New Curtains for Macbeth

a full-length play in

one act

by Larry Weinstein

by Lawrence A. Weinstein Cambridge, MA 02138

(781) 891-2918 (w)

(617) 661-1256 (h)

lweinstein@bentley.edu

THE SET

A simple version of the banquet hall in Macbeth. A long table surrounded by chairs at odd angles. Props and one section of a red curtain strewn about.

THE ONLY CHARACTER: MACK FINER

An actor in his forties.

RUNNING TIME

Approximately 90 minutes.

(MACK rushes in from a wing, buttoning his sports jacket and looking

behind him. He practically bumps into a chair that is leaned forward

against the banquet table. He puts the chair upright and slides it into

place loudly enough to attract the attention of the audience. When he

has satisfied himself that nothing further is amiss at the table—and

then turns to face the audience—he is visibly surprised to see that the

audience already belongs to him.)

MACK

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! What a grab bag of emotions I feel—(laughing as if bewildered) roiling for a soul right now.

(He shakes his head, sobers up.)

I woke up this morning to the same, dark and bloody news that scrambled your eggs today. Dear Frank Deeds, who had played so many loving uncles and grandpas in the movies—who, of course, was to

perform the role of Duncan, King of Scotland, in “Macbeth” for all of you this evening—dear Frank Deeds, as you all know by now, endured a hideous death last night, being repeatedly stabbed in his bed with the pointed end of an old-fashioned beer can opener.

How explain it? How explain? Such a very good—very very good—(as to say, “You could say this, you could say that”)—good, very good—(now more decisively) good good good (incongruously looking to the audience for help in getting through this sentence) good, good good good good good—(briefly pausing, at a loss for a better word with which to end) man! (pause) I’ll have more, even more to say about Frank Deeds in just a few moments, as soon as I have…calmed myself down a bit…. You can’t imagine what a squeamish midnight brew of good and bad, these past four and twenty hours.

It was—yes, it was but now, only just this time last night, when Frank, playing Duncan, was receiving messages about his valiant generals, Banquo and Macbeth. He was, you might say, crowning a long, lucrative career on the screen by undertaking a distinguished walk across the boards. And the audiences loved him. “It’s for him they come,” our stage manager would say to me, backstage. Then, to wake this morning….

(He pauses and shakes his head. He briefly checks the wing from

which he entered.)

I should tell you, too, that I, in my case, have…well, something in addition to Frank Deeds’ demise in mind here.

I am here tonight…. My name, by the way, is Finer, Mack Finer—I forget my manners under stress at times! I am here this evening doubly troubled. (a declaration) As Frank’s understudy, I’d assumed that, in the case of laryngitis or untimely death, I would, “as ‘twere,” inherit the crown.

Oh the context might be sad, very sad, but what does any actor live for, if not his sweet chance to triumph under lights? (pause) If things had gone off as they should today—as they should, I mean, in an emergency in general—there would be no question of it.

(shaking his head and wagging his index finger) Ahhh, but no. The call I got at 8 a.m. today went like this…

(imitating, brusquely) “Hello. Maack?”

“I’ve heard.”

“Hey. Tough break, what?”

“Ts, horrible!”

“Mack, I’ve had calls from Peter, James, and Jan.”

(expectantly) “Yes?”

(very slowly) “They all want the show closed down.”

In a blink of Satan’s eye, I knew all that had gone wrong: this play’s fabled “curse” was on their minds now—greater nonsense than a stadium of bearded women could concoct! (pause)

(improvising) If a man…waiting for his train…lets rip with one loud blast of gas there on the crowded platform, he, my friend, has got himself alone to blame: he should not have overeaten; he should not have eased his reins on that part of his body most in need of good public relations. If, however, any actor, stagehand, member of the audience produced the very same gross noise during a performance of “the Scottish play” (too dangerous to name!), the percussive perpetrator would be seen as innocent, the ill-bred Fates’ most helpless…… instrument.

And so, on hearing of the murder, each of twenty members of the cast became convinced that he would be the next to fart—or croak—in consequence of this play’s potent spell, if it were not closed down immediately. That’s how tight a grip the unseen has on Post-Enlightened Man!

At any rate, I got off that phone this morning and my Deirdre, my good wife, inquired as to where things stood. As I took my seat for breakfast, I replied, “So fair and foul a day….” (stopping short) She said I could skip the weather and I laughed—but she didn’t laugh with me. (pause) Luckily for me, Deirdre’s my agent now. She had seen how gently I put up with being passed over—over and over, by the years oblivious to me! She had seen! That, in fact, is why, at last, she got me to undo my ties to my old agent and to let her do the dubious honors of promoting my career—from a cell phone, during coffee breaks and lunch breaks at Macy’s, where she sells cosmetics.

Deirdre has believed for years that all I need to be discovered is a role of medium renown. My gifts would make it shine till people wondered why it was that I was not the star! I was to play Duncan, she had said, when I auditioned for the part. I was to play Duncan—at all costs.

Therefore, Deirdre, that fierce lover, (imitating with his own jacket lapels) grabbed hold of me this morning and said, “This break, Mack, you have got to push at, after all that you and I have done to get here—not let close, but…well…hack at…whack at…bust wide open for a change!”

“All right, all right,” I said, “How? There is no performance!”

Brilliantly, she then called my attention (indicating audience) to you! “And what,” she said, “of the ticket-holders, who naively think a show, by its very nature, must go on? They’ll turn out tonight, prime for entertainment. I say: You, Mack, entertain them!” (pause, happily) And so here I am—after fighting, going up and down against my doubtful self and her and theater management the whole day long, without an hour to rehearse…. (laughing) My “break,” indeed!

What then to look forward to this evening? First, as befits the sad occasion, a tribute to Frank Deeds, using photos provided by the Deeds family.

(A screen comes down upstage.)

After that, with your indulgence, I’ll enact a modest fraction of “Macbeth” for you: three or four key scenes to let you say to friends that you had seen the great play after all, and not been disappointed either. By that time, the several heavy curtain-shakers Deirde “specially invited” earlier today—to get a look at me—should all have come and found their seats here.

(MACK has positioned himself alongside a slide projector.)

Frank. Deeds.

