Arthur and Esther

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Arthur and Esther
A Play For Two Soloists
Ross Howard
A Samuel French Acting Edition
samuelfrench.com
samuelfrench-london.co.uk
Copyright © 2014 by Ross Howard
All Rights Reserved
Cover photograph by Antonia Reid
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arthur and esther was first produced at The Studio at Cherry Lane
Theatre, New York on 21st August 2007. The performance was directed
by Sarah Norris with lighting by David Diaz. The cast was as follows:
aRTHUR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taylor Hanes
This version of the play was first produced at the Onyx Theatre, Las
Vegas, on 9th November 2012. The performance was directed by
Brandon Burk with lighting by Jake Copenhaver, set by Michael Morse
and David Sankuer and music by Zoë Kohen Ley. The cast was as follows:
aRTHUR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taylor Hanes
esther. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Breon Jenay
Characters
ARTHUR HUEY – Long-serving community librarian. Mid 50s.
ESTHER HUEY – His wife in life. Eternally youthful. Mid 20s.
Scene
A low lit, empty library in the north-west of England and a brightly lit
area somewhere in the afterlife.
Acknowledgements
Jerry L. Crawford, Sarah Norris, Jim Amstutz, Becky Coleman, Jakob
Holder, Quinn M. Corbin, Oscar F. Limon, Dana Martin, Brandon Burk,
Anthony Del Valle, Glenn Casale, Jayme McGhan, Lisa Easley, Timothy
Trimingham Lee, Jeff Martin, Timothy Daly, Bruce Pachtman, Charles O’
Connor, Mark Muro, Peter Corkhill, Jensen Mabe, Marcel Nunis, Renee
Newlove, Tom Atkinson, Stephen Barnett, Nadia Papachronopoulou,
Antonia Reid, Geoff Leesley and Violet Patton-Ryder.
This play is dedicated to Taylor Hanes
and to Mum and Dad
ARTHUR AND ESTHER
(A low light up on ARTHUR. He sits behind a table with
an old sports bag to one side of him and a litre bottle of
water on the other.)
ARTHUR. Long lost patrons. Loyal to the last. You catch
me in a point of fall. (He unzips the sports bag and
begins to rummage through it.) Things have…capsized.
If you can grasp my meaning. But to continue…and
establish things…in an accurate manner, I must make
it clear that I am not “lost at sea”. No not at all. Nor
do I feel like I’m “up the creek without a paddle”.
(His rummaging increases with purpose.) It’s important I
think… I think it’s important to get your metaphors in
order. Water related or otherwise. (He pulls out a tub of
paracetamol. He studies the label.)
ESTHER. (in the darkness, she speaks in a rapid tempo, a
heightened sort of monotone) In over your head, out
of your depth, heavy, so, so heavy, pushing, pushing
down, pulling you down, push— heavy again, very
heavy, heavy, light, light now, light, feeling light, light,
dark, darker, darker, black.
ARTHUR. Things are bad, have gone bad…but I do know
where I am. By God, I do know that. It’s what to do
next…or rather how. (He attempts to open the tub but
somehow is unable to do so.)
(Bright lights up on ESTHER. They are almost blinding
at first. She looks down at herself, what she is wearing.
She looks at her hands with a sort of wonder, she touches
her face, runs them down her body etc.)
ESTHER. Where are we now? Look at me. Look at you.
Who are you? Crikey, look at…my hands! (She grabs
her backside. She smacks her backside. She looks down at her
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ARTHUR AND ESTHER
breasts.) Well! This place is different! So who are you,
seriously? Sorry, blimmin’ ’eck. I mean, hello. Hi, what
are your names? So we’ve moved. Why’ve we moved?
You seem a little, I don’t know, little nervous. You
know really don’t be, it’s fine honestly – yeah, yeah,
no, me too. I’m nervous. Where are we?
ARTHUR. I do know where I am. By God, I do know that. It’s
what to do next…or rather how. I’ve already decided
what I’m going to do. As for why…well I just want to
have my say first. And somebody to listen. (He bangs the
tub on the edge of the table.) They’re closing my library
and I’m going to kill myself. (He again tries to open it
more forcefully but is just as unsuccessful.) On deciding the
method, one of the perks of being a librarian…and of
a library, has always been that information – on any
given thing I might add – is always right there under
your nose. Now with the internet, they say it’s all at
your fingertips. People seem to be getting lazier and
lazier. The joy of searching for something and finding
it, like you’re a…persistent detective trying to crack
a case…that’s…gone. I foresee a time when everyone
will just have wires stuck on to their head, wires
trailing behind them as they walk, and every thought
process they might have or question they have will
be answered immediately by a supersonic electronic
boost. A cocktail of megabytes, volts and megawatts
surging into the brain and PDF, MP3, zip-zap
documents opening with a flickering, scrolling speed.
