[He walks away from the door, completely absorbed now in the baby, and apparently forgetting that he ever had any intention of going away.]
Lookit the hobby-horse! [Stands above the new toy.] Santie Claus bought it for Moony’s kid. Ten-fifty it cost! See? How shiny it is! Nice, huh? Nice! What are you crying for? Daddy ain’t going nowhere. Naw! —Daddy was only—fooling. . .
SLOW CURTAIN
THE DARK ROOM
The first professional production of The Dark Room opened in London, England in 1966.
CHARACTERS
MISS MORGAN
MRS. POCCIOTTI
LUCIO
Scene: For expediency the same set as in Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry may be used, with a few prop changes and general rearrangement to heighten effect of poverty. Miss Morgan is pretty much a stock character: the neat, fussy spinster engaged in social service. She may be interpreted more or less sympathetically, as the producer desires.
Mrs. Pocciotti is an avalanche of female flesh, swarthy Italian, her bulk emphasized by a ridiculously skimpy gray knit sweater, whose sleeves extend halfway down her forearms. Everything about her is heavy and deliberate except her eyes, which smolder and dart suspiciously.
MISS MORGAN [seated at table with pencil and pad]: Now your husband, Mrs. Pocciotti, just how long has he been unemployed?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: God knows how long.
MISS MORGAN: I’m afraid I’ll have to have a more definite answer.
MRS. POCCIOTTI [poking her broom under the stove]: Musta been—1930 he got laid off.
MISS MORGAN: He has been unemployed ever since? For eight or nine years?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: For eight or nine years. No jobs.
MISS MORGAN: Was he—incapacitated—I mean—was anything wrong with your husband?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: His head was no good. He couldn’t remember no more.
MISS MORGAN: I see. His mind was affected. Now has he received hospital or institutional treatment of any kind during this period, Mrs. Pocciotti?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: He comes home, he goes back, he comes home.
MISS MORGAN: From the City Sanitarium?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.
MISS MORGAN: Where is he now?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: City Sanitarium.
MISS MORGAN: I see.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: His head is no good. [With her broom she has fished a lead spoon from under the stove. She stoops, grunting, and places it on the table.]
MISS MORGAN: Let’s see now—your sons?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Sons? Frank and Tony went off. Was never no good those boys. Tony Chicago, Frank—I think I don’t know. I don’t know those boys no more where they go, what they do, married or working or nothing, those boys I don’t know!
MISS MORGAN: Oh! You don’t hear from them. What are the others doing?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Lucio, Silva, the young ones, still are in school.
MISS MORGAN: They’re attending grade school?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Still are in school.
MISS MORGAN: I see. And you have a daughter?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: One girl.
MISS MORGAN: She’s also unemployed?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: No, she don’t work.
MISS MORGAN: Her name and age, please.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Name Tina. How old she is? She come right after the last boy, soon as the boys make room comes the girl.
MISS MORGAN: Shall we say that her age is fifteen?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Fifteen.
MISS MORGAN: I see. I would like to talk to your daughter, Mrs. Pocciotti.
MRS. POCCIOTTI [sweeping with sudden vigor]: Talk to her?
MISS MORGAN: Yes. Where is she?
MRS. POCCIOTTI [points to closed door]: In there.
MISS MORGAN [rising]: May I see her now?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: No. Don’t go in. She don’t like it.
MISS MORGAN [stiffening]: She doesn’t like it?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: No.
MISS MORGAN: Why not? Is your daughter sick?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Wharsamatter with her, I dunno. She don’t want nobody to go in the room with her, and she don’t want the light turned on. She wants it to be always dark.
MISS MORGAN: Dark? Always dark? Really? What do you mean?
MRS. POCCIOTTI [with confused gesture]: Dark!
MISS MORGAN: Will you try to be more cooperative in your answers to questions?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: What?
MISS MORGAN [excitedly]: Is anything wrong with this girl?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Wrong? No—I dunno.