(On the screen we see what is obviously a promotional, overly bright

outdoor shot of DEEDS in overalls on a farm. He is an elderly man

who exudes kindliness. Then, we see images of a boy of sixty or

seventy years ago—first as infant, then as toddler and five-year-old.)

(dryly) From this, we may, perhaps, adduce…that Frank was once a child.

(out of the blue, reciting)

A child is an egg, I say:

DNA

denoting possibilities

from here to there.

That parent pair

whose egg is their

apparent heir

proceeds to

cook it to their questionable taste—

in shallow pan

or…teeming pot,

a mother’s love

or (so what?) not—

the snot!

Accordingly,

that egg comes out…

scrambled,

ready from Day One for doubt,

or...hard-boiled,

with a general shout,

or…sunnyside side up and out.

(Silence.)

We owe a lot to our precursors. (pause) They…pre-cursed us.

Frank Deed’s mother, I should guess, meant to cook a “good egg,” and she did.

(Images of DEEDS in diverse movie roles.)

What, in retrospect, seems notable about Frank Deeds is how little envy I and other actors felt toward him, despite his great success.

Alien, mean spirits might attribute this rare, ungrudging attitude toward

Frank—his fellow thespians’ unrehearsed warm fondness toward him—to the fact that he was not a party to their contest really, not an actor in the real sense, but always just himself, purely pure Frank Deeds.

In a word, there is…well…mystery there—something for his eulogizers to go on about in church, tomorrow afternoon.

Let’s just say: Frank Deeds was sweet; that…milky good human being, and what is more—or less, much much less, depending on your understanding—he was that same personality on one side of a curtain as the other. (pause) We whom Frank has left behind him in this blue, duplicitous passage between worlds will, I daresay, miss him more than we can possibly foresee.

(End of slide show,)

Here goes my Frank Deeds story for tonight. It requires an unpleasant introduction, however. (pause) Those of us actors without Frank’s great blind luck in life—his “photogenicity,” his white-hot agent, his unthinking way of staying on the Fates’ good side—all the rest of us scramble for morsels well beneath the notice of sun-drenched heads like his. I was finally reduced to stints in this town’s too-goo-gooey “Artist in the Classroom” project. I got paid for casting civilization’s pearls—not before swine, but to their piglets, for Chrissake!

Eighth-graders! Ninth-graders! Not unintelligent kids—you could take one look at them and tell: they’d been cheated, born just to be put out of the house; their gifts trashed, sight unseen, well before they climbed into a school bus the first time.

By now, that mattered nothing, buddy. Now, they all were certifiably unsalvageable. Hell in spades. Hell from bell to harried passing bell.

(suddenly recalling himself) But to Frank Deeds. (pause) Frank—simply would not countenance my antagonistic references to those same students. He objected even to my use of the term “thugs.” He said to me one day two months ago, when (indicating set) this was in rehearsal still, (standing behind the chair at the head of the table and rocking it backward and forward as if FRANK were in it) “Mack, I would like to meet those lively youngsters you call thugs and whores!”

Well, I granted Frank his foolish wish, invited him to be my guest at school one day; don’t ask me why.

(MACK now takes chairs from the long table and arranges them into

three or four short, unruly rows before him.)

No sooner had the invitation issued from my lips—and Frank had taken out his daily calendar, triumphant, to record the details—than I wanted it all back down my throat, unspoken. Wasn’t it enough—daily—to face those kids’ long death-march and sniping, and to try daily not to let them stray too far outside their line of march, so as not to forfeit my pay? Was I really going to make another grown adult privy to that fitful, dark, demeaning spectacle involving me?

To make it all the worse, on the day appointed, Frank was late. I remember thinking, as students straggled in, (abruptly backing off to his right and to his left, as if students were bumping into him on their way to their seats) “Just today, you pissers, try please, can’t you, to contain yourselves. Fifty lousy minutes—do I ask too much of you?”

I had to improvise to fill the time till Frank came.

I’d been lecturing them—dutifully in vain—on Elizabethan blank verse. Now I recalled that at the back of their edition of “Macbeth” I’d seen an essay entitled “Blank Verse and the Actor.” I instructed them to read the essay to themselves and use it to come up with questions for Frank.

(stopping alongside one of the chairs he has been setting up) One of them folded his arms on his desk just in time to catch his head there and start a good nap. I awoke him…

(MACK lifts the chair at least two feet off the ground and lets it fall

noisily back to the floor.)

(a concession, not an apology) …rudely. (pause) Frank might walk into the room at any time, for godsake.

(visualizing) One of them swaggered a long route from the back of the room to the front—ostensibly to drop a wadded piece of paper into the wastebasket by my desk, but really just to make a broad seductive face or two at one of the cute girls in front. (uptight) “Please get back into your seat immediately, Mr. Johnson.” He went back all right, but in his own sweet time—yes, and when he made it back at last, pivoted into his seat, landing with a plop and simultaneously bursting into parody of me.

(Here, MACK imitates his imitator, pointing to one imaginary

classmate after another and motioning each one back into his seat.)

He reaped all the fleeting glory that that scrubby class of inner city scum kids—groundlings born of groundlings—had to throw at his big feet.

(sharply) “You, Mr. Johnson, can please take your leave.”

He stood up and said, “There is nothing I would rather take—jackass.” And he left the room in silence.

(pause) That’s what Frank would not have comprehended, had I let him see it: the brutality, the…day-in-day-out sound and fury. And the worst was, it meant nothing—not to them. We in that class lived beyond the city fathers’ warm precincts of meaning. That cold room, with its clanking radiators, may as well have been a stormy, blasted heath…it was so damn desolate at such moments.

I resented, hated Frank Deeds then. Had I somehow been impressed into his service, done chores of blood for him, to clear his way?

(MACK now looks around him in his “classroom”—jerkily,

disdainfully, as if only to be sure that his students haven’t over-

heard him—when his moving gaze is suddenly arrested.)

Two white girls sitting in the room’s far corner had brought popsicles to class! They had pulled them out and started (imitating) passionately kissing them and licking them…and managing to turn the heads of boys who made that corner of the room their home too.

Christ, they were practically breeding there, my two…popsicle-time sluts.

