Linda Vista (TCG Edition)

By Tracy Letts

“Letts is a master of pitch-dark comedies that measure the grisliest depths of human behavior…Linda Vista is very funny, equally unsettling…An inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife-crisis comedy.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

Fifty-year-old Wheeler is moving into his own apartment after a nasty divorce. With a blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once you’ve already grown up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Release date: Sep 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781559369244

Book preview

Act One

SCENE 1

Wheeler’s new apartment.

Wheeler and Paul.

WHEELER: Thanks.

PAUL: You don’t have that much stuff.

WHEELER: Know what I say when someone asks me to move their shit?

PAUL: What?

WHEELER: No.

PAUL: Has anyone ever asked you? I wouldn’t ask you.

WHEELER: Well, no, probably no one’s ever asked me. But I can tell you what I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t say, Oh, hey, I’d love to help you out but I slammed my dick in a car door and I gotta go to the doctor.

PAUL: You wouldn’t say that, huh?

WHEELER: Point is, I don’t lie.

PAUL: You don’t lie in response to a question no one’s asked you?

WHEELER: Want to get a bite to eat? Want to get some Mexican? On me.

PAUL: I can’t, Margaret and I have a dinner thing. Old friends of Margaret’s. They’re in town.

WHEELER: They’re not staying with you, are they?

PAUL: Just tonight. They’re in for a wedding tomorrow. So we’re going out to dinner. Fleming’s.

WHEELER: You seem enthusiastic.

PAUL: It’s all right. It’s fine. They’re old friends and we don’t have a lot in common anymore, you know?

WHEELER: That’s why new friends are better than old friends.

PAUL: You think?

WHEELER: Cause of what you said, we lose whatever we had in common with old friends, we change. Why do we have to stick with old friends forever? They’re not family. We should be able to just trade in old friends for new ones.

PAUL: What about loyalty?

WHEELER: Loyalty to an idea is better than loyalty to people.

PAUL: No. You believe that?

WHEELER: Loyalty to people is how you wind up camping with Hitler.

PAUL: And he was not a good camper. One thing with these friends, they’re so conservative politically?

WHEELER: Which is exactly what I’m saying. Don’t tell me they’re Trump voters.

PAUL: I don’t know, I’m afraid to bring it up.

WHEELER: You cannot be friends with these people. The problem with these racist cocksuckers isn’t that they’re doing too much OxyContin, it’s that they need to do a whole lot more. I stopped trying to be polite about it.

PAUL: Were you trying to be polite about it?

WHEELER: And we’re supposed to find middle ground with these people. What middle ground, where is this ground in the middle? These people are so fucking stupid, they think human beings walked around with dinosaurs. I have to find middle ground with that? No, sir, you’re an idiot, I’d prefer not to meet you anywhere near the middle. I’ll stay right here and you stay way over there on the stupid side. Aren’t you obligated to deal with these assholes at work?

PAUL: Kind of an unwritten rule at City Hall, we never talk politics.

WHEELER: I was out to dinner with this girl and we were talking, turns out she comes from this big military family, like everybody in the family has served, and I hear this and I’m thinking, Please don’t say some dumb shit about the stupid border wall or NFL players taking a knee cause I just won’t handle it well, and so I play it cool, y’know, Thanks for their service, or whatever, and then I said, very concerned, Too bad we’re always stuck in these pointless bullshit wars, like too bad all these motherfuckers are dead for no good reason. And she went off on me! I said, "Didn’t I say, ‘Thanks for their service?’ I’m on their side, I don’t want these guys going off and dying, I think they should just stay anchored out there in the bay doing their dumb fucking maneuvers and doing, y’know, pushups."

PAUL: How’d that go over?

WHEELER: I got the check while she started singing Proud to Be an American. And this girl, my God . . . like Ali Mac-Graw. I would’ve worn a MAGA hat if she’d let me do all my dirty