MISS MORGAN: And yet you say that she confines herself to a dark room and wishes to be left alone?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.
MISS MORGAN: Well, of course that isn’t a perfectly normal condition for a young girl to be in. Do you realize that?
MRS. POCCIOTTI [slowly shaking her head]: No.
MISS MORGAN [snapping]: How long has this been going on?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Long? Long? How long?
MISS MORGAN: Yes.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes, I think maybe God knows. . . [She touches her cheek as though she had been struck there—then slowly continues sweeping.]
MISS MORGAN [distinctly stressing each syllable]: How long has she been in that room? Days? Weeks? Months?—What? Mrs. Pocciotti, it seems necessary to inform you that there is an element of time we go by. Time measured by the clock, by the calendar, by the—time! Time! Do you understand what time means?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Time?
MISS MORGAN: Yes. Now how long has your daughter been in this condition?
MRS. POCCIOTTI [quietly after a pause]: Six mon’s.
MISS MORGAN: Six months? She’s been in there in the dark for that long? Are you sure?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Six mon’s.
MISS MORGAN: How did this start?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: On New Year’s, he didn’t come over. It started that night. It was first that he didn’t come over in a long time so she called up his place and his Mama said he was out and not to call him no more. She said he was going to be married with some German girl in just a few days and they didn’t want to be bothered.
MISS MORGAN: He? He? Who is he?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: The boy that she went steady with. Name was Max.
MISS MORGAN: And you feel that her disappointment over this boy is what caused her to have this depressed mental state?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: What?
MISS MORGAN: After that she went in the dark room? You think that was how it was started?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Maybe it was. I dunno. She phoned him from down at the drugstore and then she comes up to the kitchen and heated some water. She said she had pains in her stummick. Bad pains.
MISS MORGAN: Did she?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: I dunno. Maybe she did. Anyhow she went to bed with it and ain’t been up from it since. [Her broom makes timid excursions around Miss Morgan’s chair. The social service worker draws her feet in like a cat avoiding spilled water.]
MISS MORGAN: You mean that she’s been shut up in the room ever since?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.
MISS MORGAN: Since New Year’s, you said? Six months!
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Six mon’s.
MISS MORGAN: Doesn’t she ever come out?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: When she’s got to go to the bathroom, then she comes out. But other times she stays in.
MISS MORGAN: What does she do in there?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: I dunno. She just lays in there in the dark. Sometimes she makes noise.
MISS MORGAN: Noise?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Crying and calling bad names and knocking her hands on the wall. Upstairs they complain sometimes. But mostly she don’t say nothing. Just lays in there on the bed.
MISS MORGAN: How about eating? Does she take regular meals?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: She eats what he brings her.
MISS MORGAN: He? Who do you mean, Mrs. Pocciotti?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Max.
MISS MORGAN: Max?
br /> MRS. POCCIOTTI: The boy that she went steady with.
MISS MORGAN: Mrs. Pocciotti, you don’t mean to say that that boy is still permitted to see your daughter?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.
MISS MORGAN: But you said he got married?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes. To that German girl. His folks was against our religion.
MISS MORGAN: And still he comes here? Married? He sees your daughter?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: She won’t let nobody else in except Max.
MISS MORGAN: Lets him? In the room? With the girl?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.
MISS MORGAN: She knows that he’s married? Of course she knows about that?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: How does she know what I know? I dunno. I can’t tell you what I dunno.
MISS MORGAN: He goes in the girl’s room. What do they talk about?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Talk about? Nothing.
MISS MORGAN: They talk about—nothing?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Nothing.
MISS MORGAN: You mean they don’t talk?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Excuse while I take off the table. [Removes a cloth from table.]
MISS MORGAN: Then what—what—what do they do in there, Mrs. Pocciotti?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: I dunno. It’s dark. I can’t tell. He goes in and stays and comes out.