And in no time, they had got the boys nearby exactly where they wanted: slouching, mumbling and laughing nervously. I remember thinking, fleetingly, “This is how it works,” and fancying I saw two hundred generations ranged before me, near to far—undistinguished infant after infant—making their unbroken, squalid way into this world by means of these two ignorant girls, themselves two filthy infants only days ago.

(reenacting) “Where have you two been?…How often have I warned you two about your being late to class?…Open up your books to page

2-30. Read that section silently.”

One reached down lazily by her feet for a book, (swallowing hard, an arousing memory) licking and sucking all the while. The other stared at me, then said, “I predict a person’s future for them. I’ll do yours…(licking) for you.”

“No, don’t. Just read.”

“You…will be a famous actor one day.”

“I said, ‘Just read.’ Put that goddamn melting object of your lust away, and re..e..e..ad, beginning page 2-30.”

Later, I told Deirdre this exchange, laughing. She did not laugh with me; she took it to heart. She said even unscrubbed girls could look at me and tell what I was meant for.

(back on track) No, and that was not quite all of that girl’s prophesying either. She went on to say, “Somebody today will promise to help make you a big star. Soon, Mr. Finer. He is going to sacrifice himself to make it happen for you.”

On that note—that fey note, as if it was at that girl’s word—the classroom door squealed open. There stood game Frank Deeds, his hand still on the knob.

(Only now does a connection register across MACK’s face.)

Well, I had him enter—which he did, as he removed his fashionable golfing hat and sunglass lenses—then I introduced him. He then said to the assembled, restive throng, “I am honored to be with you here today. Thank you for inviting me.”…and went right on about a minor accident which had the freeway backed up several miles, his excuse.

I turned to the kiddos for the questions I had asked them to prepare for Frank—(walking up and down the rows, changing to the voice that he would use with students to extract responses from them) about the difficulties of enacting Elizabethan blank verse drama? (pause; a condescending singsong) No…takers.

Then, the boy behind Tanika Washington—small for his age, hiding, as it were, behind Tanika—mumbled something to the boy across from him, who laughed.

(reenacting) “Please speak up, Martin. What question would you like to ask our famous guest today?”

(chagrined) “I would ask him what he has for breakfast.”

Laughter.

I pursued the matter, though. (through his teeth) “And,” I said, “if he said eggs?”

(MACK, as MARTIN, looks at his peers, not at MACK himself or

FRANK, bewildered.)

(winging it) “I would ask him how he likes his eggs.”

More laughter.

Then Tanika, who forever had to have her cut of any laughter in the room, said, “You not careful, home boy, that white movie star will make his breakfast yyyyyou!”

More laughter yet. (his big point, this) Frank…laughed…too—and such a sad, kind, deep laugh, too, the classroom fairly brimmed with his goodwill, as if it had not just been echoing my despair.

Someone asked Frank, avidly, “Was that you in ‘Out, Brief Candle’?”

“Yes,” said Frank, “that was me there in that film. How’d you like how I teamed up with that young cabbie to save his girlfriend?” He was off and running. He regaled them with gossip and his memories, and they, in turn, sat rapt withal. They loved him, I suppose.

And then—quite suddenly, twenty minutes into his brief “reign” at school—Frank Deeds turned to me and told the kids, “Unlike me, you know, your own teacher is a fine actor. He should tell us what it is that he does when he acts.”

Which—cued loud Tanika to screw up her face and to say, “What’s that, Mister Finer? Yoohoooo…act??!”

“Act?” said Frank. “Mister Finer is quite possibly the most gifted member of our cast.”

He informed ‘em all that I was playing Angus in “Macbeth”—but omitted to inform them that the great amount of time that asshole of an earl spends in standing on the greatest poet’s stage but saying nothing gives new meaning to the term “blank verse.” “Oh, a splendid part!” he called it. “In addition, Mister Finer is my understudy.”

Finally, my high-placed “champion,” Frank Deeds, announced: “Mister Finer simply hasn’t had his break yet. (slowly) I would give ‘most anything in my possession to promote Mack Finer’s stage career.”

And at that I heard the sound “Uuuuh!”…

(Covering his mouth, MACK here produces a high-pitched audible

gasp, which can be associated either with surprise or with a rapid

effort to suppress laughter.)

(at a clip, visualizing) …and shot my glance at once in the direction of the corner of the two young sluts, whose prophecy Frank Deeds had—with those words—now half-fulfilled, but…(stopping in his tracks) but, but no…they had disappeared…knowing I would be distracted by my visitor, I should imagine. (turning to another spot and visualizing) That high gasp had been emitted by another girl, who thought Frank’s praise of me too much to be believed, after all the jokes that she and those delinquent ignoramuses, her friends, had made at my expense. She was gleefully now caucusing with them about Frank’s ludicrous huge pledge to me.

(MACK once again extricates himself from a tangent—here, to put

a glowing finish on his story.)

Frank himself, however, had not heard the sound she made. He and all the other kiddos parted company in excellent high spirits! (pause) That was the power of Frank Deeds’ presence. (reaching) Like a…life preserver. Like a…large…warm…take-home pizza…with mushrooms.

(Silence.)

(swallowing, bringing one hand to his throat, smacking his lips) There. Will that suffice for tribute to Frank Deeds? What a fine man we’ve…lost. I need water; that’s what I think I need now.

(MACK sees and heads toward a pitcher of water, then pours

himself a glass. He steals another look into the wing from which he

entered—but then observes that members of his audience have taken

note of his doing so.)

Just before I came onstage this evening, I was visited by a detective. Police. (pause) Somebody had told him I was overheard to shout at Frank last night backstage, not two hours prior to his death at violent hands. (pause) And the doorman at Frank’s building had provided him with the description of a man like me.

What can I say? That was me who shouted at Frank. That was me the doorman saw.

There can be no doubt that when that witless cop detective learns that I was Frank Deeds’ understudy….

And of all absurdities—to resort to murder! (holding up the glass of water before him) Into what sad fantasy would a failing actor need to have submerged himself?

(Silence as MACK drinks.)

Still, the shouting happened. I have not denied that.

