Well Done God! Read online

  CHARACTERS

  HAAKON, a teacher, about thirty

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST, about forty-five

  TEACHER ONE, about fifty

  TEACHER TWO, about forty

  MISS HAMMOND, gym mistress, big, about thirty

  SEVERAL OLD AND MIDDLE-AGED MEN, hospital out-patients

  CAPON, ECKERSLEY, and several other schoolboys

  Darkness. Then a lantern slide punched up on a screen. It represents a stooping human male figure, in outline from the right side, with the spine and spinal nervous system marked in different colours from the outline. A PHYSIOTHERAPIST stands beside the screen holding a short pointer, with which she indicates appropriately during her little lecture, which she has obviously given many times before.

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST:

  Here you see the spine — Your attention please/

  The spine, stretching from the base of the skull/

  To this tail or tail-like extremity/

  The spine is made up of separate parts/

  Vertebrae, we call the parts vertebrae/

  They’re made of bone, the vertebrae, bone, bone/

  They move in relation to each other/

  When you bend your back, they move together/

  (It should now be possible to see that the physiotherapist is lecturing to a small group of men aged from thirty upwards, dressed in badly-fitting dressing gowns and clutching fibre cases. They sit on stacking cantilever chairs, less than comfortably.)

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST:

  They’re kept apart, so they don’t rub or grate/

  By a cartilage

  PATIENT ONE: What’s that then?

  HAAKON: Gristle/

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST:

  Listen and you’ll know. Cartilage is like/

  Cotton, strands of cotton, on the outside/

  Hard, but on the inside it’s not, it’s soft/

  It’s gelatinous, gluey, it’s all soft/

  Now, most people seem to think that the back/

  That the spine can bear any weight at all/

  It can’t. They bend over to pick up — Ouch!/

  The spine just wasn’t designed to do that/

  PATIENT ONE:

  How’s that then?

  HAAKON: What do you mean, designed?

  PATIENT TWO: Yes?/

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST:

  You’re all here because you asked for too much/

  You all asked your backs to bear too much weight/

  PATIENT THREE:

  Well, I’m eighty

  HAAKON: It’s a good age

  PATIENT THREE: It’s not/

  It’s a bloody awful age

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST: That’s enough/

  When you put a lot of strain on your back/

  Then you may move a cartilage or disc/

  You’ve all heard of a slipped disc, haven’t you?/

  You see, the spine was never designed to/

  Bend over like this. . .

  HAAKON: Faulty construction!/

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST:

  The muscles are too weak

  PATIENT TWO: Eh?

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST: They only/

  Connect short pieces of bone together/

  The correct way to pick something up is/

  To bend at the knees and make use of these/

  (indicates on lantern slide appropriately:)

  Long and very strong muscles in your legs/

  HAAKON:

  What I want to know is, how is it that/

  Since we can obviously do these things/

  But our backs can’t do them properly?

  PATIENT TWO: Yes?/

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST:

  The fact remains that the spine is just not/

  Designed to

  HAAKON: Who designed it, then?

  PATIENT THREE: Why not?/

  PATIENT TWO:

  Yes, why make it like that?

  PHYSIOTHERAPIST: I don’t know why/

  PATIENT ONE:

  Yes, why?

  HAAKON: Doctors can’t answer ‘why’ questions/

  Any more than the vicars can

  PATIENT THREE: No

  PATIENT ONE: Why?/

  PATIENT TWO

  But who designed it like this then?

  PATIENT THREE: God!

  HAAKON: Yes!/

  PATIENT THREE:

  It’s God’s fault!

  PATIENT FOUR: Another cock-up!

  HAAKON: But whose/

  Fault is it if you don’t believe in God?/

  PATIENT THREE:

  Yours

  PATIENT ONE:

  Your fault

  HAAKON: My fault?

  PATIENT THREE:Yes, your fault, mate, yours!/

  (Blackout)

  Spot picks out an interior wall, with a flight of plaster ducks — small, medium, and large — on it. Another spot picks up entry of HAAKON. He comes in wearily, but then sees ducks, drops to the floor in a shooting posture, and imitates shotgun firing: three shots and a clunk as one duck falls off wall make up first four syllables of first line.

  HAAKON:

  Bompf! Bompf! Bompf!

  (Clunk!)

  TEACHER ONE:

  Tiresome histrionics/

  Haakon, do you have to in the staffroom?/

  (Lights up: a school staffroom, with at least three teachers: armchairs, tables, noticeboards: everything consistent — e.g. piled crockery, cups of tea, children’s voices in playground off — with the end of lunch break.)

  TEACHER TWO:

  Three shots from a double-barrelled shotgun?/

  HAAKON:

  Pedant

  TEACHER ONE: And I thought your back was injured?/

  MISS HAMMOND:

  Yes, how are you?

  HAAKON: Better. Or perhaps worse/

  Depends on how you look at it. I’m nearer/

  Yes, nearer at any rate, I’m nearer/

  RADIO ANNOUNCER:

  ‘From the Midlands we present the Archers,/

  An everyday story of count. . .’

