David Hare Plays 1 Page 2

  Not at all. Nor would I wish it to be. The whole point of writing plays is to express things which cannot be reduced. In America Plenty was widely seen as a play about the Vietnam war. In Japan it was seen as a play about the superiority of women to men. In England it was seen as post-war history by some and as a play about a debilitating neurosis by others. In Israel, I am told the movie was watched every week on a kibbutz, whether from choice or necessity I don’t know.

  Q: It was the end of nearly ten years’ work?

  You could say. The day after it opened in London, I went to live abroad. I couldn’t go fast enough. And it was over four years before I wrote another stage play.

  David Hare

  London

  September 1995

  SLAG

  For Margaret

  Characters

  Joanne, twenty-three

  Elise, twenty-six

  Ann, thirty-two

  Scene 1: Common Room. Summer

  Scene 2: Cricket Pitch. Summer

  Scene 3: Bathroom. Summer

  Scene 4: Common Room. Same Day

  Scene 5: Bedroom. Autumn

  Scene 6: Common Room. January

  The play is written deliberately with as few stage and acting instructions as possible. Blackouts should be instant, gaps between scenes brief, and scenery minimal.

  Slag was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre Club, London, on 6 April 1970 with the following cast:

  Joanne Rosemary McHale

  Elise Marty Cruickshank

  Ann Diane Fletcher

  Designed by John Halle

  Directed by Roger Hendricks-Simon

  Revived at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 24 May 1971 with the following cast:

  Joanne Lynn Redgrave

  Elise Barbara Ferris

  Ann Anna Massey

  Designed by John Gunter

  Directed by Max Stafford-Clark

  SCENE ONE

  Common Room. They are standing formally with hands raised.

  Joanne I, Joanne.

  Elise I, Elise.

  Ann I, Ann.

  Joanne Do solemnly promise.

  Elise and Ann Do solemnly promise.

  Joanne For as long as I know Elise and Ann.

  Elise For as long as I know Joanne and Ann.

  Ann For as long as I know Joanne and Elise.

  Joanne To abstain from all forms and varieties of sexual intercourse.

  Elise and Ann All forms and varieties of sexual intercourse.

  Joanne To keep my body intact in order to register my protest against the way our society is run by men for men whose aim is the subjugation of the female and the enslavement of the working woman.

  Elise and Ann The working woman.

  Joanne All forms of sex I therefore deny myself in order to work towards the establishment of a truly socialist society.

  Ann breaks away.

  Ann Oh, come on.

  Joanne What?

  Ann I’ve come along with you so far, but … socialist society!

  Joanne All right, you may dissent at this point but the essential commitment is made. All sex I deny.

  Ann Can we not drop the subject now once and for all?

  Elise No one’s going to test our determination anyway.

  Joanne Is there any coffee?

  Ann No. No one’s going to be much deprived.

  Elise It’s not as if we ever saw men except parents, and it’s very unlikely we’ll ever see any more of those.

  Ann It wasn’t really that bad.

  Joanne It was a disaster.

  Exit Elise.

  Ann They were a little conscious of the lack of numbers. Who wouldn’t be? A chill in the air of Great Hall.

  Joanne The singing of the Internationale should have warmed them up.

  Ann That was a singularly silly gesture on your part. Nobody knew the tune anyway. But your stupidity at least managed to unite them. We’ve been through the very worst that we can know, and now it’ll be time to rebuild.

  Joanne When Robinson Crusoe landed on a desert island, his first instinct was to create a perfect embryo of the society he had escaped from.

  Ann Thank you, Joanne, but can we leave politics out of this? We will build a new sort of school where what people feel for people will be the basis of their relationships. No politics.

  Joanne In Buñuel’s version – 1952, I think, anyway his Mexican period, the part of Robinson Crusoe was played by …

  Re-enter Elise.

  Elise Coast’s clear. They’ve gone.

  Joanne The part of Crusoe was played by …

  Elise For Christ’s sake shut up.

  Ann Let’s not talk like that.

  Joanne You started it.

  Ann What’s the point?

  Joanne She was getting at me.

  Ann Divided we fall.

  Ann resumes chalking in the coloured parts of the blackboard. Elise starts knitting.

  Elise I’ve nearly finished another bootee. Its little feet are going to look so sweet.

  Ann Lovely.

  Joanne All you need now is a fuck.

  Joanne picks up Sight and Sound.

  Elise I’m sitting here and often I stop and think perhaps I’ve seen my very last man.

  Ann Tradesmen.

  Elise I mean real men. I can’t quite grasp what that means. Ann, Joanne, imagine it.

  Joanne Tremendous.

  Elise No more men.

  Joanne The ideal.

  Ann We’re perfectly well used to it. I’ve been two years without now and I tell you I feel better.

  Elise You don’t look any better.

  Ann I eat better.

  Elise Repulsive.

  Joanne goes to the window where something has caught her attention. She screams out.

  Ann I’ve taken off weight and I don’t have my skin trouble any longer.

  Joanne Stop buggering about, you vile little child.

  Ann I don’t doubt, Elise, that men will some time reappear in your life.

  Joanne That’s better.