Oh, but the regrets when someone dies. I suppose I could have shown more gratitude to Frank when he was still a breathing one of us, for elevating me in those young students’ eyes. I would certainly have done so, too, if he had only let the subject drop.

Every time I saw Frank after that, it was, “How are those live-wire kids of yours, Mack?”—as if he were in fact a king of all the realm, a Duncan, wanting his dispatches from the front. “You, Mack, underrate yourself,” he would say to me. “Those kids…love you; I could tell.”

That alone, being stupid, irked me, but it seemed…well-meant at least. But the comments multiplied.

I was, I thought, beginning to discern behind them a campaign at work—something about my needing to accept the fate handed me: that sop, that endless filling up of blackboards with white marks.

I had not yet heard enough to say for sure, though, and then, last night, after final curtain, Charlie Ross came ‘round backstage with Malcolm Deeds, Frank’s womanizing son, the celebrity, star of last year’s most inane new sitcom, “Toil and Trouble.” An announcement needed to be made. (standing on a chair) “Your attention, all,” says Charlie, “Your attention please. It befalls t’me t’tell you that our good new friend, Frank Deeds, must leave the cast in ten days’ time to crank out yet anotha fffilm!” Off to one far side, Frank himself—a towel around his neck—fended off the others’ “Oh’s” and “Oh no’s.”

“Fortunately, though,” Charlie now goes on, “fortunately, friends, we are not left wanting for a Duncan, however.” (to audience, ecstatic) Who could he have meant but meeeeeeeeeeee? (a sudden change of tone) Listen. (here again as Charlie) “Malcolm Deeds…will take his father’s place onstage!” (pause) Hubbub and applause. (pause, stepping down from the chair) I stopped listening.

Frank and I were last ones out of the dressing room last night. I asked him, I said, “Frank, are you a fool, or just a common liar? On your visit to my class, you told the thugs and whores that you would do ‘most anything to further my career on the stage!” All that poor embarrassed Frank could muster for an answer to me was, “I would.”

As I entered my apartment half an hour later, the phone was ringing. Deirdre shouted, “Would you get that, Mack?” (pause) It was Frank. He was saying, “Listen, I feel terrible about the way that you have been passed over, Mack. Why don’t you come up to my place with your wife and have a nightcap with me? Okay, sport? I would like somehow to make my peace with you.”

(pause, distracted) Deirdre only said, “We shall see what he can do for you, Mack.” (shaking his distraction off) And his death—which I heard reported on the radio this morning while I shaved—initially struck me, if you must know, as nothing more than Frank’s remorseful keeping of his word, as if, at last, in dying he had found a way to make all up to me, by giving me some time to reign here. (pause) I am, after all, what Frank Deeds never was: an actor.

(A cellular phone is heard ringing in MACK’s pocket. He tries briefly

to ignore it, then slaps at it, but it does not stop.)

Hell! Now this! How brainless on my part, not to have emptied my pockets before play time…. (bouncing the phone in the palm of his hand as he thinks; then, with ingenuity) Well…then behold an actor.

(MACK holds the phone like a microphone and speaks into the

mouthpiece.)

(imitating the voice of a corporate voice-mail system) Hello. (coming up with one clever crack at a time) You have reached…Limbo…merely a division of Hell. Are we ever (one word at a time, unctiously) Glad. You. Called. (pause) Please do not hang up: souls will be damned in the order in which they were received. (pause) If you know your party’s extension—or extenuating circumstances—you may dial them at any time. If, however…. (covering the mouthpiece with his hand; to audience) Come on, come on, someone, help me: I need lines for my charade.

(MACK brings the receiver to his ear to determine if his caller is

still on the line.)

Oh, shit. (pause) Yes it’s me, of course it is. (pause) Deirdre…. Please, Deirdre, it’s okay. (to audience; mouthing, not vocalizing) My wife. (back to Deirdre) It was in my pocket. (brief pause) I know, I know, I forgot. You all right, kid? (long pause) Sure!—He’s a big producer! (pause, then scanning the audience) I don’t know, hon. What’s he look like? (pause) Any facial hair? (pause, then disappointed) Huh. (pause) Well, what did he…? Of course I know! Of course! You did great, a man like…. Yes of course, but did he say “will” come or “will try”? (long pause, then sotto voce) Stall? How stall? I have half a dozen slides to show still, then I’m on—I act the scenes.

(A banded newspaper comes flying onto stage from a wing. As

MACK listens to his wife, he now looks—quizzically at first—from the

paper to the unseen person who hurled it.)

(distractedly) Yes yes yes, of course. (pause) Well—I’ll just have to do what I can. You… No no no no, you’ve done your part beautifully. You just… No no no, you just rest now; wait for me to call you when it’s over. (pause, then chiding) Deirdre…Deirdre, I don’t ramble. I have not told these fine people one damn thing along those lines. (pause) That…that’s right. (pause, then to pacify) Okay, okay, okay. (as if his mother had told him to repeat what she had just now said to him) “Stall, but do not ramble.” Do you think you’re talking to a child? (pause, relenting; tenderly) Same here, kiddo. (a puckered kiss) G’by.

(MACK hangs up.)

Stalling…on a stage! As if by cue, impromptu, I could make a two-word topic flutter from my lips, to expostulate upon!

(a loving lament) My. Wife.

(He sees that he’s produced a two-word topic. Can he get away with

it? He sizes up the crowd.)

(coyly) What you need to understand about my wife is that—ever since I met her—she’s been working a cosmetics counter one place or another.

(So far, so good.)

In fact, we met because of rouge and liner. (a nostalgic, quiet laugh; warming to his topic now) I was at the start of my career, playing George Gibbs in “Our Town,” a boy five years younger than I was, and the woman who had volunteered to do the make-up at this local playhouse made a botch of me in dress rehearsal—couldn’t seem to give me innocence without turning my whole face into a doughy mask. It was Deirdre who would do it right—and teach me how, myself, to do it—at her counter. (alternately reverie and boast) As she applied her unnamed cremes and lotions to me with her lovely two warm hands, looking at her handiwork (almost shyly here) and me—and unself-consciously moistening her lips with her tongue—I…felt that limpy “actor” whom I…keep way downstage, in my pants…uhhh, stiffen to attention, let us say. I was—if not yet in love—in lust, for certain. I remember saying to myself, “This warm-handed woman—is the woman who will make me over.”