  (HAAKON goes over to radio, switches off abruptly at exactly this point.)

  HAAKON: Yes, quite/

  Just listen to this: at the hospital/

  They gave us a little lecture about/

  The spine

  TEACHER ONE: We’d like to talk about that too/

  The spine — or rather about spinelessness/

  Is what we hear about you true, Haakon?/

  That you were in some bank on Saturday/

  When a gunman attempted to rob it?/

  HAAKON:

  He didn’t attempt it — he succeeded/

  TEACHER ONE:

  And you stood there and did nothing at all?/

  HAAKON:

  What was I sposed to do — get myself killed?/

  Only a few months ago there was this/

  Hero who picked up this adding machine/

  And threw it at a bandit and you know?/

  The next thing the nearest little girl clerk/

  Had half her face blown off by a shotgun/

  TEACHER TWO:

  Well, in my day we called that cowardice/

  HAAKON:

  Well, today we call it stupidity/

  And look, whose money was it anyway?/

  You just don’t think about things hard enough/

  Do you know that the banks made a survey/

  And decided that safety precautions/

  Installing alarms and traps and so on/

  Would cost too much and robberies were cheaper?/

  The amount they lost through theft was far less?/

  Did you know that?

  TEACHER TWO: That’s not the point!

  HAAKON: It is!/

  It’s exactly the bloody point, you see/

  You just don’t think about things hard enough/

  No, let me tell you about this morning/

  There were all these old men with back trouble/

  And the hospital wa
sn’t any use/

  They just blamed it on to God as usual/

  But that’s

  MISS HAMMOND: Of course they didn’t! That’s silly/

  HAAKON: Just you shut your little mouth, Miss Hammond/

  I’m trying to say something important/

  MISS HAMMOND:

  Just silly

  HAAKON: I know your sort, Miss Hammond/

  Your sort draw the line at actual entry/

  (Exit MISS HAMMOND)

  TEACHER TWO:

  Haakon! Are you not feeling very well?

  HAAKON: As well/

  As anyone — that’s what I want to say/

  We’re all rotting away, slowly rotting/

  And for some it’s not even slow, either/

  We just rot, corrode, decay, putrefy/

  And there’s nothing we can do about it!/

  TEACHER ONE:

  That’s childish rot, Haakon, just damned childish!/

  HAAKON:

  Because you first realised it as a child/

  Doesn’t make it childish equals useless/

  We rot and there’s nothing that can stop it/

  Can’t you feel the shaking horror of that?/

  You just can’t ignore these things, you just can’t!/

  (The bell signifying the end of lunch break sounds. HAAKON turns away, says, much more quietly:)

  HAAKON:

  You just can’t ignore these things, you just can’t/

  (HAAKON goes to his locker, takes out some books, goes out: no sooner has the door shut than he opens it again and stands in the doorway.)

  HAAKON:

  Oh, a girl in 4B called Helen Hunt/

  Told me she found a purse in the playground/

  So if anyone’s lost a leather purse/

  Will they please go to Helen Hunt for it/

  (HAAKON makes a theatrical gesture in keeping with this old music-hall joke: and exits.)

  (Blackout)

  Enough props — desk, chair, blackboard — to indicate a classroom. Enter HAAKON. Noise of kids gradually subsides.

  HAAKON:

  What lesson are we sposed to be doing?/

  Anyway, there’s something more important/

  I’m not myself today

  CAPON: Who are you then?/

  ECKERSLEY:

  But why can’t we have Civics as usual?/

  HAAKON:

  You’d rather have the usual, Eckersley?/

  The usual useless information?

  ECKERSLEY: Yes/

  HAAKON:

  Right then. How many halfpennies in a mile?/

  Secret is to know the diameter/

  One inch. More. More useless information/

  Do you know how to recognize your cows?/

  Now your Ayrshire is a brown and white cow/

  Don’t confuse with the black and white Friesian/

  And here’s one you haven’t heard of before/

  The Red Poll which as its name might suggest/

  Is a deep chestnut brown not red at all/

  And from the Channel

  CAPON: Sixty-three thousand/

  Three hundred and sixty

  HAAKON: What? What?

  WHOLE CLASS (shouts): Halfpennies/

  HAAKON:

  Capon, I shall work you one in the spud!/

  Now, Guernseys are sort of soft brown and white/

  And Jerseys are much the same colours but/

  They have funny faces. Which reminds me/

  Did you hear about the old bull who said/

  ‘I’d like a nice tight jersey for Christmas’?/

  (Shocked, delighted, reproving noises from class.)

  CHILD ONE:

  What’s up with him today?

