Waiting for Existentialism

Jun 01, 2006 12:47


Hurst and Jones are theatre critics, Robin and Helmat are actors.

On stage two people drink coke and munch fries.

Hurst: “Has it started yet?”

Jones: “It starts with a pause.”

Hurst: “How can a play start with a pause?”

Jones: “Existentialist plays always start with a pause.”

Hurst: “Oh God, not one of those again! So I’ll have to sit here the whole night listening to a bunch of actors talking nonsense with deep hidden meanings even they don’t understand?” (pause) “Or the playwright for that matter.”

Jones: “Existentialist plays touch on the deepest essence of what it is to be human.”

Hurst: “Well, I think we got it after Beckett: Waiting is boring and life is meaningless. No need to drone on about it with another tiresome, pretentious, redundant, artsy fartsy play. Damn tedious waste of an evening.”

Jones: “Shhh!”

Robin: “Where’s your burger?”

Helmat: “I placed a special order.”

Robin: “Oh great! Now we’ll have to wait for it and it’ll take forever. Why did you have to place a special order?”

Helmat: “I don’t want gherkins.”

Jones: “This young lad is clearly struggling with the responsibilities of adulthood and the stressful demands of modern day society.”

Robin: “You could have picked them off afterwards.”

Helmat: “But then I’ll have gherkin-fingers.”

Jones: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better way of expressing the psychological impasse that the current generation is in. Gherkin-fingers. Wow. That’s deep.

Helmat: “So where’s your burger then?”

Robin: (pause) “I’m allergic to onions.”

Jones: “There’s so much truth and despair in that one statement. Makes you want to ask: Where is Godot?”

Hurst: “At home with the wife and kids?”

Helmat: “Since when are you ‘allergic to onions’?”

Robin: (pause) “I heard you saw Felicity last night.”

Jones: “Non sequitur! God, this is so modern.”

Hurst: “I’ll have Shakespeare over this modern crap any day.”

Jones: “But don’t you see any Hamletian qualities in the young hero?”

Hurst: “What young hero?”

Jones: “Well, there’s two. Just pick one.”

Robin: “So, is your mum still screwing your uncle?”

Helmat: “Just shut the fuck up!”

Hurst: “No, I don’t see it.”

Jones: “Well, one of the basic rules of drama is that all plays are Hamlet. So there’s got to be a connection.”

Hurst: “What’s that bloke’s name again?”

Jones: (studies programm) “Helmat.”

Hurst: “Isn’t that an anagram of Hamlet?”

Jones: “Nah, too far-fetched.

Hurst: “Right. But Helmat? It’s got to mean something. Names always mean something.”

Jones: “Or several things.”

Hurst: “With as many conflicting interpretations as possible.”

Jones: “Helmat, Helmet, protection.”

Hurst: “Hell mat. Doormat to hell.”

Jones: “Helmat, Heimat, home.”

Hurst: “We’re getting paid for this?”

Jones: "Well, we do have a tough - euhm - line of thinking we ought to master, in our profession and all."

(Helmat takes off his boot with some difficulty.)

Jones: "Did you see that? The young playwright pays hommage to the master!"

Hurst: "Shakespeare?"

Jones: "No, Beckett!"

Hurst: "God, it smells!"

Jones: "That's total theatre."

Helmat: "Now where's that burger?"

Robin: "Maybe they forgot about us." (he picks his nose and eats it)

Jones: "Now if this isn't Brechtian Verfremdung I don't what is."

Hurst: "Brecht?"

Jones: "Yes, Brecht. The German Shakespeare."

Hurst: "No, that's Shakespeare."

Robin: "I'm still hungry."

Jones: "Oh, this is cutting edge theatre! Feminist and post-colonialist all in one."

Hurst: "I've had enough of this shit." (he shoots Helmat and Robin) "British drama is dead."

THE END
Next post
Up