An original play by Dorothy Hewitt 1978
The abuse of Kate & Rozanna Lilley | Pandora's Cross 1978  |
| Martin Sharp, Pandora's Cross, poster, 1978. |
The
creation of the Paris Company in March 1978 was a bold step, supported by leading
members of the Sydney theatre scene, including well-known author and playwright
Patrick White. Its aim was the creation of a professional operation to take up
the mantle of the fading Old Tote Theatre company, which operated in Randwick, adjacent to the University of New South Wales and in association with the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). Unfortunately, the Paris venture
was not a success, due in part to the poor box office of Pandora’s Cross and the following play Visions by Louise Nowra. A third production – Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul - never appeared as the
company folded late in 1978. Despite this, the Paris Theatre continued to be
used as a cinema and for occasional plays and rock concerts through to 1981,
after which it was demolished. Located
on the corner of Wentworth Avenue and Liverpool Street, Sydney, on the site of
the present Connaught residential apartment tower, the original building was designed
by Walter Burley Griffin and opened as the Australian Picture Palace in 1916. It
was renamed the Paris Theatre in 1954 and was thereafter operated by the Hoyts group
until 1977. It’s floor plan was long and thin, with a single, smallish screen and
room to accommodate 915 people seated. Hoyts abandoned the cinema in 1977 for a
new complex in George Street, though, as noted, the Paris continued to operate.
At one stage it had a long run of Midnight
Cowboy, a popular film with the nearby Sydney gay community (http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1282).
During 1978 there was a lot of activity in and around the Paris in association with
the work of the Paris Company and events such as an International Women’s Day protest
and preparations for the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras parade and festivities (https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/paris_theatre). The theatre's location in a prominent position at the western entrance to Oxford Street
and adjacent to Hyde Park made it an ideal location for such events. The
position remains so to this day, marking the commencement point of the annual
Mardi Gras celebrations. Artist Martin Sharp produced 3 posters for events at the
Paris theatre between 1978-80. These promoted the 1978 productions of Pandora’s Cross and Visions, plus the independent With
a Little Help from my Friends (John Lennon) in 1980. Perhaps the most
interesting and notable of these was Pandora’s
Cross ., with a voluptuous, naked female figure in yellow and red surrounded by a heart-shaped cascade of musical notes.
Pandora’s Cross
Written
by Dorothy Hewett around 1977, Pandora’s
Cross was set in Sydney’s bohemian district of King’s Cross, close to the
author’s own residence. It featured a cast of colourful characters and focused on the fictional witch Pandora, based on the colourful Rosalie
Norton. The play had been slated for inclusion in the Old Tote Theatre
Company’s 1978 series of productions to be staged at the Seymour Centre near the University of Sydney.
However, in December 1977 director Jim Sharman and producer Rex Cramphorn quit
the company in acrimonious circumstances, disillusioned by the direction it was
taking and the role they were being forced to play. In March the following year
Sharman and Cramphorn appeared with author Patrick White at a press conference
announcing the formation of the new Paris Theatre Company. Pandora’s Cross was included in their list of productions. It was
to be the company’s first venture, with $16,000 to be spent on the set and
assorted elements, aside from wages for the cast. The latter were graciously set
aside by the actors during the month of rehearsals which began in May. The play
opened on 29 June 1978 and ran for approximately 1 month. Whilst the reviews
were mixed, it was generally accepted that there were problems with the
structure of the racy and, in part, controversial script. Hewett’s Chaucerian
and wordy text, the personal conflicts and public protest narrative, and numerous
musical elements did not form a unified whole. The narrative flow was also
weak. The fact that the box office takings were low resulted in the venture
being declared a failure by some, though as one commentator pointed out, if
this new play had opened ‘off Broadway’ in a smaller Sydney theatre it would
undoubtedly have been declared a success. Louis Nowra’s Visions was presented in August following the closure of Pandora’s Cross, but the planned
presentation of Patrick White’s A Cheery
Soul was cancelled.
During the run of Pandora’s Cross, the director and cast took on board some of the criticisms directed at the play and made modifications, especially in regard to the latter section and likely in consultation with the author Dorothy Hewett. Near the end of the run, on Saturday 17 July, a presentation was held at the Roselands shopping centre complex – a rather odd venue for a less than family-friendly play. A number of lively reviews of Pandora’s Cross were written throughout this period, including one by Bob Ellis which was published in the August edition of Theatre Australia magazine. It was noted therein that one of the play’s characters – the drunken writer Mac Greene – was based, in part, on Ellis who, at the time, was a good friend of Hewett. The Sydney Morning Herald critic later referred to the play as “dramatically inert”. A reading of the text reveals a wordy, fragmented, party-like piece, with little narrative development. The complete script of the play was published in the September and October 1978 issues of Theatre Australia. As far as is known, Sharman’s has been the only production of Pandora’s Cross, though a copy of the script was published by the International Theatre Institute in Budapest during 1979. What the Europeans would make of this very Australian play and Hewett’s numerous local historical references is hard to fathom.
Production Cast
Jennifer Claire - Pandora
Arthur Dignam - The Goose
John Gaden - Mac Greene
Julie McGregor - Frangipanni Waterfall
Robyn Nevin - Ethel Malley
John Paramor - Sergeant Tinkerbell
Neil Redfern - Ern Malley
Steve J Spears - Rudi
Geraldine Turner - Primavera
Linda Nagle - Assistant Musical Director Grant Fraser Assistant Stage Manager
Richard Jones - Assistant Stage Manager
David Ellis - Bassist
Graeme Watson Choreographer
Ralph Tyrrell - Composer
Luciana Arrighi - Costume Designer
Jim Sharman - Director
John Swanton - Drummer
Ned Sutherland - Guitarist
Bill Walker - Lighting Designer
Roy Ritchie - Musical Director
Steve Doran - Pianist
Dorothy Hewett - Playwright
Jono Enemark - Production Manager
Geoff Oaks - Saxophonist
Brian Thomson - Set Designer
Bill Walker - Stage Manager
Melody Cooper - Wardrobe Master / Mistress
Final Script
A copy of the script, with introductory critical assessment by director Jim Sharman, was published in the September and October 1978 issues of Theatre Australia. It is reproduced in full below. It is likely this is the script subject to amendment during the play's brief run.
Introduction - Jim Sharman on
Pandora’s Cross
If one were to ask international visitors to list their points of interest in the city of Sydney their response would include the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, Bondi Beach and Kings Cross. Now while Pigalle, Soho, Times Square and their like have often been celebrated on stage and screen, Sydney’s notorious square mile at the top of William Street, though often celebrated after midnight in drunken bars, had not provided the stimulus for a major dramatic work. For better or worse Dorothy Hewett’s new musical play has altered this. Dorothy has created a mythical Kings Cross, with its bohemian past — post Vietnam Americanisation — tawdry facades — blatant corruption — lively vulgarity, that reflects the life of the city that would prefer to deny its existence. Traditionally artists have always been associated with The Cross’. Old-style bohemian artists, striptease artists, con-artists, drag-artists, all sorts of artists. Dorothy would have it that most of those artists have been disillusioned and, in some sense, destroyed but their spirit lives on through ‘The Cross’. In consequence she has crafted a poem for the stage that denies most conventions of formal storytelling and gathers the evidence of scattered poems (McAuley, Slessor, et al.), bantering journalese (headlines and street-kid interviews), second-hand mythology (Norton, Goossens, Neilson, etc.), wall graffiti, political sloganeering, Shakespearean offcuts and worse, then tossed this into a salad of regret and loss served to the audience with the authority and subtlety of a short order cook (if Dorothy will forgive the culinary metaphor). Most understandably audiences and critics (who prefer their salads with the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval) have baulked a little at this meal of sadness and celebration. So, we move into the treacherous area of people’s expectations. How do you like your ‘Cross’? Up front or laid back? It would seem from our experience that the expectation is definitely UP FRONT. The reality, as any ‘bastard from the bush’ emerging thirty bucks lighter from a Darlinghurst Road door way could tell us, is LAID BACK. Ralph Tyrrell's haunting score and Dorothy's sad soliloquies do not add up to an extrovert musical brimming with pizazz and neon, no matter how much humour is used in the leavening. So, we are left with a strange evening in the theatre. Our walk along Darlinghurst Road and down Macleay Street has diminished those tremulous expectations created step by step walking up the big hill of William Street. Nasty incidents in side-streets, too much bad language, not quite what we expected, a brawl we might have been involved in, gross jokes, tawdry glitter, seemingly a non-event, and yet... and yet, we still seem to be talking, arguing about it, dismissing it, remembering it. Whether, as its apologists would have it, ‘a sonata for a city’ has been created or, as its critics would berate, a mere sentimental litany of forgotten names and events. Either way it exists and, like two other remarkable Sydney institutions Dorothy Hewett and Darlinghurst Road, it cannot be denied.
ACT 1
Pandora’s
Cross was first performed at the Paris Theatre,
Sydney, on 29th June 1978. The Director was Jim Sharman and the designer Brian
Thomson. The music was written by Ralph Tyrrell. The original cast were:
The Goose – Arthur Dignam
Pandora – Jennifer Claire
Mac Greene – John Gaden
Frangipanni Waterfall – Julie MacGregor
Sergeant Tinkerbell – John Paramor
Primavera – Geraldine Turner
Rudi – Stephen J. Spears
Ethel Malley – Robyn Nevin
Ern
Malley – Neil Redfern
The set is divided into upstairs and downstairs sections, with an elevated platform for the Goose’s honky-tonk piano. The backdrop is a panoramic, moveable King's Cross skyline that lights up at night. Upstairs: Pan’s loft .. cushions, a sword, two large candlesticks, drapes, masks, strange paintings... Ethel Malley’s room containing a straight-backed kitchen chair and an Early Kooka gas stove... The Goose’s piano and stool on a platform. Downstairs: There is a staircase which can convert to an escalator. This leads into the Village ... a streetlight far left, a fountain playing, a sycamore tree backstage left of centre, and bar, neon lit with bar and stools. Centre is Mac’s room, a cheap table, chairs, battered typewriter, reading lamp and booze.
CHARACTERS
Pandora (Pan) - King's Cross witch and artist, black-haired sensual, in her forties.
Mac Greene - ex-poet from Chatswood, classical scholar, alcoholic bum, in his late thirties.
Ern Malley - Romantic poet, forever twenty-five.
Ethel Malley - Ern’s sister, withdrawn eccentric, in her late thirties.
Frangipanni Waterfall (Fran) >- Cross hustler, a teenager from Blacktown on mandies.
Primavera (Prim) - Ex-stripper and club proprietor, a well-proportioned blonde in her late thirties.
The Goose - Ancient ex-Philharmonic conductor, jazz pianist, porn pedlar, Grand Master of the coven.
Rudi - The Cross cowboy working for Mr Big.
Sergeant
Tinkerbell (Tink) - Still
handsome policeman and drag queen.
The scene opens on the night skyline of the Cross. High in the flies Sydney is falling, the developers are in and the sound of the demolishers is deafening. Suspended in blackness like an actor in the Prague Black Theatre the ancient Goose in verdigris coat-tails sits at his honky-tonk piano. As he sings, the panorama of the Cross unrolls behind him, faster and faster, so that by an optical illusion he appears to be a whirling maestro of the sky signs. Up and down the moving staircase the characters enter and move like ghosts, like waxwork figures: Mac Greene dressed in a travesty of what must once have been an “intellectual's costume”, ancient, raggy tweed sports coat with leather patched elbows, torn cords, no shirt, bare dirty feet, a tattered cravat knotted around his neck like a hangman’s noose. He holds his eternal bottle in his hands; Pandora, her black cloudy hair stuffed under a black beret, wears a colourless plastic raincoat and black sandshoes; Frangipanni Waterfall, the baby-faced redhead, is in a skin tight skirt, split to the thigh, a nose-dive cleavage, spike heels, tote bag; Rudi, the tattooed hood with the Nureyev cheekbones, dressed as a Cross cowboy with stetson, chaps, spurs & body-fitted shirt: Sergeant Tinkerbell in a police uniform, strikingly handsome, baton prominent in back trouser pocket; Primavera - a tough-faced, extraordinarily shapely bottle-blonde, in wide legged, tailored satin pyjamas. They move like phantasmagoria, figures held in an eternal dream. The time is Good Friday, 1978.
The Goose: Pandora’s Cross is the place to be
an amalgam of truth and fantasy
The spunky boys in the street
will grab a tender cut of meat
soliciting in Kellett Street
they reckon that the picking’s sweet.
All: Pandora’s Cross.
Goose: (continues) The call-girls on the telephone,
the lumpy breasts of silicone,
procurers with the mask of Cain,
a guttersnipe, a famous name,
and lolly-legs out in the rain,
yet somehow things are not the same...
All: Pandora’s Cross
Goose: Swapping mandies in the bars,
the kids are shooting for the stars
The moon rides high, the moon rides pale,
the paddy waggon starts to wail,
the drug squad cops are on their tail,
they cross their legs and go to jail...
