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