Limbo

By Frank Tropea

Limbo is a place where lost, confused souls go, and becomes the meeting place of three disparate characters await God's judgment for their suicides. A nun, Sister Margaret, who failed to save a baby from her homicidal mother, took her life over psychological torment and guilt. Next is a handsome, virile young bank executive, Michael, wh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Tropea
• Release date: Sep 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649992796

Book preview

LIMBO

A ONE-ACT PLAY IN FIVE

SCENES

By

Frank Tropea

Copyright © Frank Tropea All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

978-1-64999-273-4 Paperback

978-1-64999-279-6 Ebook

(Limbo is the place where lost, confused souls go as in suicides until some sort of divine judgment is enacted upon their souls. The setting is tall, bare walls with shining, medium-sized windows. The light is a pale, bright opalescent which glimmers off the windows in ghostly, radiant waves).

A thick miasma of pale, blue fog drifts through, at times obscuring the scene. One faintly hears in the background sad Gregorian chants and the tinkle of crystalline beads falling through a sheer, black backdrop.)

SCENE ONE

(In the twilight haze, an older nun is seen kneeling on the hard floor and praying her rosary of crystal beads. This is SISTER MARY

MARGARET RYAN and the Roman Catholicism she exudes is as voluminous as her white veil and gown. As light passes through her crystalline beads, it creates a prismatic rainbow as if she were at Fatima or Lourdes. She prays her rosary with a near-mind-numbing intensity).

Walking from the right is the HIGH STEWARD of Limbo. He is a tall, thin, albino man dressed in long, black judge’s robes, a white, ruffled cravat around his neck and a thick, heavy staff in his right hand.

The HIGH STEWARD is leading into Limbo MICHAEL GORDON, another suicide. Michael is in his early thirties, very good-looking, blond and well-built from many workouts at very exclusive gyms. He is dressed in blue, satin pajamas and looks very dizzy, disoriented and confused. He stops walking dizzily and stares around in total bafflement. The HIGH STEWARD shakes him by the shoulders to bring him to and leads him to a wooden chair near where the nun is praying on her knees as if in total abasement.)

STEWARD:

Here you’ll sit awhile. This woman, Sister Mary Margaret Ryan, will tell you a little about this special place, Limbo, where you’ll stay until a judgment is rendered on your soul.

MICHAEL:

(Beginning to come to)

Limbo, you said? What the hell is this place?

When I took that final dive ten stories up, I really wasn’t expecting anything afterwards, just oblivion – rest and peace and quiet oblivion.

(SISTER MARY stands and looks at MICHAEL sadly.) SISTER MARY: Now, young man. There always is an afterwards, beyond life. Heaven or hell or purgatory, but, never just nothing.

MICHAEL:

What and who are you? You look like someone from Lourdes or the Sound of Music!

STEWARD:

(Frowning)

Keep a respectful tongue in your head, Michael Gordon. This woman at least has some spiritual affinities. She knows that it was deliberate suicide, what