All: Pandora’s Cross.
Goose: The fountain and the linden tree,
molls and rape and sodomy,
where all the lovers come across,
we lay and played at pitch and toss
maybe it was just... fairy floss
but I get an awful sense of loss.
All: Pandora’s Cross.
Spot moves to Pandora who climbs to her loft, sits cross legged on her dirty cushions, the crystal ball spinning, candles guttering either side, the unsheathed sword at her feet, weird paintings as her backdrop.
Goose: Sitting there above the town,
Pandora wears her crooked crown
She will intuit all your dreams,
the world will not be what it seems,
strolling where the streetlight beams,
the whores will say that love redeems.
All: Pandora’s Cross.
Like sleepwalkers the characters move to their appointed places; Mac to his central table downstairs, lowers his head in his arms, Prim behind the bar, Fran under the streetlight, Rudi and Tink menacingly either side of the fountain. Far left upstairs the plain wooden kitchen chair with a copy of Ern Malley’s poems on it, waits for Ethel Malley. The Goose stays at his piano like a shadow. Pan holds up her crystal ball.
Pan: (crooning) Light the candles, cast the circle.
Mac, head still in arms.
Mac: Bullshit Pan!
The Goose: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Exodus 22, 18.
Mac raises his head.
Mac: Witches are... bunk!
Pan: (gloomily) Mac’s right. I couldn’t even blight a crop, unless it was a stray bit of grass on a windersill.
Mac: You could try a little quiet murder.
Pan: (bitterly) You’d like that wouldn’t you?
Save you the trouble.
Mac: (quoting Lorca) Agony, agony, dream, torment and agony, this is the world my friends, agony, agony. (He drops his head again)
The sound of the wreckers grows louder.
Goose: The wreckers are getting closer.
Sydney’s falling Mac.
Pan: We need Ern Malley. Ern would know what to do.
Mac: (bitterly) Ah yes, Ern lead us into the promised, barren land.
Goose: From the deserts the prophets come.
Mac: At fifteen I was a classicist with a little Latin and less Greek.
Goose: (smiling) And I was writing my first cantata.
Pan: Norman Lindsay always said I was just a grubby little girl with no sense of discipline. (She giggles)
Mac: I migrated across the Bridge from Chatswood looking for Bohemia and there you were down on your knees, drawing a black panther fucking you in McLeay Street.
Pan: That was my pitch. I made 19/11d in a good week. I usta wash in the wimmens’ lav at Central... all that art nouveau glass. I always loved Beardsley.
Mac: You took me in. My parents came across the Bridge foaming, and found me sleeping in itchy rags beside you. They accused you of unlawful carnal knowledge.
Pan: And you couldn’t even get it up.
They laugh together.
Mac: I was always drunk or high on speed. I wasn’t responsible.
Pan: That’s what your mother said.
Mac: She tried to have me committed. I don’t even know where she’s buried.
Pan: And all you wanted was a freer more excitin’ self, (pause) So you made him up.
Mac: I didn’t make you up Pan.
Pan: No, I made myself up, an old Cross ratbag. The self never changes.
Mac: I sometimes think you made us up as well.
Pan: I took yous up, that’s all... the child genius with the bad poems and the second ‘and Remington portable, and the ol’ porn peddlar ticklin’ the ivories in Prim's place. Well, me favourites are still Brahms, solitude and havin’ me back scratched.
Goose: And here we are gathered. The table rappers are out, the ghosts of the ouija board, the harpies licking their chops, all trooping in, out of vacancy.
As The Goose speaks the fountain starts to play, the streetlight goes on, Prim's Bar lights up in neons, Mac’s table lamp switches on, Frangipanni Waterfall walks up and down restlessly swinging her tote bag and chewing gum. Rudi watches from the fountain, and Tinkerbell twirls his baton like a drum majorette. Prim lays out glasses on the bar counter. Frangipanni propositions Rudi. Tink moves forward for an arrest, Rudi motions him roughly back, Tink complies sulkily. Rudi and Fran silently haggle over their transaction. Pan gazes down fondly on them all.
Pan: All my familiars. You invented a familiar for me once Mac - Ern Malley.
Fran: Who the fuck’s Ern Malley?
Pan: (slyly) Ask Mac Greene. He made him up.
Mac: I was pissed and I was bored. It was all just... a phan... phantasmagoria.
Goose: When you’re ready Mac.
The Goose plays a soft syncopation under Mac’s story. It is a routine they have obviously done many times before. Mac, driven to it, begins to narrate.
Mac: So, I gave birth to Ern Malley and his fictitious sister, Ethel.
Mac gestures to the upper level. Quietly Ethel Malley enters, sits primly in the empty chair, pulls down her skirt, opens Ern’s book of poems. She is dark, thirtyish, intense, dressed drably in skirt, jumper and flat shoes. She looks poverty stricken. Pan sits on her cushion again, listening.
Pan: (softly) Ethel’s back.
Mac strides about the stage, conducting the whole experiment again, suborned by it, in spite of himself.
Mac: I produced the whole of Ern Malley’s tragic life work in one afternoon with the aid of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a Collected Shakespeare, a Rhyming Dictionary and a bottle of cheap scotch. The writings of Ern Malley are utterly devoid of literary merit.
Ethel rises with dignity, and comes forward, carrying the book as if it is holy writ. She speaks in a stilted, ill-educated voice.
Ethel: You arst me to tell yous somethin’ of Ern Malley’s life. Ern had a job as a mechanic at Taverner’s Hill. When his condition worsened he made a bit on the side repairin' watches. He was always so good wiv his hands. He dosed ’isself with iodine but, you see, he was never strong. The crisis comes sudden. He was that irritable. He passed away wiv Graves’ disease at only twenty-five. As he wished he was cremated at Rookwood.
Mac: (pounds table) Ern Malley never existed.
Ern Malley...
Ethel: I am not a literary person meself. I don’t understand what Ern wrote, but I loved him, and it would be a kindness if you’d let me know if you think there’s anythin’ there.
She holds out Ern’s poems dumbly.
Mac: Fucking charlatan!
Ethel: The weeks before Ern died was terrible. If only he’d taken better care, it needn't have been fatal.
Ethel’s voice breaks. She sits down stiffly in her chair. Mac goes back to the table, holds onto it for support. The piano backing cuts out. Mac looks up at Pan.
Mac: Our stage was always this house, the furniture watching, the cushions dancing like demons...
Pan: You invented Ern, and set him up to love me, in your place.
Mac groans and sits with his head in his hands.
Pan: You can't easily reverse the spin of the soul. There’s the devil to pay...always.
Fran: Got any mandies Pan?
Pan: Don’t use mandies. In the old days we was all on speed.
Fran hits Rudi playfully with her shoulder bag.
Fran: Crack a fat or your money back.
Rudi and Fran argue business again in mime. Tinkerbell looks savage, twirls his baton with itchy fingers. The stage darkens, spot on Pandora. She moves to the crystal ball, stands staring into it.
Pan: When I was a kid I used the patterns in the fire, or the lamp swingin’ in the wind from the centre of the pressed iron ceilin’, even the froth on me Dadda’s beer.
Mac: (wearily) Cut it out Pan.
Prim: It just don’t wash anymore Pan.
Pan: I’m bored too Mac. I wanta live.
Mac: (standing) Don’t wake it up. Let it all...die.
Goose: (softly) At the sign of the cloven hoof, our hunting ground is always...home.
Pan: I want to dance with the devil. I miss him.
Mac: The devil or Ern?
Goose: She could never tell the difference.
Pan: (in priestess position) All ye assembled in my sight, I will raise the power, I will draw down the moon.
Mac drops to the table with a groan.
Fran: (admiring) She's orf.
Tink: But I think its divine. I love a good drag show.
The Goose rises, bows and hands Pan the ceremonial sword. He stands behind her. Pan takes the sword and draws a five-pointed star in the sky above the King’s Cross skyline.
Pan: Mine the scourge and mine the kiss, the five-point star of love and bliss, here I charge you in this sign...Dread Lord of Shadows, God of Life and Death, open wide the gates through which all must pass. Let those who have gone before return this night to make merry with us.
Mac: (standing) No Pan! You’ve always believed you could control time. But time exists.
It’s a reality.
Prim brings candles from behind the bar, lights them and hands one to Mac, one to Fran, one to Tinkerbell and one to the reluctant Rudi, then she too joins the circle. They form the circle, moving anti-clockwise, hand in hand. Ethel remains motionless, trance-like in her chair. They circle silently, ceremoniously, around the stage, then up and down the moving staircase.
Pan: All things are here Mac. They’ve already happened and we’re just...living them out.
Ethel: (sings as if possessed, unaccompanied)
O do not tell the priest of our art for he would call it sin, but we will be in the woods all night A-conjurin’ summer in.
We bring you good news by word of mouth
For women, cattle, corn,
For the sun is cornin’ up from the south,
With oak and ash and thorn.
The grave ceremonial circular dance continues as she sings.
Pan: (chanting) The circle is as large as the room allows.
Goose: (begins and they all chant except Pan)
Listen to the words of the great Mother who was of old — also called Artemis, Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis Virgin, Bride... the spear to the cauldron, the lance to the grail, spirit to flesh, man to woman, sun to earth, hold up the world.
The Goose hands Pan a pack of tarot cards. She takes them with a kind of delight.
Pan: Twenty-one cards and o look, here’s the fool, here’s the young man unafraid on the edge of a precipice, a dog at his heels. He looks towards the sky. He is the holy innocent, the free rangin’ spirit. He is numbered o, and he enters the world to experience it.
As Pan fans out the cards she drops them and they scatter on the stage. She kneels, holding out her hands uselessly. She rises, becomes again the priestess. The circle stands motionless. Pan gives a sharp intake of breath.
Pan: (chanting) The power raised here is neither good nor evil, moral or immoral, (pause) The circle is complete. I have left a gate for him in the North East quarter.
Mac: He’s not coming.
Pan: (chanting) O thou that standeth on the threshold between the pleasant world of men and the terrible domain of the dead, have you the courage to make an entry.
It is as if they are all waiting for the reply, and in the following dialogue Pan plays two roles, the priestess and her own ordinary self. She is like a medium using two utterly dissimilar voices.
Pan: (Voice whispers) Go back Ern, don’t be a bloody fool, go back.
Mac: Go back.
Pan: (Voice 2 chanting) This path is beyond life and death. If you take but one step you must arrive, inevitably, at the end.
(Voice 1 whispers) Bugger off, there’s a good kid, back to limbo. We’re all too old for you anyway.
Mac: Go back Ern.
(Voice 2 chanting) For I say it is better to risk the blade and perish than to make the attempt with fear in your heart.
(Voice I) Oh! Christ, you was always such a pushy little bastard.
(Voice 2 chanting) Say after me, I have two perfect words, trust and love.
Mac: (screaming) Its a lie, it’s a bloody lie.
Pan sinks down sobbing. There is a long pause, and in the silence the sound of light running footsteps. Ern’s voice echoes over the rooftops coming closer and closer as he sings. When Ern Malley enters singing on the upper stage he is dark, slender, saturnine, dressed in leather jacket and ragged jeans. He stands spotlighted like a young hero, full of charm, lightness and cruelty, the focus of all their eyes except Ethel’s. She remains staring out front. Once Pan puts out her hand to him but he ignores it.
Malley’s Back in Town
All: Malley's back, Malley’s back in town
(repeat)
Ern: I’m Malley, Ern Malley from Taverner’s Hill,
Out on a limb but hangin’ in still,
They’ll take me and tame me and tell me I’m home,
But I’m the wildcat that goes walkin’ alone,
Hangin’ in there for the kill.
Chorus:
For I’ve come back to tell you the deserts will bloom.
And the light will still burn in one small attic room
The words start to spin and the whirlwind begin
For Malley’s back in the town.
Malley’s back in the town.
Malley’s back in the town.
O they’ll take me and tame me and tether me down,
I’ll die in the fiery dew,
But I just wanta tell you before we’re all through
Malley’s back in the town
Chorus repeat several times
Ern: I come down to earth and it’s all just a breeze,
The city lights and the back streets are callin’ me home,
I’m lookin' for a sign that says I'll make it
through everything’s cut to the bone.
And everything’s difficult, everything's new
Everything’s hazy or far.
Out on a cloud or lost on a star,
Don’t think I can make it alone.
Repeat chorus.
Ern: So lady, my lady who's wet for my love,
For eighteen long years or more
I’ve shown you where the lillies grow
On the Eumerella shore,
Shown you how the waters flow
Mountains deep in winter snow,
The mountains of hell are high my love
Where you and I must go.
We’ll sail a league, another league,
A league but barely three,
But when you spy my cloven hoof
Sweet lady let it be,
Dig a hole for my dark soul
Tell them bury me.
Repeat Chorus Malley’s back in town.
