Aantal personages
Mannen: 1

Personages
Bough the theatre critic

Genre(s)
Monoloog

Synopsis

Bough, the theatre critic, comes home after the umpteenth bad performance. He’s made up his mind. He’s never going to the theatre again. And he doesn’t want to write any more reviews either. No more Ibsen, Brecht and Shakespeare. He’d rather have cancer; he’d rather be dead. But he doesn’t want to attend any more performances. Theatre no longer has any connection with reality, he says. Drama is everywhere, except on the stage. In a flood of vitriol, Bough vents his anger about contemporary theatre: a theatre of imitation that no longer has anything to do with real life.
His wife and his son Peter, who are also present in the living room, try to interrupt him, but to no avail. Bough continues to play his monotonous song. He hangs on to a reality that he has compiled from newspaper stories, snippets from the radio and television images. In the meantime, the drama of his wife and his son is taking place right before the theatre buff’s unseeing eyes. His son Peter drinks all the water from a vase, eats the flowers, burps and farts. He masturbates and raucously reaches orgasm. Then he fixes up a shot of heroin and destroys the television and radio. Next he has sex with his mother and strangles her. Finally he commits suicide by stuffing his mouth with wads of paper ripped from his father’s notepad. Bough reacts to none of this. The drama of reality just passes him by. He has decided to call the editor-in-chief and offer him his resignation. The piece ends at the moment Bough gets through to him on the phone.

(peter starts to give himself a shot of heroin)

FATHER
yesterday
in the marnixstraat
a tramp
'I haven't had anything to eat yet'
he says
'it's about time you did then'
I say
'yes but I was five years in paraguay'
he says
those kind of people
that kind of life
or the woman
on the lindengracht
with every step
she took
I had the feeling
she was crushing
a child's
skull
at the butcher's
I see the butcher
cutting meat
that's me I think
that meat
on the television
someone kicks a ball into the goal
that's me I think
that goal
someone sticks a stamp
on an envelope
that's me
that tongue
see myself
in the mirror
that's me
I think
I sit in the theatre
I see the stage
nothing
I think
nothing

PETER
(misses the vein)
fuck

MOTHER
peter
dad

FATHER
sometimes I get jealous
when I see a net full of oranges
so cosy all together
or that story
about the paediatrician
who longed for a child
he got a child in the end
but he hated it
apparently
he hated it
then he got divorced
I recognise that
when I was first married
I used to feel
guilty
if the telephone rang
if I turned on the light
I used to button my coat
just to feel
as if I had taken a decision
I mean
I so easily feel
so many
things which aren't even real
but when I'm
in the theatre
I feel nothing
there's nothing to feel
art
fart

PETER
(misses the vein again)
shit

MOTHER
peter
dad

FATHER
(to mother)
sometimes when it's very late
after one of those unpruned chekhovs
one of those cadavers
which they haven't dared to operate on
a five-hour long cadaver
an artcadaver
and I come home
very late
and you're already asleep
you're lying in bed
breathing
one hand above your head
and the war has broken out
your war
in your head
and you're about to wake up with a start
I know
in order to forget it
that war
and your hand goes
straight
to your
little fuschia
you open your eyes
you ask
'was it any good?'
'war never breaks out on stage'
I complain
that is the drama of the day
that is the real dialogue
'was it any good?'
'war never breaks out'
or at night
on the motorway
coming back from an opening night
in the provinces
the saddest opening nights
provincial opening nights
with provincial opening nights audiences
the saddest audiences
an auditorium full of dead fish
watching the dead
with their dead fish eyes
and then I see all those
little red lights in front of me
on the motorway
then I want to
kiss them all
one by one
french kiss them
tongue them
suck them off
then I feel something
I haven't felt
the whole evening
that whole theatre evening
that whole provincial opening night theatre evening
then I come alive
on the motorway
while I'm
tonguing those little tail-lights
in my head
(peter hits the vein and falls over satiated: thud) 

Deze tekst is vertaald door
Rina Vergano (Buff (E) - Liefhebber, engels, 1992)