(as deep into reverie as he will get) She was fair, but deeply foul as well—thoroughly degrading and perverse—a man’s most…integrative dream.

(coming out of it) I stayed seated there, at Deirdre’s counter, for an hour that first day—till her supervisor, uninvited, finally walked over asking whether she could be of some assistance to me.

(pause, needing to return to a more dignified stratum of discourse) The actors and the cosmeticians of this world—no matter on what continent—are, in point of fact, all secretly Americans. Every actor, every cosmetician is a signatory to Jefferson’s few words on independence. We believe a person has the right to be—and can be—what that person wants to be, in this wide world. If he sets his mind to it, has some gifts for it, learns to “look” the part, “act” the part—that said part—be it ten times greater than the part he started with—is then his, by all rights, to seize and call his own forever. That’s America! (pause, then offhandedly) It’s Macbeth—legalized.

I feel lucky that my spouse is as American as I, for whom the world is still a giant storehouse of commodities and hopes.

(At a loss for how to continue, MACK checks his watch.)

I can tell you this much, friends: this delay is not my Deirdre’s fault. She cares far too much for me and my success to make mistakes today. She would not have given a producer poor directions to the theater. She would not have…(a likelier possibility, which troubles him) been too aggressive on the phone with him. (pause; himself again) It’s not she who is to blame if nobody discovers me this evening.

Agents and producers, friends—they, in their time, do more acting than yours truly ever did. They all say “tomorrow and tomorrow” they’ll come. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!”

(suddenly singling out a man in the audience; brightening) Sir! I don’t remember you sitting there! Did you, uhhh, just walk in? (pause) Oh.

(Embarrassed, MACK tries to cover himself with a joke.)

(indicating a woman sitting next to the man; slyly; ostensibly to the man himself, really to the audience) Funny, sir. I can recall that woman next to you, but not you. (to the woman now) Madame, shall I take this man’s hushed word for it that he’s been at your side since curtain time? Is he the man that you walked in with? (pause) Okay. Okay, good. ‘Cause, y’know, I have things to do up here; I can’t keep an eye on both of you all night!

(MACK gives the audience a wink, then turns and sees the banded

newspaper. He scans the audience again, then—reluctantly—picks the

paper up.)

(removing the rubber band) I’d almost forgotten. Fats, our good stage manager…(unfolding the paper and turning to the editorial page) uhhh, told me I should read aloud to you the editorial in here today—which I myself had not yet read. At the time, I simply thanked him and said I was worried things might run too long, but he, as you can see, persists and, uhh…. (finding it) Ah! The headline reads, “Lights, Camera—Action on Behalf of People in Need.” (reading, skeptically) “Few Hollywood icons use their success to do anything beyond preening themselves and furthering their own careers. One exception to the bankrupt norm was Frank Deeds. He cared about the farmers of America who lose their farms. He cared about genocide in Africa, Yugoslavia….”

(MACK now breaks off his reading, dismayed, as he glances further

down the text.)

Oh no no, please no. (skimming down the page) So…so wooden. What pathetic, wooden creature wrote this? Like a puppet, words expected of him, nothing live and true, no heartbeat. (as if to say, “But then , how could it be otherwise?”) Well—it’s a wooden medium. It’s dead, it’s thoughtless. Meeting “deadlines” with its terse, “dead lines.”

(Silence. MACK resumes skimming.)

This is all…….all of it, so…(pause) Ah, but wait—a reference to Macbeth! Let’s get to that!

(reading again) “How fitting that Frank Deeds’ last role should be the role of Duncan, whom the Bard has portrayed as a saint.

“Tragically, in this age as in Duncan’s time, society has harbored in its midst the good man’s murderer, the individual depraved enough—or else deranged enough—to see no difference between good and bad on earth. He’s the…monster in man’s clothing. (pause) He is bloody old Macbeth, himself.”

(pause) What…! What ignorance! (catching himself) That is…. By which I mean, this editorial…betrays a…well…deep misunderstanding of Macbeth.

“Monster,” indeed!

Look you! Look! (opening the paper wide) Your common man comes straight from his nightly eight-hour shift of reading bedsheets in the dark—to this, a set of sheets even thinner. And they all keep him thin, thin as air, above the neckline. He is the creature of sparse understanding. He craves nothing but the half-truths and lies that steady him as he sets forth, afraid, into another day.

(imitating) When he turns a page, he tells himself that he is parting curtains on a stage, and some new, unsuspected truth will be laid bare—when all along he knows full well that what he wants isn’t the real story, but the curtains! The curtains themselves! A barrier between him and the chill cold world as it coldly is!

(more quietly) Macbeth, my friends, did not read the newspaper. (tearing newspaper sheets) He disposed of all the thin, “pulp” souls about him like this. It’s no wonder, I suppose, they called him monster in the end. They all live on what they’re fed—that inky gruel, fearfulness.

(MACK takes the shredded newspaper sheets and throws them into

the air above him, so that they rain down on him.)

Friends: Gimme five more minutes to produce producers in your midst. (returning to the slide projector) Only five, I promise. I have only five more minutes’ worth of slides to show you. They’re of the production you had paid to see tonight.

(Slide: three witches, dressed predictably, leaning into the camera

from three sides, leering.)

(staring, a reflective pause; then talking over the sound of the projector’s motor) Mind you, I have no intention of returning to that foolishness about monsters, but—if it’s monsters they want—I’ll give them monsters, a veritable coffee klatch of monsters: the witches. Who, tell me, who, pray, is the monster? That man who arrives on earth capable of any act there is?—or those who misdirect his energies when he is so susceptible on every side? They are monsters! They!

(MACK gestures to the audience to listen to a sound he can hear.)

A drum.

(Now MACK speaks in the voices of two or three distinct witches.)

A drum! (bowing low and broadly, the worshipful servant) Macbeth doth come!

(suddenly, face to the audience, erupting in loud, wet, farting sounds; with his hands flaring from his cheeks, his fingers spread) Pppssssssst! Pppssssssst! Pppppssssssssssst!