Ern: But I'm the wild cat that goes walking alone, hanging in there for the kill.
The Five-Pointed Star fades out of the sky.
Mac: (grimly) Ern’s back.
Ethel: (staring front) Are you Ern love?
Ern moves behind Ethel’s chair, placing both hands over her eyes.
Ern: Guess who? Did you wait up for me Ettie?
Ethel: I always wait up. I kept your dinner hot on the gas ring. It's been a long time.
Ern massages Ethel’s neck and shoulders tenderly. She relaxes, smiling blissfully.
Ern: I think it’s been ... eighteen years.
He turns and stares at Pandora. She turns her head away.
Pan: Don’t look at me like that. I know I've grown old and scraggy. Don't look at me at all.
Mac: (standing) He never loved you Pan. I loved you, but he didn’t give a stuff about you, ever.
Ern: (smiling wryly) Goodnight Mac.
Mac turns away, drinks from his bottle again, his back turned to Ern, Ethel, the Goose and Pan. Ern runs lightly down the stairs.
Ern: There’s a new face in the old Village.
He takes Fran in his arms. She is obviously flattered.
Fran: Like a mandy?
She rummages in her tote bag. Gives Ern a mandrax. He whispers in her ear. She giggles. Rudi scowls.
Prim: Ern hasn’t changed.
Prim serves Rudi a drink.
Goose: But it’s a different world Ern. You won’t fit in, no more than any of us. Time doesn’t stand still, not for anyone. Where’s the old Cross now? Gone, vamoosed. Full of get rich quick flesh peddlers. All up front, no style.
Prim won’t perform anymore, wouldn’t bother, wouldn’t demean herself. She’s into politics. And Pan, Oh! she sits up there, twirling her crystal ball, but it’s mostly for show. Gets the tourists in. I’ve got a few porn postcards. Heart’s not in it, and Mac’s into the bottle. It’s hard times Ern.
The Goose holds up his hand. The jackhammers grow louder.
Goose: The high rise is hemming us in.
Ern: Sounds like a fuckin' revivalist meeting.
Pan: But we can change it all, get the ol' times back. We started droppin’ out in the fifties when all them other bastards dropped in. And we stayed out.
Mac: You mean we’re in danger of becoming fashionable.
He takes a long drink.
Prim: (wryly) I wouldn't worry too much Mac.
Pan begins to weave a dream hypothesis.
Pan: I took twenty-four meth caps in four hours. Wow! all the city sounds was like a symphony. We was jailed, banned, beaten up, slept in stormwater drains, lived in Wynyard, Museum and St James, dived naked in the Archibald Fountain, jumped the rattler, went on the track.
Mac: Nobody’s into hardship anymore Pan. They’ve all got flats in Elizabeth Bay and drive Alphas.
Pan: You’re just a cynic that’s all. Ern was never cynical. Ern’s like me. He’s a believer.
Ern: So what’s wrong with Elizabeth Bay and an Alpha?
Ethel: Don’t sell your soul Ernie.
Ern: Just you watch me Ettie baby.
Pan: (defensively) Ern and I was idealists, but we always loved style.
Mac: When I was twelve I wrote, “the sane and rational man is touched with aimless dread”. I must have intuited something.
Ern: You still a witch Pan?
Pan: Still got me cats, Mephitabel, Greymalkin and Titty. (Pan kneels on stage, calling her cats)
Here, puss, puss, puss.
Ern: Prove it.
Pan: I called you up didn’t I?
Ern: (disappointed) Then it wasn’t Mac...?
Mac: Christ! I’d rather call up a rattlesnake. You died Ern. I killed you off with Graves Disease, you were in all the papers. Ethel buried you at Rookwood. Don’t you remember Ethel?
Ethel: (sobbing) But I didn't even exist.
Ern: They printed my poems. They banned me baby.
Mac: Oh, sure Ern, you were an overnight sensation. You founded the Ern Malley Journal. You even made Poetry Chicago — once.
Ern: (grinning) I was the late, lamented national poet of Oz.
Ethel: (standing) He was like Christ, walkin' over them silver mullet shoals. He stood there like John the Baptist wiv his bloody head under his arm, and you was all mesmerized to hear him.
Mac: (groaning) Why wont you let the Malleys rest in peace? Listen, for a perverse joke I created you both. I made you up.
Ern: (softly) But we make everybody up.
Mac moves centre, gesticulating wildly, drinking from his bottle, the liquid dribbling down his chin. He is hysterical.
Mac: If a man of sensibility in a mood of despair and hatred, or even from a perverted sense of humour, sets out to fake works of the imagination he can end by deceiving himself. Just so, the faker of Ern Malley.
Mac makes a sweeping gesture, falls centre. Ern helps him ironically to his feet. Mac smashes bottle on table edge, circles Ern with it. Ern watches warily, as Mac stalks him.
Mac: (babbling) Soul of magic, master of death, do you know me? Take me dark and shining one, prowl in my spirit, live in me. Read and know the fish, the sphinx, the serpent, the winged globe, life, order, chaos, death.
Mac raises the jagged bottle over his head and tries to bring it down on Ern. Tinkerbell and Rudi leap in and strap Mac to his chair with a straightjacket. Mac continues struggling and babbling.
Tink: That’s alright matey. They been keepin' a committee of welcome for you out at the Reception House.
Rudi: So it’s 'ome sweet 'ome Mac.
Mac: (to Pan) Oh my lady. Queen of Night and Sympathy, we walked the streets like angels on our good days.
Pan: (to Ern) Then I met a boy in grey clothes with a cloven hoof.
Mac: (struggling) We descended from attics, we roamed with our company of players...
Pan: He told me his name was Ern Malley and I sold me soul, in exchange for some great riches.
Mac: Ectoplasm issued from our mouths, men bowed, women kissed us...
Pan: And I said, there now, it’s only Ern Malley from Taverner's Hill, but there goes the devil himself in the likeness of a man.
Ethel rises with a piercing scream.
Ethel: No, Ernie was a good boy. When mother died I promised her I’d look after him. I always give him a nice, cut, Oslo lunch.
Mac falls off the chair, shuffles towards the stairway on his knees.
Mac: He's going to do it again. Terrorise us all and break your heart Pandora. He’ll never leave us in peace.
Ern pushes Mac over gently with his foot.
Ern: Peace is a dangerous commodity.
Ethel: (in trance) Would it be strange to meet the figure that strode hell swingin' his head by the hair in Taylor’s Square?
Ern: Belt up Ett.
Ethel sinks down again. Mac begins to scream and rock from side to side.
Mac: Pandora! Pandora! Pandora!
Rudi hits him across the mouth. Tink drags him into a corner and dumps him there. Mac curls up in a foetal crouch, whimpering. Ern moves to the foot of the stairs, motioning the Goose to play.
Ern: (softly) Pandora.
Pandora puts out a hand to him, moves to the top of the stairs. He puts one foot on the bottom stair and sings to her.
Ern: Spin the web and speak the words Pandora,
That bring me back through time and space to you.
Time stands still, the crystal ball is turning,
the candle’s burning,
I taste your tears,
I see your face
Across the lonely years I am returning
through time and space to you.
Ern comes centre and turns back to Pan spotlighted on top of the stairs.
Ern: O will I find you still above that little street
where once I loved you
the beat of countless feet,
the falling of the rain,
the blur of candlelight,
will everything stand still for us Pandora,
will you be there for me again?
A shadow crossed the moon tonight Pandora,
in ruined streets the whores are passing by,
and I know that nevermore will I knock upon
your door.
And follow up the steps to Paradise,
follow all the promise of your eyes.
Pan moves slowly downstairs to Ern.
Ern: Spin the web and speak the works Pandora
that bring me back through time and space to
you, time stands still, the crystal ball is turning,
the candle’s burning.
I taste your tears, I see your face
across the lonely years I am returning
through time and space to you.
As the song ends Pan is in Ern's arms. He holds her away from him. She is smiling.
Mac: (rational) l wrote that trashy song too.
Pan: (to Ern) Do you remember how we sat in the Terrace Bar at the Sheridan at two o'clock in the morning? It was just like a 1940's Betty Grable musical, crescent moon, rain in the air, couples dancin' cheek to cheek in the half dark . . . Rubber plants curlin' yeller with smog, wet plastic chairs tipped up against the tables.
Ern: The big quiet fences in their felt hats and double-breasted suits waitin' for business in the corners . . .
Pan: And inside they was playin' over and over
agen, “The Party's Over”.
They are dancing together and she touches his arm timidly)
Sleep with me tonight?
Ern: That’d be fantastic.
Pan: I mean it Ern.
Ern: Yeah! And next day you'd have me. What’s sex to you Pan? It's like some great pagan ritual or somethin'. I'd be committed, swallowed alive. I couldn't go through all that again.
Pan: I’ve changed.
Ern: Have you? The self doesn’t change you said.
Ern drops Pan. who stands stunned. He runs up the stairs to Ethel and lifts her up out of her chair.
Ern: Remember them long summer nights when we shared your bed Ettie?
Ethel lays her head on his shoulder, smiling happily.
Ethel: We was so happy Ern, you and me in our little bed sit wiv the Early Kooka burnin' the snags.
Ern: Didya miss me when I was gone love?
Ethel: Oh! I missed you and was the only one follered you out ter Rookwood in the bloody rain. They never come, all your flash mates, too busy wiv their speed and their fake magic.
Nobody but me ter read over your grave Ernie.
The rain dripped down me neck onter me widder's weeds. Me best black crepe shrunk up above me knees, the black dye ran inter me swami underwear. I cried buckets, but no, it never brung you back.
Ern: I'm back now Ett, with knobs on.
Ethel: Oh yeah! She wants you back now don’t she. A corpse weren’t her idea of a good time. A corpse don’t . . you know what .. . does it? She never even dropped a ferget-me-not inter that black hole. But I loved you for y’self, dead or alive. We've always been out of it Ern.
(to Pan) Don't let 'er look at me like that. Stop 'er lookin’ Ern. She’s old and ugly now like me, and she don't like it.
Ethel sits. Ern moves to Pan, stares at her.
Ern: She's right y'know Pandora. You have grown old and ugly.
Pan drops her face in her hands.
Ern: (centre) You said I couldn't adapt Goose. I couldn't fit in anymore. But you’re wrong.
You're all wrong, it's you who don’t fit in. Eve always been utterly adaptable, because I'm eternally young.
Mac: You're dead Ern.
Ern: And you're lucked Mac.
Ern moves forward, raging now.
Ern: Where’s Vadims and Repins and the
Dawn and Dusk Club, Harry Hootan and
Lillian Roxton and the Push, Lawson sellin’ his
poems at Central for a swy, Ian Idriess climbin’
the stairs to old Anguish and Robbery with The
Drums of Mer in his hip pocket, Chris Brennan
declaimin’ Catallus, and Hugh McCrea bawlin’
“I am the lord, I am the lord, I am the lord of
everything”. But you’re the lords of nothin’.
You’ve saved nothin’, built nothin’ to last, only a
few roarin’ black holes to fill the emptiness. A
nation of lags and screws, a pack of whinging
immigrants, and what were we goin’ to do? Do
you remember what we were goin’ to do? We
were the new Romantics, the Libertarians, the
first free ones ... connecting Art and Life so
much we’d die for it. Without a vision the people
perish...
Ern pauses, listening. He smiles like a child.
Listen can you still hear the currawongs singing
in the plane trees along Victoria Street?
Tink moves in on Ern, batting his eyes. Ern turns contemptuously.
Ern: Okay baby, whadda you want?
Tink: >I think you're really somethin’ sweetheart
really tough, really animal. (Tink savagely pins
Ern’s arms up his back) But you know all you’re
good for don’t you sweetie. A finger fuck that’s
all.
Ethel: You’re not goin’ wiv him are you Ernie?
You was always such a good boy.
Ern: We all gotta survive Ettie. It’s the law of
the jungle, (to Tink, almost affectionately) Okay,
you big, silly, shit-arsed queen. Show me a good
time in this old town tonight, and we’ll take to
the badlands playin’ Nat King Cole.
Tink giggles. Ern hesitates as he is dragged past Pandora.
Ern: Here’s lookin’ at you kid.
Ern and Tink exit. Pan turns away in tears. The Goose vamps softly "As Time Goes By ”.
Goose: Begin again Prim, begin again.
Rudi swings Prim on top of the bar, and speaks his monologue over the music.
Rudi: Prim was the greatest stripper the Cross
ever seen. She was the original whore wiv the
heart of gold. She was springtime in the Rockies
and she took orf her clothes like po’try. Them
little chromes standin’ on the corners wiv their
mandies in their handbags, they dunno what
class is. An’ they never will.
Fran: (objecting) Ay! Pardon me for livin’.
Rudi: But Prim knew. One bump an’ grind of
her silken hips was worth a dozen shags wiv any
other woman. I was only a kid then but I usta
save up me dough with the one thought, one day
when I’m big enough to get a decent hard on I’ll
buy me a screw from Prim. But the sad fact is
that time don’t stand still and when I was old
enough to screw Prim, she was too bloody old to
screw.
