Iphigenia in Splott Read online

  IPHIGENIA IN SPLOTT

  Gary Owen

  IPHIGENIA IN SPLOTT

  OBERON BOOKS

  LONDON

  WWW.OBERONBOOKS.COM

  First published in 2015 by Oberon Books Ltd

  521 Caledonian Road, London N7 9RH

  Tel: +44 (0) 20 7607 3637 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7607 3629

  e-mail: [email protected]

  www.oberonbooks.com

  Reprinted in 2016

  Copyright © Gary Owen, 2015

  Gary Owen is hereby identified as author of this play in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted his moral rights.

  All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before commencement of rehearsal to Curtis Brown Group Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4SP. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained, and no alterations may be made in the title or the text of the play without the author’s prior written consent.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or binding or by any means (print, electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 9781783198917

  EPUB ISBN: 9781783198924

  Cover Photography: Alex Mills

  Cover Design: Burning Red | www.burningred.co.uk

  Printed and bound by Marston Book Services, Didcot.

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  i Gruff, a’i fam

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  by the same author

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Chris Haydon for giving me the idea. To Róisín McBrinn and Chris Ricketts for running with it. And to Rachel O’Riordan for making it actually happen.

  Iphigenia in Splott was first performed at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff on 8 May, 2015 with the following cast:

  EFFIE, Sophie Melville

  Creative Team

  Author, Gary Owen

  Director, Rachel O’Riordan

  Designer, Hayley Grindle

  Lighting Designer, Rachel Mortimer

  Sound Designer, Sam Jones

  Casting Director, Kay Magson CDG

  Stage Manager, Charlotte Unwin

  Iphigenia in Splott by Gary Owen presented by Sherman Cymru opened at National Theatre’s temporary theatre, London on 29 January, 2016 with the following cast:

  EFFIE, Sophie Melville

  Director, Rachel O’Riordan

  Designer, Hayley Grindle

  Lighting Designer, Rachel Mortimer

  Sound Designer, Sam Jones

  Casting Director, Kay Magson CDG

  Stage Manager, Charlotte Unwin

  The National Theatre, where this play was staged in January 2016, is dedicated to making the very best theatre and sharing it with as many people as possible.

  We stage up to 30 productions at our South Bank home each year, ranging from re-imagined classics – such as Greek tragedy and Shakespeare – to modern masterpieces and new work by contemporary writers and theatre-makers. The work we make strives to be as open, as diverse, as collaborative and as national as possible. Much of that new work is researched and developed through our New Work Department: we are committed to nurturing innovative work from new writers, directors, creative artists and performers. Equally, we are committed to education, with a wide-ranging Learning programme for all ages in our new Clore Learning Centre and in schools and communities across the UK.

  The National’s work is also seen on tour throughout the UK and internationally, and in collaborations and co-productions with regional theatres. Popular shows transfer to the West End and occasionally to Broadway; and through the National Theatre Live programme, we broadcast live performances to 2,000 cinemas in 50 countries around the world. Since 2015, National Theatre: On Demand in Schools has made three acclaimed, curriculum-linked productions free to stream on demand in every secondary school in the country. Online, the NT offers a rich variety of innovative digital content on every aspect of theatre.

  We do all we can to keep ticket prices affordable and to reach a wide audience, and use our public funding to maintain artistic risk-taking, accessibility and diversity.

  Box Office: +44(0) 20 7452 3000

  National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 9PX

  www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

  Registered Charity No: 224223

  Director of the National Theatre, Rufus Norris

  Executive Director, Lisa Burger

  1

  You lot.

  Sitting back, taking it easy, waiting for me

  To – what? Impress you? Amaze you? Show you what I’ve got?

  Well boys and girls, ladies and gents – I’m afraid not.

  You have got it back to front, arse about tit, and your up side

  Is definitely down. See I know what you think

  When you see me pissed first thing wandering around. You think –

  Stupid slag. Nasty skank.

  But guess what? Tonight

  You all are here to give thanks

  To me.

  Yeah I know it’s a shock.

  But you lot, every single one

  You’re in my debt.

  And tonight – boys and girls, ladies and gents –

  I’ve come to collect.

  You all know me.

  I strut down the street, and your eyes dive for the ground

  Face on I’m too much for you to handle

  The second I’m past your head snaps up

  To catch an eyeful of this firm yet juicy arse –

  – and it is, so don’t even bitch.

  That’s my flat, on the corner.

  My nan remembers when it used to be a shop – like almost every house on the block,

  Oooh, she says, it’s not like how it was. I say Nan: wake up love.

