THEATRE
|
HEAVEN'S DEN
|
|
CAST: Tim Abell - Darren Victoria Wade - |
|
A two actor, thirty minute, one act play set in the eponymous bar. The play opens on a smart-looking educated woman of twenty-four sitting alone at a table in a bar. Enter a wise guy in torn jeans. Long hair, smoking, drinking beer from a bottle, our hero sees the woman and likes what he sees. He saunters over to her moving to the loud music playing on the juke box. He asks her for a light, he asks her to dance, he tells her she looks like she would be a good dancer and generally tries to engage our heroine in conversation, but to comedic effect the loud music interferes. He lights his own cigarette. She is obviously not interested and in desperation he asks if she will sleep with him. She says no. He is young, handsome, a grease monkey; not well-educated he has had a lot one night stands and short term relationships. A typical GUY! The lights go out, the bar goes black and there are loud noises off. The lights come back on. The bar is wrecked, Darren and the girl are lying on the floor, chairs and tables up turned. Darren wakes first. From him we learn that almost one entire wall of the bar has been demolished and through the rubble he can see that a nuclear explosion has taken place far in the distance. He sees a mushroom cloud and the devastation it has caused. He wakes the girl none too gently as she stirs. He has had a few more minutes than her to take in what has happened but he seems to accept it with equilibrium. He explains that his mum was always on at him to get a better job and he owed his brother money so what is so bad if everyone has been killed. She can't believe it, can't take it all in as calmly as Darren. She is aghast at losing everything. They swap insults and she accuses him of being uneducated. In a sense she is right but he is more an innocent than an idiot, for all his swagger and bravado. Their conversation goes on and they get onto the subject of committment, "the big C". She challenges him to marry her then and there especially as the concept of marriage is now meaningless given what has happened. He backs off. She offers to make love to him. Darren in a sudden change of heart drops his jeans, making love he will do, marriage he won't. Now it is her turn to back off. She accuses Darren of never having had a meaningful relationship. This he denies and tells her about "Betty with the boobs." Betty is the one woman with whom Darren had experienced a relationship that had lasted more then a couple of days. On one occasion Betty wants to do something meaningful. Betty and Darren where in his garage. He tells the girl he thought about walking hand in hand in the rain. Instead Betty changes the oil on his beloved car. We find out that Betty unfortunately didn't last too long after this romantic moment as she forgot to tighten something under the car and it cost Darren $80 to get the subsequent damage fixed. In view of that he had to let her go! Darren turns the tables and challenges the girl to tell him about a meaningfull relationship she has had. What the girl says sounds normal and ordinary until under Darren's prompting we find out that the other half in this apparently normal relationship was a twelve year old called "Spanky". The girl is a virgan and Darren has never met one before. The reason she is a still a virgin is a bad experience in College. She had been going out with a boy for several months and had finally decided to let the boy sleep with her. The two intended lovers go to his room and he asks if they can leave the lights on. She agrees and as things develop she realises that the boyfriend is filming the bedroom encounter and his friend Brian is in the cupboard with a camera. Darren shows his sensitive side. He claims the boyfriend was wrong to do that and that if he had been there at College he would have beaten both guys up. Our hero really opens his heart and tells the girl that he apologises for what he said to her when they first saw each other. Apart from the fact that he still thinks she would be a good dancer. She asks if his offer to dance is still open, He says sure and they dance. The light from the bar flickers from "Heaven's Den" to "e Den". A new beginning and maybe a new hope for us all with this new Adam and Eve. |