(as if fawning over a newborn) He’s so cute! He’s sooo cute! Diddle, diddle, diddle, and we’ll give him what he wants—as we teach him through his middle middle what to want! Hahahahahahahahaha, (without a break, eliding from the witch’s voice to his own sober voice, for laughs) we’ve all had (sober now) relatives like that, I’m sure.

(MACK stares at the slide again.)

What a remarkable angle.

“Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches.” That’s how Macbeth begins.

(still staring) It’s the womb’s tight exit. A new, a blinding light there…and sounds! Ten times louder as the infant leaves his bloody, warm, well-padded chamber for the wide, cold air and turmoil. Just beyond those straits, who should already be a-blaring—yappayammering away—but monstrous, powerful adults, who prattle knowingly and ceaselessly, drawing an impenetrable curtain of gibberish between us and that real world that is, whatever that may be.

(Presently, MACK returns his gaze to the audience. Then, he turns

off the machine.)

I have a confession for you. (pause) Something I had thought I should conceal—but now what earthly difference…? (pause) As a child, I believed my mother was a witch.

She uttered strange sayings to me constantly… (with a drunken slur) ”Your father was a wasted piece of work. A distraught abandoner. May you, Mack, be the child he feared, who outdoes him without trying—he will choke on all his curses of the two of us.” Oh, she’d ply me with her spells for him as piously as any voodoo mahn [sic] might riddle dolls with pins—when, that is, she had me to herself to lay my collar straight before she pushed me into an audition for a TV ad promoting eggs, for example. “You are such a little actor,” she would say. “Now please be as lively and as funny with the man today as you can be when Uncle Hoyt comes visiting. You go kick your father in the teeth for me!”

(pause) The witch who nursed or bottle-fed you meanwhile filled your mind with all you know, even to this day.

(He turns the slide projector on again.)

(eyes back to the slide; nodding insistently) Call them “the weird sisters,” yes. Weird’s another way of spelling “wired.” (pause) We believe a person has a private destiny, a fate that patiently awaits that person’s future self.

(MACK attempts to change the slide, but the screen goes blank—

white light.)

(not yet absorbing the situation; staring at the screen as if it held an image, preoccupied) Destiny… Destiny… (noticing) Uh-oh. Uhh-ohhhhhh.

(digging a hand into one of his pants pockets, unself-consciously) Where is that damn…can opener?

(MACK now retrieves his old-fashioned beer can opener from his

pocket, turns it over in his hand for a moment, as if to be sure it is

still in working order, and applies it to the slide projector, using

it to pry something loose.)

(working) Destiny…destiny, as I was saying…is the lie of bearded women, …but we…(climbing onto the table to continue his work on the projector) give our life away to her. We…do the things which…lying destiny…lyingly requires of us…lie ourselves or… cheat or…kill. (pause, resting from his labors momentarily; to himself, agitated) I auditioned for the part. Look who got it—got it—got the part without auditioning and now proceeds to…dish it out right past me to his son!

(He resumes his efforts to repair the slide projector. He exerts

himself.)

What it comes down to is, the people in this damn profession can’t tell good from bad no more…can’t tell good—from heinous! (pause) You must act upon your own behalf, or no one will.

(Needing another break from his efforts at repair, MACK

suddenly relents, inadvertently letting the can opener—and the

hand which holds it—fall into the path of the projector’s beam

of light, so that they appear in silhouette now on the screen.)

(MACK himself observes this effect. He then moves his hand to

different distances from the projector and tries holding the can opener

in different—more and less threatening—positions.)

(distractedly reciting) Is it then a dagger which I see before me, handle in my hand?

(suddenly aware of his audience again; a low-life voice, in response) Nah, Macbeth; it’s a crummy can opener.

(an attempt at joking) Well, destiny won’t keep, it seems. Even in a can, it seems that it won’t keep. Open it, that can, your destiny. (pause; then quietly, ironically) Is it a can of worms?

(Defeated, MACK lets out a quiet, long, lamenting sigh or squeal.

Immediately, there is knocking on a door at the back of the

auditorium, then yanking of the door back and forth. After a moment,

the knocking and the yanking cease.)

(to the audience) Shhhhh! Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

(MACK’s cell phone rings again now. Motionless, he lets it ring two

or three times, then pulls it out.)

(into the phone, curtly) Hello? (pause; flatly) I don’t know; let me see.

(He scans the audience, then has one brief, inaudible, ironic chuckle

at his own expense before continuing.)

(again into phone) No one, nobody. (pause) No. (pause, ruefully) Mmm, not much—one or two more slides. (pause) Don’t you say that to yourself, Deirdre. (pause, more alert now) Deirdre…honey…listen to me, listen to me for a minute…. (pause) Yes, it looks that way. (pause, nodding) Come, yes, come, come to nothing. (one part desperation, one part decisiveness) That, however, does not mean it was a great mistake. (pause, not hearing anything) Are you there, Deirdre? (pause) Okay. Good. (resuming) We are only flesh, Deirdre. We….(seeing a curtain; a reverie) there’s a…curtain, Deirdre….It’s as if there was a curtain hung from outer space…and that curtain never parted. From one’s first day here alive until one’s last, it’s as if there was a curtain that obstructs our view of future days and all true consequences. (long pause)

No. That’s not the reason I was so surprised by you last night. I was surprised…by your love for me…by your willingness to undertake—for me—as dangerous an action as there is. (pause) We know ourselves, I guess, by how much of our dreaming we can say out loud before the other person squints or laughs. I have told you everything, and all that I’ve told you hasn’t changed your…sober-lipped or wide-eyed ways of listening to me, gazing on me, in the least…until you’ve had me utterly believing in myself, you crazy. (pause) What, are you crying now? Deirdre, please do not. Please, stop. It—unnerves me, Deirdre. No one is to blame. You have been my rock. Listen to me: “Bring forth men-children only.”—Stop it, Deirdre. Stop your crying; (sharply) stop it!