Rudi laughs mirthlessly, and holds Prim away from him, looking her over very deliberately.
Rudi: And she turned out ter be a bull-dyke
anyway. (He drops her) Jus’ cover it all up babe
and I’ll forget all those wet dreams I once had
about you.
The Goose plays a discord on the piano. Rudi Zambiaturns away and sits smoking on the chair, his back to Prim. The Goose starts up “That Old Black Magic" as Prim speaks her monologue over the piano.
Prim: I was in love once with this wop with the
midnight blue eyes. I seen him every day in the
Rex or the Piccolo. I usta trail him down
Victoria Street. I was too shy to say anythin’. I
loved him one whole summer and that's a long
time for a putini...
Fran: Ay?
Prim: That’s Greek for whore. I usta see Last
Card Louie at the Kashmir. He was workin’ for
Abe Saffron. He’d catch your arm: Hallo Girlie,
lookin’ for a job? Welcome to Sydney. Then I
met Vicki Constantino, a six foot tall dyke in
black fox, red hair piled up high. She'd been
away to California with Ava Gardner. Louis’d
say, Vicki’s after you Prim. Are you square?
And I'd say, no, no, I was so damn green I didn’t
even know what “square” meant. He’d tip up me
face and smile, “Yeah baby, you are. You’re
really square.” (pause) Oh’. I was square all
right. I loved this Cooktown soldier. I coulda
been a whore years before. I had all the offers. I
coulda been makin’ real money. I was in me
prime, if that bastard hadn’t taken up me
precious time. (Prim moves behind the bar,
dreaming) When I moved in with Vick we usta
meet Last Card Louis in the Kashmir. He’d buy
us a drink and he’d say, “You was so square
Prim. You was unbelievable. You was like
Springtime.” He wasn’t a bad poor bastard. Last
Card Louis.
Enter Tinker bell, teetering on spike-heeled anklestraps, high piled blonde wig, dangling earrings, lame evening dress, feather boa, heavy make-up.
Rudi: (laughing) Here’s Sergeant Tinkerbell,
here’s a lady with a load on.
Pan: Where’s Ern?
Tink: I left him at the clap clinic. It was so old
fashioned it was lovely. We had a knee trembler
in the rotunda at Green Park.
Rudi: (drunkenly) Give us a song Tink. Give us
a bit of the old magic. I wanta remember what it
was like when I was a kid and run messages for
Tilly Divine, when the whole town was jumpin’,
and all the whores in Palmer Street wore Jap
kirns, and had some style.
Tink: (archly) And I was playing Amateur
Night at the Purple Onion.
He stands imperiously and beckons to The Goose.
Tink: Give us a note there dear.
The Goose hits the note off key several times.
Tink: Why don’t you get yourself tuned up pet.
Rudi and Tink fall about laughing. Tink holds up his hand. The lights dim, spot on Tinkerbell.
TINKERBELL
Tink: (sings:) I'm just a pig in a wig,
my name is Tinkerbell,
and I'm looking for
me Peter Pan.
When the game gets rough
I strut me stuff
I do the best I can.
I’m just a pig in a wig
workin' for Mr Big
and I get me slingbacks ..
only
if you think I’m stacked
then make me Jack,
’cause my silicone tits are lonely.
I’m just a sentimental lady on the side,
I'd like to go to the Tunnel of Love for a ride.
I'd like to go out dancin'
with coses and champagne,
I’d like to wear your orchid
it might help to dull the pain,
so all you spunky boys on the game,
you’re doin’ fine, you’re doin’ swell,
but when the bars are shuttin’
and the young queens are out struttin’
spare a thought for Tinkerbell…
spare a thought for the old queens,
Spare a thought for the Has-beens,
remember all the Girls
doin' what they can,
hangin' in there, hangin’ in there,
workin' for the Man.
They all sing and dance, including Mac in his straightjacket, Pan in her handcuffs. Ethel joins them and they dance up and down the staircase. The choreography must be designed so that at the end of the song Rudi and Tinkerbell are left on top of the stairs, dominating the others below.
All: I’m just a pig,
in a wig,
workin' for Mr Big,
I get me slingbacks. . .only
if you think I'm stacked
then make me Jack
‘cause my silicone tits are lonely.
When the game gets rough,
I strut me stuff,
I’m just an also-ran.
I'm just a pig in a wig,
me name is Tinkerbell
and I’m lookin' for me Peter Pan
O yes I’m lonely ...
lookin’ for me Peter Pan.
The jackhammers shatter the song as Rudi on top of the stairs breaks the mood. The Goose begins to vamp then stops dead.
Rudi: Mr Big says the more land you got the
higher you build.
Tink: Mr Big wants your space babies.
Rudi: If Mr Big says OUT, you move your
arses.
Tink: ’Cause 'e wants ter build some office
blocks an’ some blue movie 'ouses.
Rudi: If land costs fifty bucks a foot, a course
you finish up with high rise. Stands ter reason.
You six or seven cats are awlright but you’re
trespassin’. You need progress, development.
Tink: Ah, it’s just a few Commos an’
troublemakers, a few narks on the make. The
’eroes always make it ard for the rest of us, but
we'll find yous all rooms. We’ll move yous inter
a nice place across the road.
Fran: But there aint no nice places acwoss the
woad, Wude.
Rudi: Shut your big gob or we’ll shut it good.
The villagers huddle below staring at Rudi and Tink in disbelief.
Ethel: Where’ll I keep Ern’s dinner hot if yous
knock down the Village?
Goose: If you knock down the Village where
will I go. I’ll be on the run. It’s an offence they
said, a very grave offence, a breach of the
Custom’s Act. These exhibits speak for
themselves, these prints all demonstrate.. a
certain form of abberation.
Goose stands, jumbling in his pockets, dragging out postcards, and photos, scattering them nervously on stage. Then he drops on his knees gathering them up again.
Mac: They’ll vag me and take me back to Ryde.
They’ve had a clean white cell waiting there for
me for years. I’ll sit, staring at their green lawns,
listening to the dementia praecoxes babbling, the
melancholics sobbing under my barred window,
and never know they're me.
Fran: I’ll haveta find anover pitch, and they’re
all staked out. Them big, tough bull-dykes ’as got
’em all. They’d kill yous, soon as look at yous.
But I'm not like them. I'm gentle. Anyway,
whatever ’appens I'm not goin' back to
Blacktown for me ol' Dad to slap about. I knows
that.
The Goose: I said, regretfully, I bid farewell to
Australia where I have spent so many happy
years, making my modest contribution to the
cultural life of Sydney. I will continue my life’s
work elsewhere. I will leave for Rome.
He giggles, spreading his arms around the Village. This is my Rome.
Prim: How dya think I’d make out now as a
Go-Go girl, nailed to one a them booths, naked
on me platform sofles, goin’ from strip club to
strip club in me rabbit skin coat, takin’ it off for
the bastards from the bush, and me a good
Catholic.
Rudi: You’ll be compensated.
Prim: Will I? You're goin' to compensate me
for my life are you? Who are you then? Jesus
Christ? I remember you. You was that little
snotty-nosed kid usta crawl around the Pink
Pussy Cat pickin' up bumpers, waitin' for me to
get me gear off. You couldn’t compensate me.
Pan: I came down the hill from East Sydney
Tec. with me airbrush, perspex and gold leaf, to
sit in the Kashmir and be a celebrity. They said I
kept a black panther in me room, and I did. His
name was Ern Malley.
Ethel: Don't yous worry. Ern'II fix it. Ern can
fix anythin'. He’s got the gift of the gab.
Ern enters right, stands watching them.
Ern: Ern'II fix what?
Ethel runs to him.
Ethel: They re throwin’ us out Ernie. They're
demolishin' us.
Rudi: We’re goin’ to bulldoze this whole bloody
shit down, because it’s nothin’ but a ghetto.
Tink twirls his baton.
Tink: So if you got any sentimental feelin’s Ern
baby...
Ern: I come from Taverner’s Hill...so they tell
me.
Mac: Ern Malley, true to form, neo-romantic,
artiste extraordinaire, last of the great Oz
fascisti.
Mac rises, tries to bow, topples over on the floor.
Ern: Why don’t you cool it Mac?
Mac: Why don’t you free me Ern?
Ern: I thought the boot was on the other foot,
Svangeli.
Ern crosses, helps Mac up, undoes his straightjacket, sticks a cigarette in Mac's mouth and lights it.
Ern: You see, I’ve never been real and I wanted
to be real. I was just the sum of all you wanted
me to be. You told them I was a fake Mac, you
crucified me, but it blew up in your face. (He
turns and crosses to Pan) You used me, all of
you. Why did you bring me back again Pan?
Pan: I think I wanted to work it all out this
time. The last time I saw you was five o’clock in
the morning when they carried you out past the
fountain. You was so pale, you looked like
death. And I thought suddenly, Ern is dead.
He’ll never make me suffer again, I’ll never lie in
bed with my cunt aching for him, or my wrists
bruised blue. And then I missed you. You can’t
imagine what it was like here after you died. I
tried to die too.
Ern: (angry) How?
Pan: I took pills. I got prescriptions for dozens
of pills.
Ern: What sort of pills?
Pan: I can’t remember, sleepin’ pills, just
sleepin’ pills. I wanted to sleep.
Ern: That’s got nothin’ to do with me. If I’da
been here I’d of tried to stop you, but I wasn't
here was I, so for me, it never happened. Can't
you see that?
Ern kisses her.
Pan: (shivering) You kiss me, but it’s cold as
clay.
Ern drops her violently.
Ern: (brutally) Why doncha just open your legs
and relax lady? You’d do a lot more good for
yourself.
Pan recoils. Ern turns away, almost sadly, in another rapid mood change.
Ern: The past is always so seductive, particularly
if you don’t believe it ever really happened.
Pan moves to the bar for a drink. Ethel calls Ern back to her.
Ethel: I wanta have a past too Ernie. What did
I do when I was a little girl?
Ern: You sat on Taverner’s Hill and made up
mad little songs.
Ethel: Did I make them up meself?
Ern: No, I made them up for you.
Ethel: I want to make up somethin' for meself.
Just somethin’.
Ern: (kindly) I think you made up stories too.
Ethel: (eagerly) Did I? What kinda stories?
Ern: Movie stories.
Ethel: Who was the heroine?
Ern: Doris Day. It was always Doris Day.
Ethel: Was there a hero?
Ern: Yeah, yeah, there was.
Ethel: Who, who?
Ern: (firmly) Peter Lorre. You had the hots for
Peter Lorre.
Ethel: (amazed) Peter Lorre in love wiv Doris
Day?
Ern: It was continuous, like a serial.
Ethel: (sadly) itez, I musta been diff'rent then.
Ern: You were a little girl.
Ethel: I could make up some more.
Ern: (bored) Yeah, why doncha Ett?
Ethel: I think I will. I will. I’ll go on up now
and when you get home Ernie I’ll have a new
one waitin’. It’ll be better than colour TV.
Ethel climbs the stairs and sits, hands folded, eyes closed, lips moving.
Ern: (uneasy) Well, I’ll be on me way Ett.
(loudly) Ett!
Ethel: (dreamily) Ter meet one hundred Doris
Days.
Ern shakes his head, moves to the bar. Rudi is angry at the interruptions.
Rudi: Lissen yous we won’t fuck about. We’ll
say “pack yer ports, move yer arses, we don’t
wanta see you mugs agen.”
Prim: We won't move.
Rudi: You’ll move awlright, feet first wiv a
lumpa concrete round your necks. You’ll move.
Prim: Where to?
Rudi: Out ter Mt Druitt.
Prim: Mt bloody Druitt. Pigs arse we will.
We’re not movin’ out ter Mt Druitt. What the
fuck would we do in Mt Druitt?
Mac: Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if the
booze don't get you the developers must.
Goose: We’ll lobby the National Trust.
Rudi: The National Trust! It’s like an ol’
gummy bitch barkin’ up the wrong tree.
Goose: We're part of the National Heritage.
Rudi: (laughing) The National Heritage: three
molls, a looney and two derros! Well’. Maybe
you’ve got somethin' at that.
Prim: It’s awful to watch people movin’ out.
Have you ever noticed? It’s like a wartorn city.
They come outa the woodwork, dazed, helpless,
like refugees, with fifty bucks in their hands to
store their lives away in a taxi truck.
Tink: Ah! y’ get on me tits.
Rudi: (to Prim) An’ we just don’t like you
messin’ it baby.
Rudi and Tink move downstairs.
Mac: In two years the Village ‘ll be derelict.
Concrete, glass and metal! These bastards don’t
care about us. We're the shit of the earth.
Prim: We wont move.
Rudi: What are yous all? Idiots, martyrs, or
somethin’? D’ya like ter suffer?
Prim: I'm just a Mick, that’s all.