  CAPON: He’s not himself/

  HAAKON:

  Who am I then? Don’t answer that. Quiet!/

  You ought to be able to take that now/

  We make you too many allowances/

  Too many for your presumed innocence/

  Too many for your snotty-nosedness/

  We wrongly emphasize slight differences/

  To the cost of common humanity/

  For — and let’s be very sure about this — /

  You are human just like the rest of them/

  You are human just like the rest of them/

  And your one certainty is that you’ll die — /

  Our dying is the only certainty/

  (Someone laughs.)

  HAAKON:

  Shut up you little bastards, just shut up!/

  I’m trying to teach you something real, real!/

  Something that I’ve learnt for myself this time/

  Something that has to do with all of you/

  You’re going to die but before then/

  You’re going to decay, rot, for years, rot/

  Slowly your bodies are going to rot/

  Slowly, mind, just slowly, for years, slowly/

  And painfully, your bodies just give up/

  They just stop working, function by function/

  I saw old men this morning with their skin/

  Cross-wrinkled like the neck of a tortoise/

  Skin lined and loose like a flaccid penis/

  Then, after pain, comes death, you are cut off/

  Like a city street-end by the railway/

  (Long pause.)

  HAAKON:

  Only one cheer for dear old God

  CAPON: Hooray!/

  CHILD ONE:

  He’s off his squiff

  CHILD TWO: Mad, mad

  CAPON: Straight round the twist/

  HAAKON:

  Already you cover up like adults/

  Know you can live only by illusion/

  You must choose to believe that I am mad/

  (Long pause.)

  HAAKON:

  A parable, children, a true one, true/

  (During following speech dim all except for spot on HAAKON’s face.)

  HAAKON:

  There were these lizards, at the zoo, lizards/

  In a sort of glass-fronted cage, prison/

  And they fed these lizards with big locusts/

  The lizards were about twelve inches long/

  And the locusts were about two inches/

  The locusts couldn’t get away, of course/

  They had no defence against being killed/

  The only thing a locust could do was/

  To make itself an awkward thing to eat/

  By sticking out its arms and legs and wings/

  To make itself an awkward thing to kill/

  So shall I: I have to die, but by God/

  I’m not going to pretend I like it/

  I shall make myself so bloody awkward!/

  (By means of music and lighting a comic apotheosis of HAAKON, a complete reversal of mood, takes place: he is given medals by functionaries, presented with a loyal address, praised in dumbshow, he is exalted and gradually stands more and more upright, noble as a result of his suffering. At peak, blackout.)

  One Sodding Thing After Another

  EDITORS’ NOTE

  One Sodding Thing After Another was commissioned by William Gaskill for the Royal Court Theatre, and was mostly written in March 1967. It is a free adaptation and continuation of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, left incomplete at the time of the playwright’s death in 1837.

  Büchner’s play survives in four contradictory drafts, although these were not published in their entirety until 1967, too late for Johnson to make use of them. It seems likely that he relied instead on John Holmstrom’s translation (Penguin, 1963), itself based on an inaccurate first edition. In any case, his version soon departs completely from the original text.

  The play was not used by the Royal Court, and has never been performed.

  CHARACTERS

  WOYZECK

  COMMANDING OFFICER

  DOCTOR ONE (double with MAN)

  DOCTOR TWO (double with SECOND STUDENT)

  MARI
E

  JOAN

  ANDRES

  ROBERTS (double with BARKER)

  BARKER (double with ROBERTS)

  DRUM MAJOR

  CORPORAL

  DANCER (double with NURSE)

  MAN (double with DOCTOR ONE)

  FIRST STUDENT

  SECOND STUDENT (double with DOCTOR TWO)

  Voices off:

  THREE CHILDREN

  FIRST VOICE

  SECOND VOICE

  POLICE CHIEF

  CHAPLAIN

  23 parts requiring 9 men and three women: and children’s voices.

  “. . .my laughter is not at how a human being is, but rather at the fact that he is a human being: about which he can do nothing; and at the same time I laugh at myself because I must share in his fate.”

  Georg Büchner, Feb. 1834

  “Nobody really understands the human condition unless he realises that apart from one or two persons, there is not one soul who is interested in whether he lives or dies.”

  Henry de Montherlant

  in Chaos and Night

  The Army

  Any Time

  NOTES

  It is not intended that any particular period should be represented by the uniforms worn. The uniforms chosen should be from as many periods as possible (e.g. Roman, Persian, samurai, Boy Scouts, commissionaires, etc., etc.) no two being the same, to create a visual sendup of the idea of uniform.

  The music for the songs should be nearer Weill than Berg.

  SCENE ONE

  The COMMANDING OFFICER’S room. The CO sits in a chair with a sheet round his neck being shaved by WOYZECK, who is obviously in a hurry to be finished.

  CO:

  Watch it, Woyzeck, watch it!

  Woyzeck pauses, open razor in hand, as the CO talks, impatient but not daring to begin again.

  CO:

  What’s the bloody hurry? So what if you do get me done in four minutes instead of five this morning? I should only have to work out something to do with the extra time, and my life’s full enough of useless activity as it is. Bloody enervating, it is, too, enervating. Know what enervating means, Woyzeck?