(long pause) Have you stopped? (pause) Good. So, uhhh, tell me… How have you spent your afternoon? (pause) At the kitchen sink…?! (a feeble laugh) Not all afternoon, I hope. (pause) Hey but listen…. Yeah? Listen to me, crazy: There is nothing on your hands! (pause) I did—that… what’s-it-called, that abrasive soap. You were still in bed when I came back with it this morning. (pause) Did you look in the bathroom? (pause) On the shelf? (pause) Well, go and look there; I’ll hold on. (his hand over mouthpiece; to audience) Please excuse this interruption, but my wife has been quite overwrought since last night’s murder of Frank Deeds. (confidentially) In her sleep, in fact, she talked a garbled blue streak. At one point she startled me greatly; she said, “Who would have known the old man had so much blood in him?” (back on the line with her) Yes? (pause) Good. (humoring) That should…remove…any marks that you still have. (pause) Absolutely. That soap is abrasive. It’d make short work of Cain’s mark! (pause) Try it, you’ll see. (pause) It’s in the Bible, silly. (pause) Good. We’ll talk later, okay? I need to finish my—bizarre diversion of this audience tonight. (long pause, then alarmed) I say nothing’s “over,” baby—let alone our lives together. (pause) I’d be happy to give you a kiss; you know that. Only, if I kissed you now, after all the craziness that you’ve been saying, you might take it for agreement with you—for good-by, or some such meaning I don’t mean. (pause) No, not so much as a telephonic peck on the ear, do you hear me? We’ll do our kissing in person: you’ll just have to stick around for it. (pause) No more crying, baby. No more crying please. Go go go—go wash your hands for me. (a warning) I’m calling you back soon, Deirdre, to be sure that you’re okay. Do you understand? (pause) What…what are you saying? That makes no sense. (pause) Deirdre, “good Frank Deeds”—as you now call that glorified nonentity—had no more blood in him than you or I or any living member o’ the goddamn species. (pause; then subdued, resigned) About three pints, I think. (pause) No, three pints. Even if it all had spilled on you, it would be gone by now, in your obsessive personal Niagara at the sink. (pause) Fine. He was, yes, I agree. (pause,nodding) Like your father. (pause, nodding) Yes, that too, that too—but that did not obtain for him a single ounce above his biological three short pints!

Okay, okay…do eat, don’t eat, do just as you please. I’ll be calling you to check on you, my love, okay? (pause) Okay.

(MACK hangs up. He broods in silence for a moment.)

Why this fuss? Waste—is Nature’s watchword!

She does nothing without paying freely, genocidally for it, with lives—a billion sperm to fertilize an egg, a bloody slew of eggs for each that makes it through a birth on into middle age…but my dear wife has forsworn eating altogether on account of her participating in just one man’s negligible death.

Yes, and through it all, the Creator of it all—of all confusion here, as well—is nowhere to be found on earth—and my dear wife believes that she is negligent—unfeeling monster…

She. My scaffolding….(long pause, a bitter twist) What? Become my scaffold?

(MACK is at loose ends. He sees a box, idly picks it up, shakes

it—causing the object within it to bounce about noisily—then

opens it and stares right into it.)

(presently, infantilizing the audience) What do you suppose I’m looking at?! (straight, cold) Bloody old Macbeth’s encrusted head—just as it was cut from him by “brave Macduff,” offstage, and then displayed: a proof! a monster’s head!

The thugs and whores had wanted me to bring it into school to show them.

(Once again, MACK stares into the box.)

Call Macbeth a monster!

(MACK now turns from box to set and back again, once or twice.)

Yes, and does our foremost guide, the estimable Bard of Avon, then bear no responsibility for all this useless, truthless “monstering”? (pause) No, he shares the blame. Even he, Shakespeare, he himself was a panderer. He knew well enough that what is monstrous is not us but the Creation, e…e…verything—but he aimed to make a final scene to please his royal patron, good King James, the Bible man. He virtually…

(Banging, louder now—then louder still, as if a single person had

been joined by others at the door. It goes on and on.)

(calling loudly) Sto-o-op it, frauds! (much more sharply, shouting now) I said stop it! There’s a goddamn play in progress!

(The banging stops, as if in response to MACK.)

(MACK remains on guard a very long moment. Then, as he starts

to relax, his cellular phone starts ringing again. It rings at least

three times before MACK answers it.)

(into phone, warily) Hello? (pause, more relaxed) Yes, Deirdre? (pause) Me? Why no. It’s only been two minutes. (pause) Ah. Hold on. (with hand over mouthpiece; to audience, deadpan) She was afraid I had already called. She can’t hear the phone ring when the water’s running. (pause in which to let the audience absorb this revelation; then back into the phone again) Yes, Deirdre. No—but the cops have come. Do you think they perhaps have some big part—larger than mere life perhaps, a dull eternity—in their minds for me now? (pause) No, right outside the theater door. I believe I spooked the whole detachment of ‘em with my fine, crazed shouting. Probably, their sergeant has decided not to rush me: I just might be armed. Better let the well-heeled paying public head for home first, hey?

Gun? Are you asking me if I said “gun,” Deirdre; I said “armed.”

(MACK shakes his head, exasperated.)

(sternly) I don’t get the words you’re saying to me, Deirdre—please collect yourself! (pause; then more calmly and kindly, as if answering the question, “What have I become?”) You’ve become a bleeder and a blubberer who used to be an intact lover, like the moon. What I…What I want you to do now…

(He recoils from a sudden noise on the phone.)

Whew, Deirdre, what was that, like a blast? (presently) Hello. (pause) Hello? (pause) Deirdre? (pause) Deirdre, honey?

(MACK begins to gasp uncontrollably. He covers his mouth with the

back of his hand, backing away from the audience.)

What?! She what?! (pause) You…don’t know that. Say the phone malfunctioned…(more subdued) with a…loud noise.

(MACK puts the phone to his ear one last time, then pulls it away,

heaving, calming down.Silence.)

What, against all this, would I amount to…by myself?

(There is tentative banging at the door now, as if in response to

MACK’S prolonged silence. MACK unthinkingly grabs a stapler

from the table and brandishes it like a weapon.)

Hold off, goons! I’m still on the premises! Beware of me! Beware!

(The banging stops. Presently, MACK notices two things: first, the

stapler in his hand; then, the newspaper sheets strewn about him. A

plan forms in his mind.)