Tink and Rudi get a drink at the bar. Prim starts humming.
Prim: (humming) Proddy cats sit on mats,
eatin’ maggots outa rats, Catholic dogs jump like
frogs in a dish of holy water.
Ern: I gotta find somebody to sleep with
tonight.
Mac: Frightened of the dark?
Ern: You oughta know. How dya reckon you
and I’d go Prim? You’re still a good lookin’
chick. Would y’ like to be one of my girlfriends?
All you have ta do is hold me.
Prim: I might make it with Ethel. Ethel needs a
girlfriend.
Ern: Yeah! there’s a lot to Ethel, but nobody
ever finds it out. I guess they never had much of
a chance with me around.
Prim: I might ask her down for a drink.
Ern: Yeah, why doncha. She’d like that.
Nobody ever asks her anywhere.
He moves about the Village restlessly.
Ern: I’ve gotta find somebody for the night. (To
Fran) You need another customer?
Fran: It’s real quiet. Nobody cornin’ by.
Ern: I’m broke, got no bread.
Fran: Ah! I guess I could afford one on the
house.
Delighted Ern moves across to Fran, puts his arm around her.
Ern: We'll go to Costellos and the Hooker Rex,
and pick up some booze and some shit. Will you
be one of my girlfriends Fran?
Mac: The world’s full of all your old brides in
their old wedding gowns.
While Ern sweet-talks Fran by the fountain Rudi pulls his bar stool downstage.
Rudi: I wanted ter be a toecutter for the
painters and dockers see, but I never had the
skills. Them toecutters was real tough babies. I
usta wait down the enda the wharf outside the
pick-up shed to be called for the roster. We was
seagulls, see. If no union men showed we got the
leavin’s. It don't do much for your image.
He takes pliers out o f his pocket and removes his shoe, gloomily staring at his toes.
Sometimes I think, why not practice on meself,
get me hand in. But you wouldn’t want a
toecutter wivout any toes would yous. Wouldn't
look professional. Wouldn’t build up the
confidence.
Rudi begins his country and western number.
RIDE AROUND LITTLE RUDI
(Lyrics, Merv Lilley)
I’m Rudi Roderega, I’m a cowpoke from the
Cross,
I was born in McLeay Street astride a big black
hoss,
Which tended to stumble causin’ premature
birth,
But I rode it ten seconds before meetin’ the
earth.
All: Ride around little Rudi, ride around slow,
Rake at the spare ribs and watch the head go,
Spur at the shoulders and watch the blood flow
Ride em ten seconds is all that I know.
Rudi: I ran round the markets and crossed to
the Cross
To court Primavera for better or wuss,
She stepped like a filly with thoroughbred lines,
And I thought ’er more beautiful than King
Solomon’s mines.
I sought out me fortune at each rodeo,
All: Ride round little Rudi, ride around slow,
Spur at the shoulders and watch the blood flow,
Ride em ten seconds at the big rodeo.
Rudi: Once up in the clouds and smokin’ some
grass,
I shot at a bullseye, hit a pig in the arse,
All: Ride around little Rudi, ride around slow,
Rudi: Take your time at stonebreakin’ with
some years to go.
All: Ride around little Rudi, wivout any hoss,
Rudi: Its a long time in Bathurst for a boy from
the Cross,
But when I got pardoned I made some dough
fast
To court Primavera and screw’er at last.
I'm Rudi Roderega, bolt cutters in tow,
I blow the odd safe to make the big dough.
All: Ride around little Rudi, ride around slow,
Rudi: Tell where the stuff is or I chop orf y’ toe.
I’m Rudi Roderega I work for Mr Big
He can use a tough hombre who can stick a pig.
I’ve tied up me bronco, took me poly saddle
down,
Can’t find Primavera though I’ve searched the
town.
All: Ride around little Rudi, ride around slow,
Watch for Primavera, she might be on the go,
Though the grass is all trammelled and the
hitchin’ rail gone,
You can ride round McLeay Street if you can
raise a bone.
All repeat Chorus.
Tink: Why lover I never knew you was that
sentimental.
Rudi: Ah, piss orf Queenie. Don’t get y’ tits in a
knot.
Tink begins to sob.
Tink: Nobody wants me, and there’s nothin’
sadder than an old drama queen. I wishd I’d
never gone inter the Purple Onion, never tried
on all that lovely drag, never met Carlotta. I
coulda been a nice straight young copper,
twirlin’ me baton down Palmer Street, takin' a
back hander from the molls.
Ern: Why doncha take Rudi upstairs Pan, and
give him one. Sweet talk him under your
guttering candles, sacrifice y’self for us all. He’s
got them nice Nureyev cheekbones.
Ern crosses right with Fran on his arm.
Tink: Wait for me Ern.
Ern: You’re not much of a screw Sergeant
Tinkerbell.
Tink: And you’re such a little turd aren’t y’?
Such a fuckin’ little floosie. Well, I don’t wanna
be a gooseberry. Heaven Forbid! Just drop me
orf at Patches.
Tink flounces off right. Rudi thoughtfully puts on his shoe, crosses to Pan at the bar.
Rudi: Cornin’ then babe?
He takes her hand, and they move slowly up the stairs. Ern watches them go, his arm around Fran.
Ern: (to Pan) You fixed up for the night then
Pan?
Pan ignores him and keeps on climbing. Ern moves to the foot of the stairs, calling up to her.
Ern: You’ll always be there Pan. (pause) Like
Ethel. Does a fuck really make all that
difference? (long pause) (angry) I know, for you
it’s some great magic ceremony. It binds me to
you forever, (pause) There's only now Pan. I
only recognise now. We live now that’s all.
Those terrible days don’t exist anymore. They’re
past, they're over, (pause) Who’s your best
friend? (pause) I love you Pan.
Pan swings round savagely at the top of the stairs.
Pan: I know exactly where I come in your
pantheon of women. I come after a drag queen,
a dyke and a hooker.
Ern: So why didn’t you leave me out there?
Pan: It was my last big fling.
They stare at each other.
Ern: And I’m just a promiscuous actor.
Pan: Whores are always promiscuous.
Pan moves to the cushions with Rudi. Ern exits right laughing with Fran. The Goose begins to play "Lady be Good” very softly, as Rudi and Pan begin to kiss. Mac takes a long drink.
Mac: (drunkenly) The psychopath is an arch
exhibitionist. He uses all the accepted phrases,
contrition, love, gratitude as convenient coin in
the game of human relationships. He knows the
answers but he never knows their meaning.
Mac’s head drops on the table, the bottle crashes to the floor.
Goose: (dreaming) I could be conducting La
Stupenda at the Opera House tonight.
Giggling Rudi and Pan begin to undress each other. Rudi is covered in tattoos from neck to ankles. Admiringly Pan turns him round and round tracing his tattoos.
Prim: (calling) Like a drink Ettie? It's on the
house.
Ethel moves primly downstairs. The lights have faded everywhere except for the spot on Prim’s bar. Ethel awkwardly balances on the bar stool. Prim slides a beer across to her.
Ethel: When I die nobody will ever have heard of me. There’ll be no sign, no plaque saying “Ethel Malley lived here”. I’ll be like Hans Anderson’s little sea maid, foam on the seashore, dissolved in a tenth of a second. (Ethel giggles) I was makin’ up this story just now Prim. Wanta hear it?
Prim nods, wiping down the bar.
Ethel: Well, it was all about this girl who
looked like Doris Day, all fresh an’ young, like
springtime. You remember. (She clutches Prim's
arm. Prim stops wiping) She's jus’ startin’ ter
work the bars, and there’s alwiz this feller sittin’
there, in the corner, crackin’ his knuckles. He’s
her pimp see, and he looks like Peter Lorre. And
then one night he strangles her, throws her inter
the Harbour, with a concrete slab round her
neck...and the sharks get her, or p’raps...he
buries her under the tarmac on Ansett runway
where all them Jumbo jets take orf for London
an’ New York...or...p’raps he chops her up an’
feeds her down the garbage shaft, an’ nobody
never fishes her up agen.
Prim silently pours Ethel another drink. Their eyes lock.
Prim: (with bravado) My philosophy’s always
been...hold all things lightly.
Upstairs Rudi, naked, stretches luxuriously against the skyline, and then lies smoking on Pan’s cushions. In the dim light there is a flash of lightning, thunder rolls, rain begins.
Rudi: Weather’s changin’. Southerly buster blowin’ up.
Pan pulls a white, semi transparent robe around her and stands staring out at the rainy lights, her back to the audience. Then she stretches out her arms to the sky clouds and it begins to rain. At the end of Act One the rain increases, the sky darkens, then really darkens.
Pan: I hear thunder, a flash of lightnin’ lights
the loft, a blast of thunder hits the sky. The floor
moves under me feet.
Prim: It’s holy Saturdee. I think I’ll go to First
Mass at dawn.
Rudi: Come ter bed Pan.
Pan moves across to him. The Goose vamps a slow skat on the piano. Mac raises his head and stares out front.
Mac: Cold night for a drunk.
Goose: Cold night for us all.
The light moves off Ethel and Prim onto The Goose who plays a little night music, softly, for everyone, until the light fades out altogether.
THE GOOSE’S SONG:
THE KNAVE OF HEARTS
The Goose: There's a time to love another
and a time to close the chapter,
Before all the words are guilty,
but the game was such a wild one,
that no ending seems the right one.
Though the barrels are all empty,
and their duelling days are over,
she keeps on playing roulette just the same.
Chorus: For he was the Jack of Diamonds
and he was the King of Glory,
and she crowned him in the morning
when her cards were on the table,
never knew he was a Joker,
and the Joker was a wild one,
never knew he palmed the aces,
and he was the Knave of Hearts.
For her hands were ringed with silver
and she wore her scarlet dresses,
she travelled through the country
like a devil and an angel,
and she met him in the garden
when it rained and when it thundered,
she had lost the game and knew it,
but the odds were still the same.
Repeat Chorus.
For she was the Queen of Diamonds,
and she was the Queen of Glory,
he had crowned her in the morning
and she had the Knave of Hearts.
Her cards were on the table,
and she held a royal routine,
she lay with him at midnight
and never heard the chimes.
Repeat Chorus.
And she thought about the time when she was
free and didn’t know him,
didn’t know the room where all the palm trees
were a wonder.
In her simple silver bracelet she saw that he’d
never seen her
and she knew the dream was over and she’d
dreamt it all alone.
Repeat Chorus.
End of Act One
The time is early evening of Easter Saturday It is that transitional time when the sky is palely luminous and competing with the already lighted street lamps. The Village is a hive of activity. Pan has drawn one of her panther / woman rampant on the pavement and is now painting a sign on the wall near the fountain. The sign reads “Homes are History". Mac is sitting at his table, almost sober, typing furiously. Prim is working a flatbed at the counter, is gathering up the leaflets and folding them. The Goose is playing "Across the Western Suburbs we will wander” on the downstairs piano. The atmosphere is excited, cheerful, and busy with a sense of purpose usually quite alien to the Village.
The Goose: (sings) O me name it is the Goose,
they’ve been playin’ fast and loose,
with the little village that I call me home,
so its caused me heart to grieve,
for I’ll have to take me leave,
and across the western suburbs I must roam.
Ethel: (sings and capers scattering leaflets) Me
name is Ethel Malley and I’m callin’ this ’ere
rally,
before our national heritage is squandered,
for they’ve started knockin’ down
all the nite spots in the town,
where in the old days Ern and Ethel wandered.
Prim: (sings and jumps onto the bar) Where is
me house, me little terrace house,
where is the village bar of Primavera,
the wreckers of the town
jus’ came up and tore it down
and across the western suburbs I must wander.
All: Under concrete and glass
Sydney’s disappearin’ fast,
it’s all gone for profit and for plunder,
though we really want to stay,
they keep drivin’ us away,
now across the western suburbs we must wander.
Mac: O me name it is Mac Greene
and I’ve got a head of steam,
for the inner city is me natural home,
for pyramids of glass
they have given me the arse
now across the western suburbs I must roam.
Pan: (capering with paint-brush) O me name it
is Pandora
but what’s happened to me aura,
for its plain to see they do not give a bugger.
Before we even knew it
we was shifted to Mt. Druitt,
and headed out as far as Wagga-Wagga.
As they sing and dance in a circle together Sergeant Tinkerbell and Rudi enter. They read Pan’s sign, pick up the leaflets, jeering and nudging each other.
All: (except Rudi and Tink) Under concrete and
glass Sydney’s disappearin’ fast,
It’s all gone for profit and plunder.
The Village pull Tink and Rudi into the dancing circle. They both come unwillingly but Tink quickly gets into the spirit of the performance, while Rudi is unwillingly charmed by Pan.
All: (sing/dance) Though we really want to stay
they keep drivin’ us away
Now across the western suburbs we must
wander.
The performance ends. They move back to their tasks. Only Rudi and Tink are left like shags on a rock, centre, trying to look truculent.