  Ann And you will be happy. But until then we must spend the time creatively.

  Elise Hurrah.

  Ann We will build a new Brackenhurst.

  Joanne When Robinson Crusoe landed on a desert island his first instinct …

  Ann Well what would you do?

  Joanne Do as you like. You’re in charge.

  Ann You find it so easy to criticize. What would you do?

  Joanne I don’t know.

  Ann Really? Elise?

  Elise What?

  Ann Do I have to do all the thinking?

  Elise Mm.

  Joanne (back at window) Take that thing out of your mouth.

  A bell rings incredibly loud.

  Ann There’s no time to be lost.

  Joanne Incidentally, I’m fed up with my room.

  Ann Your room will be seen to.

  Joanne When I was a projectionist …

  Elise We don’t want to know.

  Joanne Do you know the last film I saw?

  Elise Touch of Evil, Orson Welles, 1957.

  Joanne Stupid to claim it’s a great film, but it does contain the most wonderful camera-work.

  Elise The last film I saw was Look at Life.

  Ann I haven’t been for years.

  Elise Called Loads on Roads.

  Joanne That’s late ’68 Look at Life. Not a very great period at all. Very facile camera-work.

  Elise I enjoyed it.

  Joanne Crap.

  Elise I thought it assured.

  Joanne I thought it crap.

  Elise I had a really good time.

  Joanne What are you trying to get at?

  Ann And I never saw it.

  Elise You’d have liked it, Ann.

  Joanne What are you trying to prove?

  Ann Girls, my girls.

  Joanne (faintly) Oh yes.

  Ann gets up, throws the chalk into the air. The bell ring
s again. Yells across the room out of the window

  Ann Get into class.

  Joanne Who’s teaching?

  Elise I am.

  Ann Why aren’t you in there?

  Elise I’ve given them reading. I put that bossy one in charge.

  Ann Is that a sign of a good schoolteacher?

  Elise We’re appalling schoolteachers.

  Ann Come, come.

  Joanne Are you going to teach?

  Elise No.

  Joanne I think I will, then.

  Exit Joanne.

  Ann I won’t have that said.

  Elise Why have we only got eight pupils then?

  Ann Eleven paid.

  Elise Eight stayed.

  Ann The eight are very happy.

  Elise Freaks.

  Ann You’re as responsible as anyone.

  Elise Agreed.

  Ann Though not as responsible as her.

  Elise She’s not harming anyone.

  Ann She’s harming my girls. My beautiful girls. I’m sentimental perhaps but I do think girls should be spared her sort of nonsense.

  Elise It does them good.

  Ann Stop expressing your opinions. They don’t help.

  Elise Leave off.

  Ann You’re such a hopeless person. As a person. Don’t you wish anything for yourself?

  Elise In the words of Isadora Duncan, I would like to be remembered as a great dancer but I fear I will only be remembered as a good bang.

  Bell rings yet more insistently.

  That’s all. The whole thing can probably be blamed on some childhood vitamin deficiency. Or a great rush of air to my legs that sucks men to me. I’m chilly.

  Ann It is chilly.

  Elise Stop staring at me.

  Ann Window.

  Elise shuts the window.

  Do you think things are very far gone?

  Elise Of course.

  Ann The parents were not impressed. What do you think of Joanne’s plans?

  Elise Ridiculous.

  Ann She’s renamed her study the Women’s Liberation Workshop. She says she’s teaching dialectics this week instead of gym.

  Elise You’ll have to fight back.

  Ann What do you think of my plans?

  Elise Hopelessly naïve.

  Ann I like the idea of a new cricket pavilion.

  Elise Hopeless optimism.

  Ann I’d like a new row of baths.

  Elise Hopeless incompetence.

  Ann They’re currently filthy.

  Elise The girls tell me they find it exciting to smoke cigarettes in their baths, the height of decadence.

  Ann I’d prefer you didn’t talk about the girls smoking in front of me.

  Elise You know they smoke.

  Ann I do not know they smoke. I don’t know that at all. And if they do, Elise, I want it reported to me properly, not slipped into our conversation by subterfuge. I’m only trying my best, (no response) There are sixteen too many milk bottles coming every day. This has been going on for nine days. There are 144 spare bottles of milk in various shades of cheese.

  Elise Joanne is domestic science.

  Ann Joanne is.

  Elise She’s a constant reproach.

  Ann I’ve told her.

  Elise I told her to love life. If you come to Brackenhurst unused, you are sure to be unused for life.

  Ann It’s not that bad. Fancy a game?

  Elise Thank you, no.

  Ann Just because you always lose.

  Ann is bouncing a ping-pong ball on her bat.

  Elise I lose at all the games I play from ping-pong upwards and at Brackenhurst as there’s nothing else to do it makes for a very fine time.

  Ann starts thwacking the ball hard against the back wall and leaping and grunting to return it.

  Ann And that. And that. And that.

  Elise If the governors see fit to close the school, we’ll all be out of a job.

  Ann And that.

  Elise Are they all relations of yours?

  Ann Mostly.

  Elise Look at this dress. Do you think it suits me?

  Ann stops ping-ponging. Elise walks manneredly round the room, head high, legs in a straight line.