MISS MORGAN: Do I understand you correctly? The man, married, your daughter in such a condition, still you allow him to visit the girl in the dark, you leave them alone in there, you don’t know what they’re doing?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes. She likes him to go in there. It makes her be not so much noise. You know. When he don’t come around a few days, she takes on something awful. Hollering, screaming, never you heard such bad names! Upstairs—complains! When he comes—right away better! Eats what he brings her! That way it helps a lot, too. We don’t got so much in the house. Maybe relief she don’t come. Max—loaf of bread, cheese, pickle, maybe some coffee even. It helps. [Lucio appears at window on fire-escape.]
LUCIO: MAMA!
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes.
LUCIO: Gimme two nickels. I bet Jeeps he couldn’t lick me an’ he did an’ he says he’ll beat me up worse if i don’t come acrost wit’ the money!
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Shut up! [Jerks thumb at Miss Morgan’s back. Lucio looks startled and clatters downstairs. Shrill cries from below.]
MISS MORGAN: I suppose you know, Mrs. Pocciotti, that you can be held liable for this?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: What?
MISS MORGAN: How long has it been going on? Between this man and your daughter?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Max? I think maybe God knows.
MISS MORGAN: Mrs. Pocciotti, I have the feeling that you’re deliberately evading my questions! That doesn’t improve matters any. Cooperation from you will simplify things a great deal.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: You speak funny things. I don’t think. I try, but I don’t make it out.
MISS MORGAN: I don’t think you try very hard. Now if you concentrate less on that aimless sweeping back and forth with a broom—if you listen to what I ask you—if you try to give sensible answers—things will get on much better. —How long has your daughter and this German boy been going together?
MRS. POCCIOTTI [violently]: Question, you get me mix up! Question, question! How do I know what’s wrong?
MISS MORGAN: Tina! Max! How long did they go out together?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Since school, since beginning at school!
MISS MORGAN: And after your daughter got sick and shut herself up in the dark, when did the boy start coming in that room with her?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Maybe five or six mon’s.
MISS MORGAN: And you and your husband, Mrs. Pocciotti, neither of you did anything to prevent him from coming?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: My husban’ his head is no good. I got work to do. We get along best as we can. What happens is God’s will, I guess. What is wrong is wrong, I dunno! Is all I can say.
MISS MORGAN [pause]: I see. Mrs. Pocciotti, the girl will have to be taken away.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Take her away? She won’t like it.
MISS MORGAN: I’m afraid we can’t consult her wishes in the matter. Nor yours, either. You’ve shown yourself completely incompetent to care for this girl. I think I may say that you have even contributed to her delinquency.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: I don’t think she’ll want to be going. You don’t know Tina. She fights, she kicks something awful.
MISS MORGAN: If she won’t go peaceably, she’ll have to be removed by force.
MRS. POCCIOTTI: I hope she will go. It’s bad for the boys, her laying there naked like that.
MISS MORGAN: What? Lying naked?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Yes. She won’t keep the clothes on her. The boys look in through the door and they laugh and they say bad things.
MISS MORGAN [in disgust]: Tch, tch, she’ll have to be taken away and held for a long observation. [She rises.]
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Better you make it be soon. From the way she is looking.
MISS MORGAN: What do you mean? How has your daughter been looking, Mrs. Pocciotti?
MRS. POCCIOTTI: Like—this. [Her curved palm moves slowly before her abdomen in a broadly elliptical gesture.]
MISS MORGAN: Oh! You mean—? [She raises her hand to her lips. Mrs. Pocciotti nods slowly—goes on with her sweeping.]
SLOW CURTAIN
THE PRETTY TRAP
(A COMEDY IN ONE ACT)
The Pretty Trap was first performed on March 23, 2011 at the Southern Rep Theatre, New Orleans, as part of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival’s centennial tribute to Williams. It was directed by Aimée Hayes; the set design was by Ashley Sehorn; the costume design was by Laura Sirkin-Brown; the sound design was by Mike Harkins; the props were designed by Sarah Zoghbi; and the lighting design was by Joan Long.