Accompanied by the flashing pop up box telling you
you’ve won a yacht. So congratulations for thinking.
Or thinking about thinking. (He reads the label on the
tub.) I sound… I know. But civilization is crumbling.
(He takes out a pair of glasses from the top pocket of his shirt
under the sweater.)
ESTHER. It’s been like this from the start, don’t you think?
No explanations. Just to wait. You can say a little
something. It’s okay, really. Anything? So why are you
here? What did you do? (A beat) Wait, wait, wait. I asked
ARTHUR AND ESTHER
once, I said, “Are we in Purgatory or something?”
but they just smiled at me all condescending like I
was asking if Father Christmas and his reindeer had
been here yet. I think they also thought I was being
ungrateful and were kind of offended. Well he did.
Thingumybob. He looked like he was put out a little.
You know the one I’m talking about? Looks a bit
like Burt Reynolds from that movie White Lightning?
Everyone else just comes and goes but he’s the only
one I really see all the time. Where was he before, I
wonder? He’s the one I always see. I nearly asked him
if he was God once but I thought that after the whole
Purgatory thing it could get round here that I’d gone
crackers. (A beat) Besides, he seems more like he’s in
the administration side of things. But eh, just imagine.
That he was God. What an anti-climax, I’m just saying.
But I mean, he’s handsome. If you like that kind of
thing, I suppose. And most people do. Funny.
ARTHUR. My father used to say “Melvil” – that wasn’t
my name but when my father spoke you listened –
“Melvil, there is nothing like the smell of a book.” (He
puts his glasses on and immediately takes them off.) And
I think he’s right. My father loved books and kept a
respectable library at home as well as the one he kept
here between these four walls. (He wipes the glasses with
his sleeve, breathes on them and polishes.) At the dinner
table we would quiz him on the opening line of any
literary masterpiece you can think of and he would
recite it word perfect. But just weeks before he died he
confessed that he had only read the opening two pages
of every great novel written in the English language
and never went beyond. (He puts the glasses on and
pushes them to the end of his nose.) I admitted to him that
on nights I couldn’t sleep I would sneak downstairs
for something to eat and catch him systematically
bending the spines in four different places of his newly
delivered paperbacks and putting them on the shelves
giving them the look of having been read. (He reads the
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ARTHUR AND ESTHER
top of the cap of the paracetamol tub.) He apologised and
just asked me not to tell Mother. I never did. But when
I visit his grave from time to time and read the epitaph
which my mum suggested, it breaks my heart… “Here
lies Alvin Frank Huey 1926-1987. Loving husband to
Mary. Loving father to Arthur. He lived his life cover
to cover.” (Silence)
ESTHER. So come on, where the hell are we? I know we’re
not in Hell. I mean you all look great! (Silence) You’re
welcome. And me too. (Touches her face) I mean, I can
tell, and the food here’s cracking! And eh, come on,
we don’t really have to lift a finger, do we? I mean,
in some ways, we’ve come up trumps. It’s also quite
temperate for another thing and there’s no blasting
furnace or senseless whippings or anything like that.
So it’s not Hell. You know what I’m on about. No one’s
running around wailing and tearing at their hair or
raping and torturing the new arrivals or anything like
that, are they? No forced sing-alongs. I mean, can you
imagine? Crikey. But maybe that’s on the other wing.
Who knows? (A beat) You don’t, do you? I mean you
can tell me.
ARTHUR. But back to the…of where I was going. Where I
started. The method. Since it was published in 1982, we
have had a book in the library, 28 Ways to Terminate Your
Existence and Questions You May Have by Montgomery
Swank. A Canadian. ISBN 0453527941. We kept it
in our “Personal Development” section at first. (He
slowly and precisely turns the cap of the paracetamol.) It’s
a well-known book among librarians as we frequently
have to re-order it. For reasons you would imagine.
It’s seldom returned once checked out. Testimony to
the accuracy of the content, I suppose. (He opens the
tub with an unnecessary force and the paracetamol shoot out.
He prowls the floor collecting the pills, wiping them on his
sleeve and putting them back into the tub.) We later kept it
under “Restricted Use”. I wouldn’t regard myself as a
penny pincher – it’s just one book – nevertheless, it all
ARTHUR AND ESTHER
adds up. Just out of curiosity and given the history we
had with that particular book, I would monitor what
kind of people would be looking at it. Mostly it was
medical students and the like, which I thought was all
innocent enough. You did get others who seemed to
have more of a vested interest, but it wasn’t my place
to interfere. I never felt right about that kind of thing.