If it’s monsters they want, I’ll give them monsters worth their contemplating.

(In silence, MACK constructs diverse rough, man-like figures out of

newspaper. He surrounds himself with these.)

(continuing to work; to audience, vibrato) Oh, I know that you can’t stay the whole night through with me. (pause) For some here, a theatrical performance isn’t anything of note. It’s the lure to catch and go to bed with someone. (pause, with a laugh) It’s a popsicle! (pause) And for some here—who have made that shameless use of the great plays already—now, in consequence, there are babysitters to get home to. (longer pause) No one…ever…seems to……learn things…in a theater.

Where, tell me, should the play “Macbeth” have ended? I’ll tell you: The play “Macbeth” should properly have ended on its last great note of poetry—the “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech, as hackneyed as it is—with its last word, “Nothing.”

Unfortunately, though, that speech was Macbeth’s. With a real king in his audience, Will—that ever shaky shaker of a spear—could not possibly have put his final say into the mouth of any killer of a king.

(Silence—as MACK continues working.)

(idly) “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… Cree…(stopping short, then saying the word fully, to reflect on it) “Creeps”—that’s the only word that no longer suits….We, in our time, need…well, something having no mind: a machine.

Beeps!—like a cell phone or a computer. (pause) “Tomorrow and tomorrow and to…(imitative of machines, each sound cut off abruptly) bee…bee…bee…bee… (in his normal voice again) beeps in this petty pace from day to day, (a horrid thought to him) on to thee last…bee…bee…bee…bee…syllable of recorded…bee…bee… time: (pause; lifting an arm straight above him, then letting it fall like the long hand of a clock, slowly, as he intones) beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

(Silence.)

A version of “Macbeth” which ended there, its most fitting note for ending—Macbeth’s own words, his silence—could not possibly have turned him into monster. (pause) A play…which ended there. (pause, a pronouncement) Such is the power of the playwright in saying when to let the curtain fall.

Would not such a play have sounded each of us to his/her rotten, outgrown core?

(Silence.)

I shall not be long at this. Only…every act and thing shows me its dark side now.

Even nature does—trees. (referring to newspaper sheets) These, you know, are trees’ dark products. (making a discovery, laughing) I know what they are: Birnam Woods, a veritable forest of men—collectively uprooted, acting upon orders to uproot the wicked too…on behalf of pale power-brokers they themselves will never meet.

Certainly, they’re blind as any forest. They are that same forest of a million upright, thin, stick soldiers which has ever mustered to dispose of inconvenient, seeing men.

I may be the bloody chief of monsters—but, then, look at them! What have I to fear at their hands? Are they my superiors? They stay in “columns.” They wear infinitely doubtful marching orders on their frail sleeves.

(seizing a sheet of newspaper in both hands) Listen! (rustling it loudly, raising his voice to be heard) This is what their mommas taught them! All the child’s wild shrieks—all the politician’s grandstanding—all of it comes crackling—a senseless airborne racket, shaken loose!

They are born of gibberish. (more quietly) They are born of woman, just as I was.

They, in sum, can’t touch me.

(With his foot, MACK now crushes one of the newspaper “men” he

has created. He then unself-consciously begins to hum “When the

Saints Go Marching In.”—“Pa-pom-pa-POM…pa-pom-pa-POM, pa-

pom-pa-POM-POM-POM-POM-POM….”)

(stopping short) Hahahahaha, nooo—no saints here! This is feigned goodness. These are phonies!

(improvising as he sings)

Oh when the……feigned…

Go marchin’ in,

Oh when the feigned

Go marchin’ in,

I want to be there

And be… (crushing underfoot another man of paper) “number” (the comparative of “numb”)

When the feigned go marchin’ in.

Oh when the sun

Refuse to shine,

(speaking) …refuse to shine!—just like in a theater: dark and empty as the interstellar void,

(singing again) Oh when the sun

Refuse to shine,

(speaking) …It’s curtain time; now see for once!

(singing) We shall have to…re-think summer

When the sun refuse to shine.

(He kicks the last remaining “man” well out toward the edge of the

stage.)

(singing) And when the moon,

It turns to blood,

(speaking to the audience, with hostility)…These are the actual lyrics!

(singing) Oh when the moon,

It turns to blood,

(speaking) Whose blood? Frank Deeds’ or Duncan’s? (shaking his

head) The Creation’s—which is all a blood of secrets.

(singing) It’s too late to…send out plumbers,

When the moon

It steams with blood.

(MACK now takes the newspaper sheet still in his hand—which he’s

used for sound effects—and lets it drift into the middle of the other

stage debris, where it lands. He then turns, notes the chair at the head

of the table, slowly makes his way toward it, and sits in it. Silence.)

What a heaving evening we have had. Has it been tragedy or goddamn comedy? (pause, challenging) Well? (pause) Well? (pause) I am sure that I can’t help you there.

(presently, shooing the audience away) Go go…go back home. What have I been telling you? (pause) Do you suppose that if you stay on to the end here, someone—the producer—will appear and give you back your money? (shaking his head) You…have gotten all that anyone can hope to get from theater: you have had a man as knowing as yourselves (hand to his own chest) be sacrificed…as an incompetent! (long pause; then dismissively, at rapid speed) You’ve been spared for now, so…

(one word or phrase at a time, as if saying, “Read my lips”)

Go…back…home…now.

Lock a…wooden door…behind you.

(more normally, but still derisively)

Draw those indispensable

Fine curtains—

That you may be counted virtuous

By neighbors

When, (too light a touch, a taunting)

“tomorrow and tomorrow”—

(quietly, sincerely) Or tomorrow—

You expire.

Draw the curtains, friends.

Get yourselves a bit of shut-eye.

Hold to the illusions it requires in the morning, every morning, to eat eggs in peace.

(a reprise of his singing, but as if continuing to give instructions to the audience)

And when the moon,

It turns to blood…

(progressively slowing his tempo to a standstill)

Oh when the…moon,

It…..turns…….to……….

(Silence.)

You look surprised. (pause) Why? (pause) That I…SSSsssSSSing?

(The actor should at this point be poised between defiance and

compassion.)

(Silence for a beat, then the house goes dark.)

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