AN EXCERPT FROM The Stumble

DAVID ADJMI

CHARACTERS (appearing here)

OSCAR LEVANT, late forties to fifties

GEORGE GERSHWIN, thirties

THE NURSE, twenties

SETTING

There are three primary settings for the play: the theater in which the play is performed, a private room in Mount Sinai Hospital, and the inside of Oscar’s mind.

TIME

Now. And varying points in time between the 1930s and the 1970s.

This play is a ghosting. People vanish and appear as if by magic. The space should feel uncanny. Transitions should be effortless and lightning quick. Punctuation should be treated as indicators of rhythm rather than grammar.

Lights up on Oscar in pajamas and hospital slippers. He’s holding a pack of cigarettes and a lit cigarette, which he smokes over the following. He’s high—not flying, but a few feet off the ground.

OSCAR (when the applause dies down): Thank you for that very warm welcome. You’re very nice, thank you. (beat) Uh. I want to begin with a story—a marvelous… sort of a fable, one my father told me when I was a little boy. It was always one of my favorites, it goes like this: A young man murders his mother—it’s a happy fable. A boy… murders his mother and—he cuts her heart out and he presents it. To his sweetheart—this was before the invention of… normal gifts—and in his hurry; he stumbles. And the disembodied heart he carries in his hand cries out, “Did you hurt yourself, son?” (beat) And the moral of the story is LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOING! (smokes) I feel a bit naked without an orchestra In any event.

Thank you for coming tonight, to our brilliant… singular and… truly… genius—night of theater—and we’re so happy to have you. Who we is I have no idea—I’m speaking in the royal we. And we… (sotto voce) apropos of schizophrenics—AND… by the way my name… is George Gershwin and—this is all about me No I’m Oscar Levant. (snickers to himself) I’m not Gershwin I’ve just stolen his identity. Uh. I’m Oscar Levant and you’re… whoever you are; I have no idea who you are.

You’re my alibi. To the murder of… well, I didn’t kill anyone. UHHH.

I’ve had an extremely thrilling and… eminent… uh, life. That I want to share with you in the form of a dramatic presentation. I ran the music department at RKO when I was twenty-one. And I studied… years later… with the brilliant Arnold Schoenberg. And for many years I was friends… friends with George Gershwin, the greatest composer of the twentieth century, whose career was—cut short by. Tragically… uh. () And I got very—known for playing his music . I’m on strike. I developed a phobia of the piano and I can’t be near the piano. But I used to say. And who knows how I got here, I certainly don’t.