Tink: What’s all this ’ere then?
Ethel: (hysterically) Green bans forever!
Rudi: Green bans me arse. What’s up Pan?
Pen: (airily) I’m paintin’.
Tink: What’s goin’ on?
Prim: (ironically) You’ve created a sense a
community Sergeant.
Rudi: Whose in charge ere?
All: Prim is.
Rudi: Prim! The old bulldyke stripper Prim!
Prim: Watch it Rude, you know better than to
come the bounce over me.
You’ve tried to close me down and shut me up a
dozen times.
Pan: Prim’s always been a real anarchist. Any
demmo, you name it, against uranium, against
the queen, Prim’ll be there.
Prim: I’m a good lapsed Catholic, that’s all.
Goose: She’s like a good mouser, Prim is. She’s
got patience. She waits...and then she pounces.
Tink: What’s goin’ on then?
Mac: Whaddya think it is. It’s a fuckin’ squat mate.
Tink: You’re a man of the world Mac.
Mac: I’m a bum, but I live here.
Prim: We all live here. I come to the Cross from
Kempsey luggin’ me globite suitcase when I was
sweet sixteen, and I can’t be conned.
Mac: (reciting) Where the stars are lit by neon
where the fried potato fumes
and the ghost of Mr Villon
still inhabits single rooms.
And the girls lean out from heaven
over lightwells thumping mops,
while the gent in 57
cooks his pound of mutton chops...
Groaning to God from Darlinghurst... Five Bells...
The Village clap and cheer...
Prim: (interrupting) You’ll offer us money to
get out, sure you will. The City Council, the
DMR, the State Government, and the bloody
developers they’re all hand in glove with the
crims, the cops and the hoons to get rid of us.
You’re trespassin’ they’ll say. And in they’ll
come, thirty or forty big bouncers, and they’ll set
alight to the Village and split.
Ethel: (clapping the speech) The world is a
ghetto.
Prim: But we’re goin’ to civilize the cities.
We’re stayin’ and we’re goin’ to fight back.
Rudi: (turning away) You’re all mad as hatters.
Rudi stalks over to the fountain and stands glowering beside it.
Mac: We’ll bar and bolt it up like a medieval
castle sport. We’ll bring in coils of wire...
Tink: And you’ll all end up in the Darlinghurst
lock up. Look, I think the world’s just fantastic
these days as long as it don’t get out of hand. I
believe in everyone doin’ their own thing..in
moderation. I’d love to do a forty eight minute
special in Noumea. They’d crown me Queen of
the Pacific. I’d be a second Sadie Thomspon...
Rudi: (savagely) Belt up Tinkerbell.
Tink flounces across and stands on the other side of the fountain, stiffly at attention. Pan begins on another sign “Save The Village", and Ethel crosses to Fran's pitch with her leaflets over her arm. There is the sound of a horn tooting and laughter offstage. Enter Ern in a red Alpha Spider with Frangipanni riding on the bonnet, the dickey seat crammed with parcels. Frangipanni is dressed in a knee length lapin coat, and Ern in high boots, black velvet trousers and a cream silk shirt with wide, dramatic lapels. He has his hand on the horn.
Pan: (screaming before she turns) Noise
polluters!
Ern: Got a present for you Pan.
Pan: Not anymore baby.
Ern: Catch.
She turns in time to be enveloped by an elaborate scarlet Japanese kimona. She stands, enchanted with it, in spite of herself smoothing the rich embroidered folds.
Pan: Where'd you get the flash buggy?
Ern: On me bank card.
Fran: (posing cheesecake) Howdya like me
rabbit?
Ethel crosses, hands a leaflet to Ern.
Ethel: Green bans forever.
Fran laughs hysterically. Ern looks amazed.
Ern: What’s eatin you Ett?
Ethel: Mutate now. Avoid the rush.
Fran: Takin' over me pitch Ett? You turned pro?
Fran screams with laughter. Ern grins.
Ethel: Try puttin’ your mouth over your
exhaust pipe and suck.
Ern: What about a new image Ettie? Try these
on for size.
He throws a glittering lame dress, a pair of spike heeled shoes, and a feather boa at Ethel's feet. Ethel drops her leaflets, and kneels, holding the lame dress to her cheek.
Ethel: (softly)Oh! Ernie its too ... glam for me.
Ern: Nothin’s too good for you Ett.
Ethel: I know! I’ll wear it at the Village
Festival.
Ethel exits upstairs carrying the gifts like a precious burden, and disappears into the dark at the top of the stairs. Ern is busy throwing his presents in all directions: for the Goose an opera cloak, a top hat and white gloves, for Prim two huge feather fans, for Rudi a deadly looking pistol, for Tink a diamond paste tiara. The Village, like delighted children, scramble for the spoils. Rudi spins the pistol, looking sinister, Tink takes off his cap and poses in the cloak, hat and gloves sits elaborately at the piano.
Ern: What’s this about a Village Festival?
Pan: We’re all inter savin' the Village. I’ve
painted me pavement pictures, the Goose will
play, I’ll tell fortunes, Prim will strip agen,
Fran'll play the hooker on her corner. Mac’ll act
out the Village drunk. (That won’t strain
anybody's imagination.) They’ll come in their
thousands to see the old Cross, still alive and
kickin’. (Pause. She looks at Ern challengingly,
then elaborately casual.) You goin’ to read, Ern?
Ern: They’d remember me then wouldn’t they?
Pan: They’re all waitin’ to remember you.
Ern: Ah! You’re just an old seducer Pan.
Prim: You're a part of the Village, Ern.
Ern: I'm not “a part” of anythin'. Mac invented me, that’s all.
The light has faded from the sky. A blue haze falls on the Village. Mac turns on his desk lamp and continues typing. Ern crosses and places four whisky bottles firmly on Mac's table. The Goose removes his white gloves and begins to play "Shine in my Feathers”. Prim crosses and lies full length along the top of the piano, twirling her new fans.
Ern: Writin’ again Mac?
Mac: Got to get The Village Voice out on time.
Ern: Didn’t know you were a journo, or a politician.
Mac: I used to work for Smith s Weekly.
Ern deliberately pours Mac and himself a drink, hands the glass to Mac.
Mac: (with longing) I’m on the waggon.
Ern: It's a materialist society Mac.
Mac suddenly grabs the glass and drains it.
Mac: And there’s no angels here mate. (Pause,
wry laugh.) Fuck it, let’s have anarchy. (Mac
pours a second glass.) The problem with this
place is, there’s too many drunks.
Pan: (wryly) And too many lovers.
In her scarlet kimona Pan moves up the staircase. Ern watches her go, torn between Mac and Pan.
Ern: (calling after her) That’s how I always
think of you, as some fabulous Japanese
princess.
But Pan doesn't answer. She disappears into her own dark sanctum. Ern places his glass on Mac's table and moves into a follow spot. The song and dance are directed to each of the watchers in turn. Filling the stage Ern wheedles, cajoles and threatens them all like a lover.
SHINE IN MY FEATHERS
Ern: (sings, dances) Shine in my feathers,
glitter in my jewels,
look how much I’ve given you
I'm just a givin' fool.
I’m the vivisector,
I’m the camera eye,
I’m the sad recorder
No-one can deny.
I’m the ghostly lover,
with nothing to reveal,
my whole heart is open
for everyone to steal.
How can you describe me
when you dream aloud,
smoke from burning paper,
a shadow or a cloud.
Miracle or monster,
lover, friend or foe,
in your arms I’ll linger
but you’ll never know...
I’m the vivisector,
I'm the camera eye,
I'm the sad recorder,
no-one can deny.
Shine in my feathers,
glitter in my jewels,
look how much I’ve given you.
I’m just a givin’ fool.
The Village clap Ern as he crosses and pours another drink from Mac's table. Mac is getting steadily and expertly drunk; Rudi stands, glowering, still spinning his gun, by the fountain; Fran still sits, knees crossed high, on the bonnet of the Alpha, repairing her make-up and dropping mandies; Tink is talking to her, draped over the bonnet, occasionally accepting a pill; Prim is still stretched across the piano.
Mac: (drunker) We’re all exiles of the heart in
this brutal country.
Prim: That's true alright, but I dig the bright
lights. I usta work the Quay, Taylor Square, up
the Cross, and I know 'em all, all the little crims
in the swy games, and the cheeky drums makin'
too much money.
Prim glares at Rudi and Fran.
Rudi: (indignant) I was in the pen for armed
robbery and shootin' a copper in the arse.
(gloomly) A course the arse don’t count.
Fran: (indignant) The first time I got orf wiv a
guy I was twelve. It was only a dollar in them
days.
Tink: (preening) Drag queens never grow old.
They always stay groovy.
Mac: (off again) Jailed here we sense some sort
of fragile beauty, some splendour; the verdigris
spire on St James, Queen Victoria riding the
mist in Hyde Park...
Fran: I usta wock up ta Costello’s when I was
younger. I looked weal good then, sort of
wholesome, nice skin an’ that. I made heaps
when I was younger. They’d say, Fwan
Waterfall, you’re a good kid.
Fran lights a cigarette in an elaborate holder.
Tink: Nature’s nature aint it? I’m goin’ to have
me vocal chords done first, then me hands, and
two toes cut orf so’s I can wear stillettos. Then
I’ll have all the bones of me face smashed and
reset, so’s I can look like Dietrich.
Prim: I been round too long, I know too much.
Tink: Life’s very avant garde. Only the cats
who know where it’s at, really know where it's at.
Rudi: This is the big time now Prim. You're
only a fly in the ointment.
Prim: You got a conspiracy of silence about
me, hopin’ I’ll go away. But that’s wishful
thinkin’. Mind you, I like a dash of realistic
pessimism.
Rudi: So pack your belonging and leave the
street baby. We don’t want to see your face
agen.
Prim: You c’n see why I don’t care for guys no more.
Goose: Take care Prim.
Prim: I’ll take care Goose. I know about tactics.
Lenin alwiz said it was two steps forward, one
step back, like a slow foxtrot.
Goose: (proudly) I was an Ishmael. The press
kept a day and night vigil over me. My welcome
home by the ABC was cancelled immediately. I
was followed wherever I went.
The Establishment doesn’t forgive easily.
Mac rises unsteadily to his feet.
Mac: Old, dim, decayed, peeling, lovely...less
drink to that.
Mac collapses in his chair. Ern pours him another drink.
Prim: We’ll save the Village, because I know
too bloody much.
Pause awhile. She stares challengingly at Rudi. The Goose shakes his head.
Rudi: Cornin’ Sergeant Tink.
Tink: I thought Ern and me...
Ern: I think Rudi’s waitin' Tink.
Tink moves nervously across to Rudi, dropping his tiara.
Tink: I'm just a natural showy, like the Pope.
Rudi: Why doncha turn your badge in. You’re
not a copper’s arsehole.
Tink: I’m waitin’ till me breasts get bigger
darling.
Tink puts his arm in Rudi’s and together they
move off. Rudi pauses at exit left.
Rudi: I’m warnin’ you Primavera, just for ol’
time’s sake, and I’m not too sentimental, pack up
ternight or somebody might just fish your still
lovely leg outa a shark’s belly.
Rudi and Tink exit.
Mac: (very drunk) Richmond River cedar,
honeysuckle, chimes and horns...
Prim unwinds from the piano top. She is
nervous, but full of bravado.
Prim: Give us a drink will ya Ern?
Ern crosses and pours her a whisky. She laughs nervously, swishing her fan.
Prim: Ah! Rude’s all piss an’ wind. Alwiz was.
Little punk, pick’ up the butts an’ the dead
marines in the Pussycat.
Prim swallows the whisky, shivers .
Goose: Cold Prim?
Prim: They’re walkin’ over me grave, ternight.
(She laughs loudly.) Well, this won’t buy the
baby a new frock. If I’m gonna strip again I
definitely need a rehearsal. Give us a hand here
Goose.
Together they exit right, carrying the flat bed .
Fran: Cornin’ now Ern luv. We could go
somewhere nice like the Carousal.
She crosses to Ern wiggling her hips, and swinging her handbag.
Ern: Get goin’ baby.
He turns his back. She looks at him savagely.
F ran: Doncha give me the ice. Ah yeah, I
know. I knock about. I'm just a fuck, that's all.
Ern: Sleep it off Fran.
Sobbing Fran makes for the car and climbs in, curling up on the seat.
Fran: Pardon me for livin’. (Her head pokes up
over the side.) When I'm mandied man, I’m
happy. I cwack me quota an’ that’s it. I got a few
dweams left y’ know. (She settles down, her
voice blurring .) I’d like ter be a hairdresser an’
settle down. (Silence, pause, head over the door
again .) Cwack a fat or your money back.
Fran giggles and goes to sleep. Ern crosses to Mac, stands opposite him.
Ern: I don’t want to fight you Mac. I want to...
hold hands. Can’t you understand, you created
me, because I was part of you, the part you
drowned in the whisky bottle, and now it rises
up again...like a genie.
