Steiner Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons

West End Auflage
ISBN: 978-1-78850-642-7
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 104 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Modern Plays

'Let's just talk until it goes.' The average person will speak 123,205,750 words in a lifetime. But what if there were a limit? Oliver and Bernadette are about to find out. Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons is a tender and funny rom-com about what we say, how we say it, and what happens when we can't say anything any more. This special edition of Sam Steiner's hilarious and provocative play - featuring a revised text, plus an introduction by the author - was published alongside a major revival in 2023 performed at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End, as well as at Manchester Opera House and Theatre Royal Brighton. It was directed by Josie Rourke and starred Jenna Coleman and Aidan Turner. The play was first performed at Warwick Arts Centre in 2015, and won three Judges' Awards at the National Student Drama Festival before appearing at Latitude Festival, Camden People's Theatre in London, and several runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was a hit with both audiences and critics. It has since been performed around the world, is widely studied and has been translated into multiple languages.

Sam Steiner is a playwright and screenwriter from Manchester. His plays include: A Table Tennis Play (Walrus Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, 2019); You Stupid Darkness! (Paines Plough & Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2019); Kanye the First (HighTide, 2017) and Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons (Walrus Theatre, 2015; revived in the West End in 2023). He is a co-founder of Walrus, a new writing and touring theatre company.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Steiner, Sam

Leseproben

OLIVER. Thirty-four.

BERNADETTE. Twenty-one.

Day?

OLIVER. Yeah. Yours?

BERNADETTE. Yeah. Tuesday happened again.

OLIVER. Sorry.

BERNADETTE. Well, sorf.

OLIVER. Fuck it.

Talk?

BERNADETTE. Thirteen. You talk.

OLIVER. About?

BERNADETTE

Bernadette.

BERNADETTE. I know.

OLIVER. I can’t know you in one hundred forty.

BERNADETTE. Try.

*

OLIVER. We need to stop meeting here. It’s all a bit morbid.

BERNADETTE. Well, it’s the only place that I know that you know.

OLIVER. You’ve never asked where else I know.

BERNADETTE. Well, maybe I just like revisiting the graves of dead cats. Maybe I’m just that kind of girl.

OLIVER. Maybe we should talk about other places we could meet.

I told my friend Eliot / about you

BERNADETTE. Eliot’s the one that played trumpet on / your latest

OLIVER. Yeah / and

BERNADETTE. The one who’s really pro-word limit.

OLIVER. Yeah. Fascist fuck. Anyway I told him that I’d met a… person… and that she was you, you know, that her name was Bernadette and that she had… like I described you to him, your features and everything.

BERNADETTE. Would kill to overhear this conversation.

OLIVER. That you’re a lawyer / and stuff

BERNADETTE. Training.

OLIVER. And then he asked me where we met.

BERNADETTE. You didn’t tell / him that

OLIVER. That we met at a funeral for a cat named Dennis? No.

BERNADETTE. Steph was heartbroken and the service was very powerful.

OLIVER. Or that we…

BERNADETTE. Continued to meet at the pet cemetery for…

OLIVER. No.

BERNADETTE. So you haven’t actually told him…

OLIVER. No. I told him we met at a book club.

BERNADETTE

I’d also been lying about having a book club.

BERNADETTE

I think we should talk about other places that we could meet. Y’know like sausage factories. Or abattoirs.

BERNADETTE. Yeah. We should. We should. It’s just…

OLIVER. Yep.

BERNADETTE. That I don’t really know you outside the pet cemetery, Oliver. I don’t know you when you’re around other people really.

OLIVER. Only the carcasses of dead animals.

BERNADETTE. Yeah.

OLIVER. Right.

BERNADETTE. And what if you’re like a different guy when you’re not around the…

OLIVER. The… yeah.

BERNADETTE. Yeah.

OLIVER. I think I’m pretty much the same.

BERNADETTE. Yeah obviously / you are but…

OLIVER. If a little less on edge.

BERNADETTE. No obviously you’re the same. But what, okay, what if, when there are more people around and when there are smells and billboards and cinemas and like fast-food restaurants and rock music and people on the street selling burgers…

OLIVER. Do you live in like, a child’s drawing of a city?

BERNADETTE. And parents and friends and .

OLIVER. Right.

BERNADETTE. Sorry.

OLIVER. Do you not want to be seen with…

BERNADETTE. No! It’s not.

OLIVER. Okay?

BERNADETTE. No no no no it’s just all… out there you know… it’s ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

OLIVER. ‘Ahhhhh’?