  Everything changes, everything moves on.

  Nan loves to have a moan about the world, the way it’s gone,

  Course when she moans about how the world has gone,

  What she’s really moaning about – is me. My life.

  Cos I live my life a million miles an hour, do what I like, when I like, and

  Oh look, I’ve got – this1 – for you, if you can’t deal with it

  Nan says, this place used to have everything you need

  Shops are gone, bingo hall burned, pubs closed, doctors shut,

  STAR centre getting pulled down and more flats thrown up.

  She says we used to live. You could live here and live well.

  Now they’re stacking us up, and we’re supposed to just exist.

  I say Nan you’re such a moaning old trout I swear

  Nan scowls at me she is up and out

  Says – I’ll tell you what young miss –

  It is eleven thirty-five in the morning and you have taken drink!

  Nothing good can come from living like this.

  I say to Nan:
if you don’t like the way I live

  Maybe you shouldn’t come round no more. How’d you like that?

  Nan grumps off,

  Slaps down a couple of tens on the table as she waddles by

  And I should

  I should

  Pick them up go after her stuff them down her throat

  But

  I let the money sit.

  I let her shuffle down the stairs

  I let the front door slam because

  I need those notes.

  See the only way I get through the week is a cycle of hangovers.

  And I’m not talking, bit of a baddy head here.

  I’m talking proper, brain-shredding three day bastards.

  I’m talking hangovers that start, you’re under a table at Chicken Cottage,

  You’ve already chucked so much you’re just heaving big empty sick-flavoured burps, till

  Some secret trapdoor springs open in your guts

  And this thick green gloop shoots out your gob

  This sour liquorice juice, pints and pints of it,

  Where the hell was that tucked away? And you wake

  In a stranger’s bed, or a bathroom floor, or police cell.

  But you wake,

  Your muscles ache, your throat’s sore, teeth fizzing from all that acid

  In your puke the night before. You wake and you know

  – that’s half the week sorted!

  Because you’ll be day one in bed, crying and wishing you were dead,

  Onto the settee for day two, sweating into your duvet, eating twenty pee noodles, watching whatever shit comes on Dave ja vu.

  And on the third day you rise, and put yourself back together; start with a scalding hot bath mid morning to lift the shit from your pores then a ten hour programme of sanding down surfaces, picking, plucking, painting before you’re ready to go again.

  But last night I didn’t get there. Last night, don’t know why, don’t know what,

  I just didn’t have the commitment to getting absolutely totally fucked and now

  Disaster. It’s Monday morning, and I’ve got a brain functioning on full power.

  That is not natural, it is not normal

  And it is definitely not safe.

  I am going to need those notes from Nan,

  So tonight I can put right last night’s wrong, get totally fucked

  And wipe myself out for the rest of the week.

  So I let the woman walk.

  I don’t stuff those grimy tenners back in her face.

  Sometimes you’ve just got to take it.

  But still,

  Even if I’ve got an escape from real life tonight

  That leaves me with a day to get through

  My body buzzing, all this energy and fuck all to do with it.

  This means one thing.

  Trouble. In the end for me

  But before that, for… losers like you, basically.

  I wander down to the pavement, scan the street for targets

  Who’s gonna volunteer? Who will step up, be victim of my fury?

  And –

  Yes.

  This prick. This prick coming now.

  One of these pricks you see snarling on the weights at the STAR

  Glugging down protein shakes, gazing at himself in the mirror.

  Session after session pumping up his arms and chest,

  But leg day: leg day, the prick pisses off down the pub,

  So he’s got arms like thighs, but thighs like cheese straws.

  He totters down our street every day, little legs barely bearing the weight

  Of his steroid-boosted bi’s and tri’s and pecs

  Walking his nasty little dog, some kind of mongrel, maybe not a pug

  But fucking pug ugly for sure, and this prick

  Lets his nasty little dog shit all over our street. And that really pisses me off

  Not just cos I have to walk through it but – so does he!

  How fucking stupid do you have to be

  To let your dog shit on the street you walk down

  Every single day of the week?

  There’s so much crap, he has to do this little dance

  Just to dodge the turds he’s left lying in wait for himself.

  I watch him, pirouetting down the pavement like he’s having a fit

  And sometimes, I wonder

  Why exactly I even go out with the prick.

  He sees me sat on the kerb lifts his hand says

  Alright slag?

  I say –

  What did you call me, Kev?

  Smile fades, he says

  Whassat now?

  I say, did you just call me a slag?

  He says, I calls you that all the time, you loves it you do.