  Ann I’ve seen it so often I can’t tell.

  Elise I should have been a model. I would have shown clothes to advantage. I would have loved it. I should have been an actress.

  ‘Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face

  Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek

  For that which thou has’t heard me speak tonight.’

  Acting. That was Acting.

  Ann has returned to her blackboard.

  (loud and black) O Desdemona!

  Ann Look, I think it’s all in, come and see.

  Elise Where? It looks very nice.

  Ann It’s taken me four hours that. The children need colour to help them learn.

  Elise Why don’t you get rid of Joanne?

  Ann I am responsible as much to my staff as to the children in my care. I have to think on everyone’s behalf.

  Enter Joanne.

  You’re meant to be teaching. Why have you left?

  Joanne I got bored. Your children are so stupid. I was reading Schopenhauer at 10 but this lot can’t manage an alphabet.

  Ann Who’s looking after them?

  Joanne I left that bossy one in charge – Lucrecia Bourgeois as I call her. She’s loving it.

  Ann You’re the worst of the lot.

  Joanne There’s a dog, incidentally, crapping on your tennis courts.

  Exit Ann fast to tennis courts.

  You were talking about me.

  Elise Rubbish.

  Joanne You changed the subject.

  Elise I bet there’s nothing on the courts.

  Joanne Flabby cow. The jerk. Go and look.

  Elise Doesn’t bother me.

  Joanne Flabby cow.

  Elise Child.

  Joanne Tit. Withered tit.

  Enter Ann.

  Elise Well?

  Ann There’s nothing there.

  Joanne You’ve hardly looked.

  Ann I’ve looked enough.

  Joanne The dog’s probably gone by now but I doubt if the crap will have fled.

  Ann I’ve looked once.

  Joanne Take a proper look.

  Ann No.

  Joanne Do you want to warp my development or something?

  Ann OK.

  Exit Ann.

  Elise What’s out there?

  Joanne If she can’t see it, that’s her problem.

  Elise Invention.

  Joanne In a situation like this, anything is possible. The ascendant triumph of the mind. The battle pitched in heaven and in hell.

  Elise You mean there’s nothing out there?

  Joanne You must allow for things beyond your understanding.

  Elise You mean there’s nothing out there.

  Joanne The inner eye.

  Elise You don’t impress me with these antics and you only lose the sympathy of Ann.

  Joanne The revolutionary consciousness – my own – admits of no limitation to possible fields of vision. The world is infinite. As soon as anything may be said to have revolutionary essence, it may be said to exist.

  Elise Do dogs’ stools have revolutionary essence?

  Joanne The case of the dogshit is marginal and particular.

  Ann is back.

  Ann What is the point of all this? You send me hunting … I really don’t understand you.

  Joanne There are things about you I dislike.

  Ann Let’s simply talk about it.

  Joanne It’s there if you look for it.

  Ann I don’t know.

  Joanne This is a woman’s world.

  Ann and Elise reel.

  Elise Again!

  Ann Nothing to do with it.

  Joanne I’m sick of you stamping about like a man gone wrong.

  Elise So what?

  Joann
e If men reappear, if we ever see men again at Brackenhurst, they will have to be fey imitations of women to make any impact at all. Let me tell you this –

  Elise Again.

  Joanne No, really, listen. Brackenhurst inches the world forward. Brackenhurst is sexual purity. Brackenhurst is the community of women. Nothing is pointed, nothing perverts.

  Elise She’s off her tiny tits.

  Ann Politics again. I’ve told you about politics.

  Joanne I’m talking about women being women.

  Elise There are some things a woman doesn’t talk about.

  Joanne Yes?

  Elise And her rights are one.

  Ann Her rights is one.

  Joanne I’m talking about women being really women, being different from men.

  Ann When I edited my school magazine, we made the rule you could write about anything you wanted except sex, religion and politics. I’ve tried to stick to that rule in life.

  Joanne And the dog’s crap?

  Ann The original point.

  Joanne Yes.

  Ann Wasn’t there. You don’t have any respect at all.

  Joanne It was there.

  Ann There are old-fashioned values and discipline is one.

  Joanne Please look again.

  Ann If you people wash away the old-fashioned values, what happens to the old-fashioned people who happen to believe in them?

  Elise You’re not old-fashioned.

  Ann There are people riding on the back of those values. You can’t shoot the horse away from under them.

  Elise It doesn’t make sense.

  Joanne I’ve long since lost track.

  Ann If I can’t discipline my staff into abandoning superficial left-wing feminist nonsense –

  Joanne The point of the conversation …

  Elise (to Ann) You don’t have any values.

  Joanne I’m trying to get through to you.

  Ann You’re just using me.

  Joanne Forget it.

  Pause.

  Ann It’s not there. I’ve combed the ground.

  Joanne Thank you.

  Elise How did we get into this conversation?

  Joanne Forget it.

  Joanne goes to pour out a Scotch. Pause.

  Ann Feminist nonsense.

  Joanne You’ve never listened, how do you know?

  Pause.

  Ann In three weeks the chairman of the Governors comes to inspect and we’re far from ready.

  Elise We ought to have something special to show her.