Mac: (blearily) But when I rub the bottle and
cry “Genie Begone” he doesn’t obey
me...anymore.
With a sob his head drops on the table.
Ern: Can’t you accept that I'm you as you once
were, young and wild and beautiful.
Mac rises, grappling with Ern .
Mac: (with hatred) A kind of revolutionary
simpleton who made brilliant discoveries and
howling blunders. You’re a thief, and a
magician, and a cheat. You stole Pandora. You
made love together like vicious children.
Ern: I never loved her.
Mac: So much the worse.
Ern: I thought you were credited with my
creation?
Mac: I killed you off. I made that decision.
Ern: I guess you had the right. Didn’t you?
Ern turns away.
Mac: (wearily) I just sit here, suckin' lightning.
He drinks deeply from the bottle.
Ern: (sadly) Don’t make me sorry for you baby.
It won’t wash. Jesus Mac! It's been backs to the
wall boys for so long.
Ethel enters in a silver glow at the top of the
stairs, a transformed Cinderella, the fairy on top
of the Christmas tree. Conscious of her beauty
she steps slowly down, her silver dress glittering
like fishes scales in the light, the feather boa
draped over her shoulder, her legs shining in her
still heeled sandals.
Ethel: (softly) Ern!
Ern turns, transfixed at the transformation and moves delighted to the bottom of the stairs, holding out his arms to her. She moves straight into them, and together in the silent, darkened Village before the Festival begins, with only Mac, drunkenly passed out at the table, and Fran, asleep in the Alpha, they dance out their love story. The Goose enters silently, like a ghost and the piano begins to play...
I’M WRAPPED IN YOU
Ern & Ethel: (song & dance routine) It’s a kind
of lovin’,
it’s a kind of game,
although the squares might give it
a different kind of name.
It’s a game for stylish players,
it’s a constant curtain call,
it’s a hard act to follow
anywhere at all.
It’s a game for two,
and I know it’s true,
no matter what you do,
I’m wrapped in you.
Ethel: There’s a shine about you,
that I like to see,
you’re the Prince of Darkness
in my fantasy.
Ern: There’s a shine about you
that I like to see,
you’re the black haired princess,
you're the poetry.
Together: It’s a game for two,
and I know it’s true,
no matter what you do,
I’m wrapped in you.
Ethel: Cloven hoofs are catchin’
sulphur fumes are fine,
when you look at me dear,
everythin’s divine.
Ern: You’re the lame angel,
With the rainbow strobes,
when I look at you dear
the universe explodes.
Together: It’s a game for two,
And I know it’s true,
No matter what you do,
I’m wrapped in you.
Together: It’s a kind of lovin’,
although the squares might give it
a different kind of name.
It’s a game for stylish lovers,
it’s a constant curtain call,
it’s a hard act to follow,
anywhere at all.
It’s a game for two,
and I know it’s true,
no matter what you do
I’m wrapped in you
I’m wrapped in you
I’m wrapped...in you.
With a final twirl Ern and Ethel come together in a long, passionate embrace. They do not break apart, even when Pandora appears in her red kimono at the top o f the stairs, because they are not even aware of her presence. She carries her tarot pack in her hand.
Pan: (ironically) Tell your fortune Ern.
Ern and Ethel break apart, but he still holds her
hand.
Ern: (carelessly) I don’t think I’ve got much of a
fortune left to tell.
Pan: Do you remember how we played at being
brother and sister, and then one night in a dark
corner our fingers touched, and they were
burning.
Ethel moves away from Ern to the bar, and sits on a stool, staring at nothing, her dream of Ern vanishing.
Ern: (uneasily) Knowing us both it was
inevitable.
Pan: I never planned them, those magic days in
the loft, makin’ love, drinkin' tequila, readin’
Ezra, listenin’ to Charlie Parker.
Ern: (flatly) I loved it all.
Pan: There were no great myths to live
through, so we made up our own.
Ern: But I was always afraid of you.
Pan: Why? Who am I to be afraid of?
Ern: Pandora — the witch.
Pan: Mum an’ me usta sit out in the garden and
read the tea leaves, till the Green Cart come and
dragged her orf to Callan Park, (gently) I never
claimed to rule the sky Ern, not like you.
Ern: You’ll never let me forget will you?
Pan: Never.
Ern: What do you want of me, tell me what you
want.
Pan: Everything.
Ern: You can’t have it. It’s impossible.
Pan: I know but I still want it. (long pause)
Their eyes meet, fall. I dreamt about you last
night. You was making love to me again. You
wore a magic skin. It made you so luminous,
almost... invisible. Then I woke up alone.
She gives an embarrassed laugh. Ern moves back to the foot of the stairs.
Ern: Listen, listen, we could never have lived
together. Artists can’t live together. Tell me ...
anybody ... give me an example.
Pan: (driven to it) The Brownings.
Ern: He overshadowed her and she died.
Pan: The Shelleys.
Ern: She wrote one novel, Frankenstein, and he
drowned.
Pan: I could’ve locked the door on you
sometimes.
Ern: I would have kicked it down.
Pan: No, it could’ve worked, it could have
been...
Ern: But I died of Grave's disease and Ettie
buried me.
Pan: (dully) And what’s the use of goin’ over it.
It never happened and it never will.
Ern: Except...when I look at you sometimes I
do remember...what I’ve lost.
Pan: And all the time I’m courtin’ you, with
every movement, every tone, every eye flash,
Ern, Ern Malley I'm seducing you, because I
just can’t help it. It’s like...breathing.
They make movements towards each other.
Pan: P’raps just once, we could...
Ern: (savagely) It’s never just once. Once is the
beginning of everything.
Pan: (with bravado) Waddabout a one night stand?
Ern: Not with you Pandora.
Pause .
Pan: Are you happy Ern?
Ern: (laughing) Happy, who’s happy?
Pan: Whadda you want then?
Ern: I want the world.
Pan: (smiling) Is that all? Well, that isn’t
possible either is it?
Ern: No, impossible.
Pan: So what will you do?
Ern: It doesn’t seem possible to do anything.
Pan: But we survive.
Ern: Do we?
Ern turns away. Pan sits on her cushions and lays out the tarot.
Pan: (almost gaily) And here’s the angel of time
and art bestridin’ the water. A simpleton in
armour comes ridin’ a white horse, carryin’ a
banner with a white rose...
Her voice is agitated now, her hands fly over the
cards. Ern turns as if waiting for a blow.
Pan: (reluctantly) He is Death. A dog and a
wolf bay at the waxin’ moon. It has a woman’s
profile. Look behind them, a path winds between
two towers to a hilly horizon, one lightning
struck tower bursts into flames, two human
figures fall from it.
Pan & Ern stare at each other. Pan scatters the cards. Ern turns away to Mac, pours a stiff whisky. The lights begin to whirl, the fountain, rainbow-coloured to play. Goose enters, sits at piano. Fran wakes, stretches, climbs out of the car, takes her place by the fountain. Rudi and Tink (in full drag) join her, Ethel picks up her leaflets from the bar and stands near Fran. Ern sits at Mac's table drinking. The Goose strikes the opening chords of “I'm Gonna Striptease You” and Prim, transformed with glittering G string, bra, high-piled hennaed hair, gilt sandals and diaphanous robe whirls into the lights, waving her fans.
Goose: (sings) Lost her cherry on a table
to a Yank on R and R.
He said if she was able
she could be a minor star.
The Village join in, dancing and singing at the
appropriate moments.
She d be a go-go dancer,
with her platinum blonde hair,
she’d be a fancy prancer,
and he would send the fare.
All: Pasties and a G string
it’s the striptease matinee,
past the lonely tables into the light of day,
they're leavin' in their rabbit skins,
for the next matinee.
Goose: They call her Gypsy Belle,
she knows he'll never send the fare,
and when you see her standing there,
you know she's got a tale to tell...
Prim: Because you make me blue,
I'm gonna striptease you,
I’m gonna striptease,
because of what you do
I’m gonna cocktease you,
that’s what I’ll do,
I’ll striptease you.
Prim: She did a naked Go-Go,
in the Hooker Rex Hotel,
she did a porno floor show
for the local RSL.
She smiles and snaps her G string.
she’s afraid of gettin' fat,
as she bares her lovely pussy
in the Pink Pussy Cat.
All: Pasties and a G string in the striptease matinee,
past the lonely tables into the light of day,
they're leavin’ in their rabbit skins for the next
matinee.
Goose: They call her Gypsy Belle.
She knows he’ll never send the fare,
but when you see her standin' there,
you know she’s got a tale to tell...
Prim: Because you make me blue
I'm gonna striptease you.
I’m gonna striptease you,
because of what you do,
I’m gonna cocktease you,
that’s what I’ll do
I’ll striptease...you.
With a sweep o f her fan the naked Prim takes the applause. She runs off flitting her fan to the bravos of the Village. Rudi and Tink exit.
Ethel: (excited) Save the Village. Strippers
unite.
Fran: (excited) Pardon me for livin’.
The Goose pulls out postcards, pin ups and
magazines. Fran and Ethel chant their slogans
rhythmically.
Goose: Hard Core Action, Glory Hole, Love
Boys, I Found It At The Movies, Gay Sadist,
Locker Room Lovers.
Ethel: Save The Whale. Stop Rolfe Harris.
Fran: Frangipani Waterfall’s the name.
Goose: Nude slides, gay mags, rubber aids...
Pan: (standing) Here is the heel of fortune, and
the four creatures of Ezekial, Angel, Eagle, Bull
and Lion...
Ern stands, swaying on his feet, comes centre to recite.
Ern: I have lain with the Lion, not with the Virgin
And become he that discovers meanings.
Now in your honour Keats I spin the loaded zodiac.
Pan spins her crystal ball. The lights still whirl. Mac, very drunk, breaks in.
Mac: Night and water pour to one rip of
darkness
the Harbour floats on air,
the Cross hangs upside down in the water.
Goose: Macho Memories, Queens Of The
Latin Quarter, Take It Both Ways, Butt Great,
Love In The Steam Room...
Ern: (angrily) Where I have lived the bed bug
sleeps in the seam, the cockroach inhabits the
crack...
Fran: Cwack a fat or your money back!
Mac: Five Bells!
Ethel: Homes before High Rise.
Ern: (raging) Set this down too,
I have pursued rhyme, image and meter,
known all the clefts in which a foot may stick,
stumbled often, stammered...
Mac: (banging the table at Ern) Are you
shouting at me dead man,
squeezing your face in agonies of speech on
speechless panes.
Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!
Ern: (standing over Mac) Ern, Ern Malley, Ern
Malley.
Ern shakes Mac like a terrier with a rat.
Mac: (unstoppable now) But I hear nothing,
nothing, only bells, five bells,
Five bells coldly ringing out, five bells!
Ern glares down at Mac.
Pan: The high priestess has the moon at her
feet. The hanged man hangs upside down by his
ankle, hands tied behind his back.
Ern: (to Pan screaming at foot of stairs) You
spin up there like a fucking funnel web.
Ern picks up a glass of whisky and throws it in his face. Mac licks it as it dribbles down his chin .
Ethel: (enthusiastically) Home’s where the
heart is.
Ern: (in a fury) Will someone shut that stupid
cow up.
Ethel stares at Ern in horror, then, with strangled sobs, rushes upstairs and sits in her chair like a bad child, the leaflets scattering as she runs. The whirling lights fade, the fountain loses its rainbow, but a spot remains on the almost sinister, absolutely motionless figure of Pandora. Ern moves to the foot of the stairs.
Ern: (drunk & heavily sarcastic) Well, where is
it Pandora, the great Festival you talked about,
the Ern Malley Revival, the new audience you
promised me? Where are they Pandora?
Pan: (carelessly)They never turned up.
Ern: And you planned it that way didn’t you?
Pan: I didn’t plan anythin’. But I don’t care if it
happened, because I don’t mind if you suffer.
Ern: You betrayed me, out of spite.
Pan: (sending it up) Beware of those who’ve
been deceived. They’re always dangerous. They
wait, almost without knowin’ it, but they get
their revenge in the end.
Ern: You deliberately brought me back,
knowing there’d be no place for me, hoping I’d
be dependent on your loving charity.
Pan: (mocking him) Ah! Wake up Ern. Nobody
comes to the old Cross anymore. Nobody cares
about you or me or Prim or Mac or the Goose.
We’re outa fashion.
Ern: (turning away) You’ve always been
programmed for disaster.
Pan: Somebody had to teach you about failure.
Ern: Through you I seem to have lost all my
radiant world.
Pan: (angry now) And I’ve been made like
nothing by you. You never loved me.
Ern: I love whoever I’m with.
Pan: And now you’re lodged in me like a
parasite and I can never tear you out. (Pause. In
despair. ) Will I love you all my life, what’s left of
it?
Ern turns, they stare at each other .
Ern: I'm not entirely heartless, (pause) I did
almost love you once.