CHARACTERS
AMANDA WINGFIELD
LAURA WINGFIELD
TOM WINGFIELD
JIM DELANEY
Character Descriptions:
Amanda Wingfield, a perennial southern belle, transferred to more rigorous climate and conditions.
Laura Wingfield, her daughter, a shy and sensitive girl of eighteen who “needs to be pushed a little.”
Tom Wingfield, her son, the dreamy type, who also needs pushing a little.
Jim Delaney, a gentleman caller, who represents dreams plus action, the man coming toward us. Needs pulling.
Author’s Note: This play is derived from a longer work in progress, The Gentleman Caller. It corresponds to the last act of that play, roughly, but has a lighter treatment and a different ending.
The feeling of the play is nostalgic. It belongs to memory, which is softly lighted and not too realistic, and often has the quality of faint music. The curtain rises on the interior of Apartment F, third floor south, on Maple Street in Saint Louis, in a block that also contains the Ever-ready Garage, a Chinese laundry, and a bookie’s shop disguised as a cigar store. It is early summer. There are billowing white lace curtains at the windows and the furnishings of the little apartment contrive to have a certain grace and charm in spite of their cheapness. The scene is played in two areas, downstage for the living room and upstage for the dining room. Portieres are between the two areas, which give the effect of a second proscenium or a stage within a stage. That faint music, which is the music of memory, is heard as the curtain rises.
AMANDA [offstage]: Don’t come into the kitchen in your white dress! Go in front and relax till they get here.
[A door at the back of the upstage area is opened and Laura comes in. She is a very slight and delicate girl of nineteen. She has a fugitive prettiness that could easily escape attention, that comes and goes, but sometimes could stab your heart. Probably the dress that she actually wore on this evening was not so lovely as that which memory gives her. She seems to move in a radiance of her own. Amanda enters the dining room with a bowl of jonquils, which she places between the candelabra on the drop leaf table. She is a middle-
aged woman of great energy whose early prettiness was more emphatic than Laura’s. She has relinquished none of the girlish vivacity that must have been so charming in her youth but now is a little comical or pathetic.]
AMANDA: I was carrying jonquils the very first afternoon that I met your father. However it wouldn’t be fair to blame that on the flowers. The Cutrere boy had driven me over to Clarksdale to see old Agnes Hoskins who’d just had another stroke and couldn’t talk. It depressed me so to see her in that condition, but on the way back we passed this field of jonquils, literally thousands of them. I made Dave stop the car, and I got out and gathered my two arms full. Dave was annoyed because I wouldn’t put them down in the back seat of the car. I used them for a shield when he tried to kiss me. I didn’t care to be kissed by Dave Cutrere! [She laughs archly.] But when I got home and entered the downstairs hall, still carrying all those jonquils in my arms—Well, there was your father, discovered for the first time, installing a telephone at the foot of the stairs. How much better it would have been if—! [She crosses downstage to Laura.] Still—I wouldn’t have had a daughter as pretty as you! If I hadn’t married that telephone man, who fell in love with long-distance. That hem’s a little uneven—hardly noticeable though, I’ll leave it alone. I’ve got to mix the dressing for the salmon and change myself and it’s already five of six. Laura, you’re almost as pretty as I used to be. It’s early for white, but white’s so lovely on you. You’re so slender, Laura. It’s better to start out slender, for life does put flesh on you. I’m very lucky that I can still wear misses. Turn around. Yes—it dips a little but men don’t notice such things. You’ve never looked so pretty and maybe you’ll never look so pretty again. So be on your best behavior; for once come out of the shell— Vivacity counts for so much!
LAURA: I feel all gone inside.
AMANDA: Laura! Why?
LAURA: You’ve made such a fuss—Mother, you don’t even know him!
AMANDA: He’s Tom’s best friend at the warehouse, and before I suggested Tom’s bringing him home to dinner, I took a trip down there to have a look at him. I had Tom point him out.