(He takes two paracetamol with water.) But anyway, when
they told me of their plans to close the library they
offered me a settlement and said I could keep as many
books as I had room for at home. For some reason,
I could only think of the Swank book and I took it
home with me that night. They came by yesterday and
boxed everything up and today they took everything
away. They left me the keys so I could say goodbye to
the carpet and windows and then I’m to lock up and
switch the lights off, they said. (He reaches into the sports
bag and pulls out a petrol can and a large box of matches.)
ESTHER. They don’t tell us anything. It’s not like it’s bad
here, I mean don’t think I’m complaining but you can
tell we’re in a different place now, that’s all I’m saying.
Like something really amazing is going on just over
there somewhere and we’re stuck here. Somewhere
just nearby. Like you can hear it, feel it, smell it almost.
Up on the next floor or across the river or what have
you. It’s just a feeling you get, you know? Almost like
we’re in Birkenhead. You know? With Liverpool just
over there in the distance. I don’t know, I’ve never
spent much time in that neck of the woods if truth be
told. Merseyside. But I once went to a pottery class and
there was a lady who was from there and she wasn’t all
that bad really and she said it was alright. So I suppose
when I put it like that it comes highly recommended.
(A beat) I know Southport of course. Formby. They’re
not Blackpool. But that’s just me. I don’t know where
you stand on all that. The Battle of the Beaches. As
nobody calls it. No, this is not Hell. Can’t be. It just
doesn’t have that…ambience. No. So where are you
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ARTHUR AND ESTHER
all from? Geographically speaking? You know, it’s so
cosmopolitan here, if people spoke to one another I
think we’d really learn a lot about things.
ARTHUR. “Huey” as a last name came solely from my father.
Our family name is Dewey, which is an influential
name in the development of libraries across the
United States of America. My great-grandfather is
Melvil Dewey. If you have heard of the Dewey Decimal
Classification System, well that was his idea. He came
up with it when working as an assistant librarian at
university over there. He was only there for three
years, and that’s what he did while he was there. So
you could say we have libraries in the blood in our
family.
ESTHER. Just no children here. Strange. I sort of miss them.
It must be just a life on earth kind of thing, kids. Makes
sense, I suppose. We never had children, Arthur and
I. I mean, I couldn’t, you know. Or he couldn’t. Or
something. One of the two anyway, or both. I mean,
they could never really tell us why. That library, that was
his baby. (A beat) If I could do it all again, I’d have been
a mother. We’d have made that happen somehow. I’d
have made sure about that. A boy would have been
just cracking. He’d have been a little smasher. Maybe
two boys. A pair of sons. Daughters are all well and
good, but, well there’s all kinds of things that can go
wrong or happen to daughters. They grow up so fast.
Especially these days. Down there. But sons – as long as
they stay out of prison they’ll be just fine really. (A beat)
Something the both of you can share and invest in.
Something together. Keep the whole planet ticking
along. Human beings with your physical likeness, you
know, just walking around on earth, swinging arms
gently in the pouring rain…or even just standing there
looking all serious, eating an apple or what have you.
Maybe they’d have liked waving to strangers. Not like
they were – like they weren’t with it, you know. I just
ARTHUR AND ESTHER
mean they’d have been real friendly types. Eh, they’d
have been right little belters.
ARTHUR. Great-grandfather Dewey also helped found the
community of Lake Placid too. During their Great
Depression his son, Godfrey, my grandfather, was
president of the organizing committee of the 1932
Winter Olympics which were to take place there.
He donated some of the family land to be used for
construction of a bobsleigh run. It was then that the
two-crew event as we now know it was introduced.
(He unscrews the top of the petrol can, sniffs the contents
and grimaces. He screws the top back on.) Despite being
born into such circles, my father wanted to be exposed
to more and at the age of nineteen went to Europe,
defeated Hitler, found himself in Lancashire carrying
a slight limp and a smuggled German officer pistol,
and met my mum at a bus stop. She was a Roget. As in
the thesaurus. And the Dewey family were delighted
with the prospect of uniting with the Rogets. Two
of the great families in the history of reference.
But my mother’s family were all mill workers from
Ramsbottom, partially illiterate and no relation. With
the very real threat of disownment from the Dewey
family once they found out, my father changed his last
name to Huey, married my mother and they stayed
right here. He took the community library position
here. When I was old enough I became his assistant.
When he died, I was captain of the whole ship. Until
last week.
ESTHER. They’d have been right little smashers. I’m sure
of that. Still, it’s not everything. And it’s really no
excuse when it comes down to it and no one can say
for sure if that would have changed things any. And
I really did try to keep things going for the both of
us… “keep things going”… I mean, I don’t mean
it was as bad as all that, I mean me and Arthur, well
we’re talking about twenty-nine years. I just mean I’d
do things because I loved him. I still love him. Even
15
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