom brushing up for the interview.

O’Hagan had rang me himself personally to tell me I’d got it.

Cocktails in Gogarty’s Monday night to say hello.

Griffen, Staunton, Crawford. Strong handshakes.

What I presumed was Armani. All ex-rugby.

And then one or two of their wives suddenly.

And I was like, ‘Holy fuck, easy Tiger!’

Me in my Penny’s blazer and my loafers from Dunnes.

Hardly able, but trying to swallow these Glenmorangies being pressed into my fist.

Swaying in the door.

Mary and Colm curled up in the living room watching Friends.

Colm. Nine years of age. Constant cold.

Useless at sports.

Bullied until third class.

Until Mary went down and spoke to the head.

Went down on her own.

Because there was simply only so much I could fit in.

And the head dealt with it.

And I drove Mary and Colm wherever they wanted to go at the weekends, and although I wouldn’t say I was necessarily a quiet person, I hardly said a fucking word.

Dinner in O’Hagan’s house. Friday night.

I whined at Mary about how I needed to dress better.

She took me from shop to shop and I shelled out for three suits. Cotton shirts. Silk ties.

Catching Mary smiling and seeing what there was to see in her when we were younger, but we weren’t younger now and I told her that dinner at O’Hagan’s was staff only.

No wives. That was another night.

And for once I had something to treasure, that I was looking forward to.

A glittering jewel on the mountain at the top of Friday.

And me trudging towards it not wanting to get there too quickly.

Enjoying it in the middle distance.

Because I could see it and it was mine.

And it was going to happen.

3

JOE

Sister Pat knocked while I was getting dressed.

I could smell breakfast being served.

It was the first morning I’d felt hungry in ages.

She had a little box wrapped in brown paper.

It was addressed to me, but at my son’s house.

His wife, Lisa, had dropped it in to me on her way to work.

Sister Pat was the closest thing I had to a friend, really.

She was the same age as a lot of the residents but like that old expression, young at heart.

As opposed to me who was just bloody immature.

‘It’s not your birthday or something, is it?’ She says.

‘No, my birthday’s not ’til June.’ I go.

My birthday’s not ’til June! Like it’d make a difference!

Sure I hadn’t had a birthday present in years, sure!

Who’d be sending an old curmudgeon birthday presents?

And not on his birthday.

I’m not that popular.

Well. I felt like a bit of a twit standing there holding it.

It was very light. But there was definitely something in it.

For a religious, Sister Pat had a lot of little girl in her.

She was being nosy, standing there waiting for me to open it. But, like the bold child she knew she was, she knew I was too awkward to tell her to clear off the hell there out of it.

‘Are you not going to open it?’ She goes.

‘I am.’ I say.

Little box covered in brown paper.

Dun Laoghaire postmark.

‘I’m going to wait ’til I have my breakfast,’ I say.

‘And I’ll open it when I’m drinking my tea.’

‘Do you know what you are?’ she says to me, ‘You’re very vain.’

And she left then.

I knew what she meant, but she said things like that and there was no real anger in it.

And it didn’t really make me feel anything really either.

That’s just what she was like.

Very direct.

A brilliant nun really.

A perfect bloody nun.

So I put on my jacket and took my stick and I went down the corridor to the dining room.

There was about twenty of us in the home at that point.

Quick look around.

All present and correct.

No one gone up to Beaumont in the middle of the night.

A few of us had sticks.

And a few were in wheelchairs.

But we were fairly agile now, not too bad.

I sat down there beside Jackie Fennel and Mary Larkin.

Who I mostly sat with when I ate.

Often me and Jackie’d wander round to the bookies and get a bottle of stout in Tighe’s.

And we’d put little bets on for Mary Larkin as well.

Local women worked in the home and they made you your breakfast and they brought it over to you and everything.

They were great to us.

So there we were and we spoke about the weather and Mary Larkin’s son, Peter, who was a guard and whose wife was expecting another baby.

And Jackie Fennel was looking at the racing in the Independent.

And now and again I’d think about the little box in my pocket. And my arm’d move a little bit.

And after breakfast when everyone began to mooch off for a chat or do their own thing, I sat there by myself having a cup of tea while the local women cleared up.

And I took out the box and I pulled at the string which I put in my pocket.

And I pulled the paper off neatly because it was all done neatly and I figured out how to get into the cardboard.