  I go I have had a fuckin gutsful of you –

  He goes chill the fuck out I was joking like

  You prick I shout and I’m off down the street,

  He skips after me, snapping at my heels, I’m screaming

  You twat, you bastard, you fucking shit

  It’s like a whole routine we got worked out,

  We usually pull it – three in the morning?

  Screaming at each other, staggering up and down the street.

  You might’ve heard us. Or you might’ve been trying to sleep?

  So we’re raging across the road, and

  Some fat mum with a massive buggy full of fat kids says

  Would you mind watching your language

  Or lowering your volume, please?

  I say the fuck you say to me?

  One of the fat kids starts to sob.

  She goes, your language is upsetting my little girl, alright?

  She’s belly rolls bulging her leggings from black to sheer grey

  And blinking at me, breathing through her mouth like the dog she is.

  I say the fuck d’you think you are bitch?

  Christ look at that hair. Rat black then three inches of grey roots.

  I mean I can see the bitch is busy popping out sprogs

  But five minutes with a pack of Nice n Easy would sort that,

  It’s so fuckin sad when a woman loses her self-respect.

  Kev limps up. Fuck’s this ’en?

  Bitch fucking started on me, trying to tell me what to do.

  Kev’s like who the fuck’s she think she is? I’m like that’s what I said.

  Pug ugly dog’s snapping around her buggy, bitch backs away

  That dog comes near me I’ll have the police out –

  I step closer, fast, and she’s not expecting it, and –

  Ewwww, the greasy sludged up pores in that T-zone,

  Bitch hasn’t deep cleansed since a million years BCC – before CC cream.

  I say, you fucking call the police love.

  You just try it.

  You just try.

  And she’s gonna say something.

  But then I look down at her buggy.

  A wriggly red newborn, chubbed up toddler, sobbing,

  And a cheeky girl, riding the rail at the back.

  And fat mum sees me look. And she thinks.

  She thinks about her soft little babies.

  Who have to walk this street,

  Play on this street,

  Live on this street,

  With me.

  And she thinks better.

  I go that’s right love, you walk away, you cunt.

  I go to Kev, you see that, you see how she was having a go?

  He goes what a fucking bitch aye

  I go that’s got me all riled up that has

  He goes yeah no I’m not surprised.

  But if you’re all riled, maybe I can help you relax?

  He brings out this massive bag of weed.

  I go where’d you get that?

  Blagged my way into some student party Crwys Road

  Found it under a mattress next to a foot long dildo?

  I mean who needs a foot long of anyth
ing?

  And I… don’t crush his innocence.

  We slink back to the flat,

  We light up, kick back, haze through the hours

  Smoking and shagging, even better for killing time than a hangover

  Cos there’s none of the shivering, and not so much of the self-hate

  And then the sun goes down – and I’m up, off the bed.

  Kev’s like – whassis now?

  I’m – we’re off out, I need to get hammered.

  He goes, I’ll hammer you right here right now love

  And even though I’ve shagged him four times in the last five hours

  When he says it like that it makes me wanna fucking kill the prick.

  But

  For tonight, I let him live.

  I work out my anger banging on Leanne’s door.

  Leanne’s my flatmate, I love her, she’s a fucking warrior.

  She screams, what the fuck? I scream, we are fucking off!

  Chuck Dove 72 on the pits, rummage with a baby wipe between the legs, and

  Leanne, we are fuckin leaving you behind!

  Leanne bursts out of her room, smoothing down a new halter neck

  Says, Eff, be honest now – d’my tits look big in this?

  I say – fucking massive love. And we are off.

  First bar’s Las Iguanas, cos

  Leanne’s got a voucher. All pitchers two for one.

  Which means you pay fifteen quid to get two pitchers of basically ice water

  Quelle fucking bargain. But then Leanne whips

  A quarter bottle of vodka from her clutch bag

  I grab it, cheeky slug, then dump the rest in the pitcher.

  Straight off, a git with a badge saying bar manager teleports in next to us,

  He goes, guys guys guys hope you’re having a great night just need to check – is there vodka in this?

  I say, well it’s supposed to be a vodka martini

  So I would fucking hope so. He goes

  You know what I mean, miss. Can I see in your bag please?

  I’m breezy, cos the bottle’s not in my bag,

  It is behind my back, tucked into the band of my skirt. I say

  Go ahead love, if that’s how you get your kicks

  He has a little poke around, I tell him

  Those would be tampons? Just in case you’ve never seen them.

  He chucks the bag back to me, defeated but then

  As I grab the bag,

  I sort of lean forward, and the bottle sort of pops free,