Double Feature: Two (NHB Modern Plays)

By Prasanna Puwanarajah

Double Feature brings together - in two volumes of paired short plays - four of the most exciting new voices in UK theatre, in their first commissions for the National Theatre.
This volume contains:

- Nightwatchman by Prasanna Puwanarajah
- There is a War by Tom Basden In Nightwatchman a British Sri Lankan cricketer prepares for the innings of her life for England against Sri Lanka at Lord's. Facing a relentless bowling machine she challenges our preconceptions of politics, sport and national pride as harshly as she challenges her own.
There is a War is a miniature epic that explores the mad savagery of war with biting black comedy, and takes us into the dark heart of a strange and surreal conflict.
As soldiers, priests and scavengers roam a battle-scorched landscape, a young medical officer finds herself abandoned and useless, unable to locate the hospital or even the war she was promised.
The plays premiered in a specially converted space at the National Theatre in July 2011. They were performed alongside Edgar & Annabel by Sam Holcroft and The Swan by DC Moore, published in the companion volume Double Feature: One.
'sharp, funny and fizzing with invention' - The Times
'marvellously incisive' - Independent
'a sharp satire with an irresistibly silly strain' - Financial Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Nov 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780013770

Book preview

DOUBLE FEATURE:

TWO

NIGHTWATCHMAN

Prasanna Puwanarajah

THERE IS A WAR

Tom Basden

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Nightwatchman

There is a War

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Double Feature: Two was first performed at the Paintframe, a specially converted space at the National Theatre, London, on 26 July 2011, with the following casts:

NIGHTWATCHMAN

THERE IS A WAR

All other parts played by members of the company

NIGHTWATCHMAN

Prasanna Puwanarajah

Author’s Thanks

I am indebted to the following people:

Polly Findlay, Ben Power, Nicholas Hytner, Ben Kidd, Sebastian Born and the NT Literary Department, Namasivayam Puwanarajah, Komales Puwanarajah, Beth Morgan, Dr Seuss Enterprises and the inimitable Stephanie Street.

Prasanna Puwanarajah

Setting Notes

The action takes place in an indoor cricket net.

The conceit here is of a bowling machine delivering imaginary balls towards Abirami. We don’t see this machine and we don’t see the balls it delivers. We hear in turn, and in precise detail: the workings of the machine; the ball hitting the AstroTurf; the ball hitting the bat; and the ball hitting the side netting after it is struck. In fact, the theatricality of the conceit depends upon the machine and its delivered balls being not visible, but nonetheless immaculately rendered both sonically and in Abirami’s physical actions.

Metal, indoor cricket stumps behind Abirami should respond to being hit by deliveries as indicated in the text.

A number of settings are possible, the following two feeling particularly distinct:

Traverse: this places the audience down both sides of her, with the cricket strip being slightly raised to form a specific catwalk, and un-netted save for the portion of a floor-to-ceiling net directly behind her, which may respond to balls that pass her by billowing backwards.

Proscenium: a floor-to-ceiling net which is the back portion of an indoor cricket net, possibly with the beginnings of the side netting running downstage towards the audience, stage left and stage right (leg side and off side respectively for a right-handed actor). As Abirami looks out towards us, the bowling machine is, as it were, embedded within the audience.

Black.

An echo in the air, initially suggestive of a sports hall.

The sound of switches being turned on. A catwalk of AstroTurf appears, audience on both sides, as strip lights hum to life overhead. Above one end of the AstroTurf, visible to the audience, is an electronic counter with the units SPEED/MPH.

Below this, ABIRAMI strides out. She is British Sri Lankan, late twenties/early thirties, in England Cricket squad training kit, holding a kit bag and a set of cricket stumps.

She looks at us and nods appreciatively.

ABIRAMI

Not a bad turn-out for women’s cricket.

She places the stumps down. She marks out the batting crease using her bat, placed on the ground as one would in the back garden, and chalks a line. She plonks down her kit bag and begins to pad up. During this:

Garden cricket with Dad

Down the park

Tennis ball to hard ball

First set of pads

Club cricket

League cricket Lancashire

Phone call.

‘Abi, we’d love for you to come up to Lord’s for the Test Match this Thursday.’

Beat.

And they’ve probably said the same thing to people since they invented this fucking game, you know

WG Grace getting a call while he was doing his doctoring:

‘Hello, is that… W…G… (whatever his fucking names are, fuck knows)

We’d love for you to come up to Lord’s for the Test this Thursday.’

As though they were asking you to a birthday party.

But I bet no one’s heard those words without thinking

That they were the closest they’d ever get to pure, pure bliss.

Ha!

If Lord’s burned down now, I’d be the last new person they’d asked.

A fucking Lankan.

Hilarious!

Yeah, man…

WG…

Right through to me.

Now that is a fucking family, Dad.

Not like your lot.

She fishes out a remote control, which she points back the way she came at an unseen bowling machine at the other end of what is now clearly a cricket strip. She hits a button. A mechanical ping sounds from the machine. ABIRAMI steps to one side and watches a ball as it goes past. She sees it but we don’t. The net behind her bulges back briskly as the imagined ball hits it. The electronic counter reads TESTING…

She fiddles with the remote control.

Just-Outside-Off-Stump was that, Merlyn?

Even I could bowl better than that

State-of-the-art-bowling-machine-my-arse.

She fiddles again with the remote control, changing settings on the machine twenty-two yards away from her. She hits a button again. Ping. Another ball. It misses the stumps again. The counter still reads TESTING…

(To us.) Precision, right?

It’s fifty metres that way

And fifty metres that way

But the battle in the middle is about a lick of varnish, Nothing more.

A few millimetres this way or that at the centre of the Field of Mars.

The difference between a Yorker that shatters those (Stumps.) and a half-volley that gets a fucking belting,

And that’s cricket, man.

It’s…

Well, it’s the Marmite Sport, innit?

‘Come on, England! Lively in the field! Walking in!’

You’d think it’d be hard to get excited about walking, right?

But that’s just it with cricket.

Beat.

You can.

She holds the remote control up again and pushes a button. Ping. Another ball. It hits off stump, which clatters back metallically before settling.

There we go, Merlyn.

That’s your off-peg.

Now then.

Let’s knock the leather off some balls.

She points the remote control, pushes a button, and throws it aside. SPEED/MPH reads ‘55’. A spot of light begins to flash on the unseen machine in the darkness. She hops from foot to foot, warming up, putting on her batting gloves.

It’s all about the back foot, right?

This one: (Waggles it to show us.)

Get it moving early on and the rest is a piece of piss.

Get it stuck in the mud and it’s seventy miles an hour worth of leather to suck on.

Head still

Back and across

Front foot

Bang!

She shows us, then does some stretches, skipping about at the crease, warming up the legs.

Uurrghh, come on, legs!

Wake up!

(Darting from foot to foot.)

Fred Astaire Fred Astaire Fred Astaire

It’s all about the batting, right?

It’s all about runs.

I mean, fuck the bowling, man,

Who gives a shit?

‘Athletic in the field?’

Fuck That,

I’m shite at fielding.

You wanna know what it’s like when your long barrier fucks up

And it’s through your legs like a bike through traffic?

Fucking embarrassing.

Luckily Dad sent curries for the team otherwise I’d have been dropped, d’you know what I mean?

I