Lovelock's Dream Run

By David Geary

This play sets the well-known events of Jack Lovelock's Berlin Olympics in parallel with a conservative boarding school in New Zealand today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victoria University Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780864737823

Book preview

LOVELOCK’S  DREAM RUN

David Geary

Victoria University Press

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements

First Performance

Production Note

Characters

Slides

Preshow

Scene One: The Boys’ High Playing Field

Scene Two: Nick and Howard’s Cubicle in the Dorm

Scene Three: The Memorial Library

Scene Four: A Berlin Cabaret

Scene Five: The Memorial Library

Scene Six: Howard and Nick’s Cubicle

Scene Seven: Sickbay

Scene Eight: The Rugby Field

Scene Nine

Scene Ten: Berlin

Scene Eleven: Christ’s College, Christchurch

Scene Twelve: A Chartered Bus

Scene Thirteen: Howard and Nick’s Cubicle

Scene Fourteen: Railway Station at Night

Scene Fifteen: The National Library

Scene Sixteen: The Desert Road at Dusk 

Scene Seventeen: The National Library and  BHS Phones

Scene Eighteen: The Desert Road

Scene Nineteen: The Railway Station

Scene Twenty: The Head’s Office

Scene Twenty-One: Third Form House Drama

Scene Twenty-Two: The cubicle

Scene Twenty-Three: ‘Demons’

Scene Twenty-Four: The Railway Lines

Copyright

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge James McNeish’s novel Lovelock (Hodder and Stoughton, 1986) as being the inspiration for the ‘Otto Peltzer Theory’ and the ‘Cabaret Scene’, both of which form part of Lovelock’s Dream Run. For anyone interested in further information on the life of Jack Lovelock, I strongly recommend this novel and also James McNeish’s collection of prose, The Man from Nowhere (Godwit Press, 1991).

Many thanks to Alison Quigan, Centrepoint Theatre, and to the QE II Arts Council for commissioning the play. Mick Rose and Tim Spite for script editing. Stephen Danby for playing me ‘These Foolish Things’. Bruce Leadley and Timaru Boys’ High School for access to the Lovelock collection. And the Alexander Turnbull Library for the archive material and slides.

Finally, thanks to Playmarket for workshopping the play at the 1992 Australasian Playwrights’ Conference. The play’s success owes much to the workshop director, Lisa Warrington, and dramaturg, Murray Edmond. It was with their much appreciated help, and the considerable talents of the cast below, that Lovelock’s Dream Run was first realised.

    Directed by Lisa Warrington

Dramaturg, Murray Edmond

First Performance

Lovelock’s Dream Run was premiered at the Watershed Theatre by the Auckland Theatre Company on 11 March 1993 with the following cast:

Directed by Raymond Hawthorne

Production Note

The physical set should be relatively neutral, so that a few simple set units and props can establish each new setting. Costumes, too, need only suggest the identity of the several characters played by each actor. The exception is Jack Lovelock, who should be in period dress. The slides should be projected on a screen above or behind the action. It is indicated where the slides should come in but up to each production whether they stay up or it reverts to a blank screen. The play should never lose as one of its levels of reality the sense of a bunch of schoolboys putting on a play.

Characters

J

ACK

L

OVELOCK

H

OWARD

C

URTIS

/ O

TTO

P

ELTZER

/ L

ENI

R

IEFENSTAHL

/ C

UNNINGHAM

2 / J

EAN

B

ATTEN

N

ICK

H

URIWAI

/ R

EPORTER

3 / J

AZZ

S

INGER

/ C

AMERAMAN

/ L

UIGI

B

ECCALI

/ K

IDDIE

P

IKE

/ F

RITZ

/ R

EPORTER

2 / K

IDDIE

/ K

EENE

H

ITLER

/ H

ANS

/ R

EPORTER

4 / T

HE

H

EAD

/ C

ABARET

P

ATRON

/ C

HUBBS

/ C

AMPBELL

/ N

Y

/ D

IGNITARY

/ K

IDDIE

/ W

ALTER

1

S

ILVERS

/ C

UNNINGHAM

1 / C

ECIL

M

ATTHEWS

/ R

EPORTER

1 / C

ABARET

P

ATRON

/ N

OLAN

/ S

TARTER

/ H

AROLD

A

BRAHAMS

/ K

IDDIE

/ W

ALTER

2

P

IT

R

AKER

/ H

ELGA

/ C

ABARET

P

ATRON

/ A

UTOGRAPH

H

UNTER

/ M

ATRON

/ G

REEN

/ K

LAUS

/ C

ORNES

/ R

EPORTER

5 / K

IDDIE

/ A

LICE

Slides

Preshow

Slides 1a-e: Jack’s smiles, alternate.

Music from the show plays, ie: ‘These Foolish Things’, the theme to Brideshead Revisited, ‘Deutschland’, ‘God Save the King’ and the ‘Marseillaise’.

Scene One: The Boys’ High Playing Field

Slide 2: Lovelock’s Oak—close up.

H

OWARD

is wearing a perfectly fitting Boys’ High School summer uniform. He sings to himself part of ‘These Foolish Things’ while picking up acorns and putting them in a bucket.

H

OWARD

:

Oh will you never let me be

Oh will you never set me free

The ties that bound us are all around us

Slide 1a: Jack’s smile

There’s no escape that I can see.

Pause.

These foolish things remind me of you.

To audience: It’s a charming smile, don’t you think? Pause. Hmm? Pause. Well, I think it’s charming. I used to walk around Intermediate imitating Jack’s smile. He strolls around with a fixed grin