I don’t really eat many burgers and I’m quite good at shutting out street sellers. Like shutting them down. Downtown.

BERNADETTE. Here, it’s just this. It’s just… this.

OLIVER. You’re scared.

BERNADETTE () I’m scared.

OLIVER. Of smells and cinemas and rock music.

BERNADETTE. Of things getting / in the

OLIVER. Yeah.

Well, me too.

Scared, I mean.

BERNADETTE. Okay.

OLIVER. Okay?

BERNADETTE. Okay.

I was just checking.

*

OLIVER BERNADETTE OLIVER

BERNADETTE

OLIVER. Fuck.

*

BERNADETTE. Hi.

OLIVER. Hi. You look nice. High heels.

BERNADETTE. Yeah, you didn’t tell me where we were going… so I dressed nice. Where are we going?

OLIVER. We’re going zorbing.

BERNADETTE. What?

OLIVER. We’re going for sushi.

*

OLIVER. Ready?

BERNADETTE. Yep. Ready.

OLIVER. Okay right, right. Band. They’re a band. They were big in the eighties. Absolutely awful, music-wise. Not damp damp damp.

BERNADETTE. Wet Wet Wet.

OLIVER. Yep. Okay so these are like, right, like peninsulas but they’ve got water all the way round.

BERNADETTE. Islands.

OLIVER. Yep but they’re… chaste.

BERNADETTE. They’re ?

OLIVER. They’ve never had sex.

BERNADETTE. Virgin Islands.

*

OLIVER. Nineteen.

BERNADETTE. Two. Hungry?

OLIVER

OLIVER. Want?

BERNADETTE. Lamb –

OLIVER. Lamb what?

BERNADETTE

Zero?

BERNADETTE

Shepherd’s pie?

BERNADETTE

Stew?

BERNADETTE

Rogan josh?

BERNADETTE

Lollipop.

BERNADETTE

Hang-glider?

*

OLIVER. Morning.

BERNADETTE. Morning.

OLIVER. Hi.

BERNADETTE

BERNADETTE. Hi.

OLIVER. You talk in your sleep.

BERNADETTE. What did I say?

OLIVER. It was pretty hard to tell. Something about Batman stealing your pens. Think it was Batman. Could’ve been a ‘bad man’.

BERNADETTE. It was a bad man.

*

BERNADETTE. Hi.

OLIVER. Hi.

BERNADETTE. I like coming home to you.

*

OLIVER. Sixteen.

BERNADETTE. Twenty-four.

OLIVER. What do?

BERNADETTE. Bed?

OLIVER. Half seven.

BERNADETTE

Tired?

BERNADETTE

BERNADETTE. You?

OLIVER

You’re always tired.

Obsessing over count.

OLIVER. Badly today.

BERNADETTE. Too much going on.

*

BERNADETTE. When was the last time you saw her?

OLIVER. I see her every now and then. We go on those marches. Against the Hush Law.

BERNADETTE. Bill.

OLIVER. Bill.

BERNADETTE. She’s the one that’s really into it?

OLIVER. Yeah. She almost ran against them in Basildon.

BERNADETTE. As an independent?

OLIVER. Yep.

BERNADETTE. Why Basildon?

OLIVER. She thought there was a diverse voter base or something. Lots of undecideds.

BERNADETTE. But you’re… you’re into it too. The marches.

OLIVER. Yeah.

BERNADETTE. Why did you break up?

OLIVER. It was just time.

BERNADETTE. Why was it time?

OLIVER. I don’t know, Bernadette. A whole host of reasons.

BERNADETTE. And you see her every now and then. For the –

OLIVER. Yeah.

BERNADETTE. Well then, I want to see her every now and then. If she’s your ‘anti-establishment buddy’ then I want her to be my like normal buddy.

OLIVER. You could come to the meetings?

BERNADETTE (). Yeah.

OLIVER. Yeah?

BERNADETTE. Yeah – no – I could. I always feel a bit… stupid / at those

OLIVER. What? You’re like the smartest / person I know.

BERNADETTE. But it’s different, it’s… No, I’ll come, I will! If you want me to?

OLIVER.… Sure.

BERNADETTE. What do what’s-her-name

OLIVER. Julie.

BERNADETTE. Julie. What do Julie’s parents do?

OLIVER. Uh… they’re paediatricians. Why?

BERNADETTE. Nothing. Just… curious.

OLIVER. You knew what her name was.

BERNADETTE. I did yep.

OLIVER. What’s going on?

BERNADETTE. I want you to tell me all your things.

OLIVER. What?

BERNADETTE. All of your and… uh –...