Pan: Why?
Ern: Because you were an artist, because I
couldn’t destroy you. Because you were like one
of those girls in a Russian story, pouring out all
her burning secrets at a touch, or a sigh, or a
glance.
Pan turns away, her back to him, visibly
affected.
Pan: I’m tired of lovin’ you Ern. I want to be rid
of you, for good.
Ern moves up a stair. Pandora drops her kimona and stands in her simple short black satin slip, barefooted.
Ern: (softly)Come down, Pandora.
Pan turns, smiles enchantingly and runs down the stairs like a girl, into his arms. They kiss, completely immersed in the kissing. Then Ern holds her away from him.
Ern: Will you be one of my girlfriends Pan?
Pan: (wryly) Which one?
Ern: The artist, the cleverest one.
Pan: (sadly moving away then back to him) I’m
not an artist’s arsehole and neither are you.
What’ve I ever done in the end but draw a few
burnin’ leopards on a pavement. We’ve been
kiddin’ ourselves, Ern Malley, all these years.
Ern grabs her shoulders, shaking her.
Ern: You’re bitching me, not like an artist, like
a woman.
Pan: I can’t separate the two.
Ern pushes her away in disgust. She looks up at him from the floor, mocking but tearful.
Pan: Do you still love me? Why do you love
me? Will you always love me?
Ern turns away, tired of it all, crosses to the bar and sits moodily on a stool. Pan picks up Tinkerbell’s discarded tiara, tries it on her tangled hair.
Pan: Look, now I ’m the queen.
She laughs, still close to tears, and hands
shaking, tries to straighten the tiara.
Pan: My crown’s awry.
She crosses to Mac on the stairs.
Mac: (tenderly) It always was.
Mac takes Pan's face in his hands.
Mac: We lived in the sky over Sydney, sleeping,
loving, arguing amongst all that glitter and
green moonlight from the neons...
Pan: They lit up your face like the demon king,
oh no, that’s wrong, that was Ern Malley.
Pan grabs Mac's arms.
Pan: Why doncha kill him Mac? I’m tired of
him hangin’ around.
She gets to her feet, and, staggering slightly, makes for the stairs. Mac rises, moves after her.
Mac: I’ll help you up the stairs.
Pan: Nobody can help me. I’m on me own now.
She moves up the stairs.
Pan: But there’s your friend over there. He needs a helpin’ hand. Help him. It’s time somebody got rid of that cold-hearted little bastard.
Mac: You’ve always been fine, alluring...and terrible to me Pandora.
Pan: Yeah, I know.
Mac: But you ruin everything you touch.
The two men watch her progress as she climbs, almost gaily now up to her attic.
Pan: Give us a bit of a tune there Goose.
The Goose starts up 'Pandora’s Cross”. Pan singing, disappears into the darkness of her attic.
Pan: (sings) The fountain and the linden tree,
molls and rape and sodomy,
Where all the lovers came across,
we lay and played at pitch and toss,
maybe it was all fairy floss,
but I get an awful sense of loss,
Pandora’s Cross.
Her voice breaks, as the Goose continues the last lines of the song. Mac crosses to the bar and Ern and Mac sitting next to each other, settle in for some heavy drinking.
Goose: (sings plays) The world will not be what
it seems
she will intuit all your dreams,
strolling where the streetlight beams,
the whores will say that love redeems
Pandora’s Cross.
Tinkling softly under the monologue the Goose
begins.
Goose: I conducted in all the great cities of the world, went dancing, lecturing, loving in Isherwood’s Berlin, climbed the one hundred Verona steps and looked south over the sea. That was where Dante wrote a good deal of his Commedia. In Venice, on the other side of the canal, there was a little workshop where they repaired the gondolas. It’s probably there still. And London, full of splendour and bad taste, with Turner’s sunsets burning up the Thames; I took breakfast in Soho every morning to watch a beautiful boy sitting with his mother, put three white sugar lumps into his Turkish coffee.
The Goose launches into the accompaniment for "I’m just a little Hooker on the Game” as Frangipanni Waterfall begins a reverie, in spot by the fountain.
Fran: I’d like a nice sugar daddy y’know. Somebody who drives a Mercedes and'd give me pocket money. I’d like the security. Sometimes I think I’ll get a straight job in a massage parlour. I’m strong y’know, like the bionic woman, but Jesus what’d I do. I’m alwiz bombed, whacked outa me head. I dwop about ten or twelve mandies a night, topple sideways and crack me head on a chair, get up agen. I got a bruise on my heart, see. Sometimes I feel real slack.
Fran: (sings, dances) I’m just a little hooker on the game,
And Fwangipanni Waterfall’s the name,
If you’ll pardon me for livin'.
I’m very good at givin’,
they tell me that I’m quite a spunky chick,
so little Jackie Horner,
you c’n meet me in the corner,
anytime you wanta dip your wick.
With a pocketfull of mandies,
and a head full of shit,
I’m a refugee from Blacktown,
if you’re lookin’ for a bit.
I’m just a little hooker on the game,
whatever you c’n pay for baby I’ve got it,
And Fwangipanni Waterfall’s the name.
I got a pitch here by the fountain,
and I listen to it play,
tell me pretty baby what’s that fountain say,
Mac and Ern: (join in) She’s just a little hooker
on the game,
and Fwangipanni Waterfall’s the name,
If you’ll pardon her for livin’.
She’s very good at givin’,
they tell her that she’s quite a spunky chick,
So little Jackie Horner
you c’n meet her on the corner,
anytime you wanta dip your wick...
Fran: I’m on the game
and Fwangipanni Waterfall’s the name...
Taking off her fur coat Fran goes behind the fountain so that she is pretty well obscured, puts her fur coat over her and, yawning, curls up to sleep. The Goose ceremoniously places coat, top hat and gloves on the top of the piano and exits right. Ern and Mac, very drunk now, continue to speak as the stage grows darker.
Mac: I have written and burned, burned, mark you, two novels (Mac rises, falls heavily, whispers ) and three hundred sonnets.
Ern: (stands) Without holy curiosity and awe, none can find the Muse.
Mac stretches out his hand.
Mac: It is enough that we once came together, what is the use of setting it to rhyme...
Ern: (swaying) It is enough that we once came together
what if the wind has turned against the rain...
Mac: (with a sob) It is enough that we once came together,
Ern: Time has seen this and will not turn again.
Ern collapses, grabbing Mac’s hand and simultaneously their heads hit the table. They both pass out. Pause and two shadowy figures enter with elaborate caution. It is Rudi and Tink (still in drag). They lurk by the fountain.
Rudi: (whispering) Them two pisspots are out to it. They won’t give no trouble. Where’s the Goose?
Tink: (giggling) Out goosin'. (He giggles).
Rudi thumps him savagely. Fran's head comes around the fountain, but withdraws quickly.
Rudi: (snarling) Shuddup fairy. Where’s the hooker?
Tink: (hurt & dignified) Prob’ly swanned on upta the Fitzroy Gardens to pick up a bit of the trade. This place is dead as a doornail. Ooh! (He giggles again, pause. ) But I don’t like it Rude. I don't like it at all.
Rudi: Ah! you wouldn’t know if your arse was on fire.
Tink: I don’t mind a bit of the graft or the standover, but I draw the line at m...
Rudi punches him in the belly and he doubles up with pain.
Rudi: Nobody cares what you draw the line at cunt. You just shut your gob and be told.
(Rudi drags Tink upright, still gasping .)
Mr Big won't like it Tinkerbell if you mess up this simple little job for him.
Tink: You’re spoilin' me hairdo Rude.
He pats his crooked wig into place. Rudi laughs, placated.
Rudi: Y’look like a moll on a holiday.
Tink: Prim’s not just any ol’ worn out pro y’know. She’s got a followin’.
Rudi: That’s why she’s gotta be stopped, see. Mr Big wants his casino right here in the heart of the Cross, and it’s not goin’ ter be fouled up by any nosey ol’ slut keepin’ dossiers on us all. Why you never know what she might turn up. There’s some big names in this business, the heads are in on this. (Pause) When it quietens down a bit we’ll go in and grab’er. Then we’ll lug ’er out front and stow ’er in the Alpha.
Tink: What if she starts in screamin’?
Rudi: She won’t never start in screamin’, babe, never agen.
(He begins daydreaming) I’ll really make the big time with this little lot Tink. I’ll be up there at last with The Boys. I’ll be a proper hit man, and they won’t never be able to put me down as jus’ any ol’ punk agen.
There is a muffled sneeze from behind the fountain.
Rudi: Wassat?
Rudi pulls out his gun, Tink takes his truncheon and together they creep on the fountain ambushing it and dragging out a terrified Fran.
Tink: Why look oo’s here Rude. It’s Pardon Me For Livin’.
Tink yanks Fran’s head back by the hair and forces her to her knees.
Tink: Funny how listeners never hear good of themselves.
Rudi stands close, staring down at her.
Rudi: Where you been hooker?
Fran: (faintly) Playin’ the pokies.
Rudi knees her in the groin. She gasps and folds up.
Rudi: Don’t lie ter me. What you hear, ay?
Fran: Nothink.
Rudi: Well, whatever you ’eard you didn't ’ear it. See?
Fran nods.
Fran: (clutching his trouser leg) Y’know me Wude. I’m no nark for the jacks.
Rudi: Yeah? You’re no what?
Fran: Nothink.
Rudi shakes his leg free, turns away.
Rudi: That’s right. An' remember, (he turns back ) You got a good memory?
Tink pulls her hair back harder. Fran tries to nod.
Rudi: Then don’t forget there’s a nice, deep, black harbour out there fulla Noahs Arks, failin’ that the garbage disposal grinds up ev’ry tiny fingernail, an’ out there on the Ansett tarmac the draught from them big jets is purrin' Frangipanni Waterfall, R I P. See!
Tink lets Fran go. She scrambles away on her hands and knees, Rudi kicking her in the rear and laughing as she crawls.
Rudi: Pissorf Hooker. Git down ter Costellos or the Crest...
Tink: Or I’ll put you in quick for vagrancy.
Rudi and Tink exit downstage left. Fran sobs quietly by the fountain, then painfully pulls herself up, trembling and terrified. She moves from side to side like a frightened rat, pops a few mandies out of her handbag, puts on her shoes, and, at last, overcomes her terror sufficiently to run crookedly across to Mac and Em. Moaning incoherently she pulls at Mac’s arm. Mac groans, mumbles, shrugs her off in his sleep. She tries Ern, whispering and tugging madly at him.
Fran: Ern, Ern, wake up, oh! for Christsakes
Ern, wake up. Ern half wakes, his eyes trying to focus.
Ern: Wassup? Wassa matter?
Fran: (whispering) It’s... Prim. They’re goin’...
ter do 'er in.
Ern: (stupidly) Do who in?
Fran: (shaking him) Prim! Croak ’er, dong er,>
dump ’er, do ’er in...
Her voice rises hysterically. Ern grips her shoulders, shaking her.
Ern: Shuddup. D’ya want to get us all hung?
Now lissen, you’re goin’ one way and I’m goin’
the other, and you never saw me tonight. Got it?
Fran: (weakly) But Prim...
At a noise off they both stand paralysed.
Ern: (whispering) Forget her. There’s nothin’
you or I can do. She’s dead already.
Ern exits quickly right while Fran runs off sobbing left, as if pursued by demons. The Easter Sunday Bells begin to ring out over the city. Mac stirs, mumbles, stretches out a hand towards Ern’s vacant place.
Mac: Ern! (A pause) Five bells!
Eyes still closed he shakes with laughter.
Mac: Ern! (Another pause) Christ is risen!
Mac still laughing falls asleep again. The Bells ring out more and more insistently. Then two dark figures enter right dragging the naked body of Primavera. Everything is in darkness except the occasional flash of Tinker bell’s sequinned skirt, or the white glow of Prim’s dead flesh. The body is crammed into the Alpha, and with Rudi steering and Tink pushing behind the car slides noiselessly away. The Easter Bells keep on ringing, wildly, all through the blackout. Then The Goose, dishevelled in flying cloak rushes onstage from the right, carrying Prim’s bloodstained pyjamas. The bells stop ringing. The Goose, centre in spot, stands as if blinded by headlights, howling.
Goose: Primavera! Primavera! Primavera!
Ethel in a short white childish nightgown and Pan in her white robe appear on the balcony, Mac wakes up, clutching the whisky bottle. The Goose stares at them.
Goose: She’s...gone.
All: Gone? Gone where? Primavera? Where?
Mac: (sobered) What’s up Goose?
Goose holds out Prim’s pyjamas dumbly.
Pan: Oh! no, no, no.
Ethel screams, and runs down the stairs, sobbing.
Ethel: Prim, Prim, Prim.
Ethel throws herself on her knees centre, burying her face in the pyjamas, rocking from side to side.
Ethel: (moaning) Everyone I love, just dies.
Enter Fran right, bruised, battered, black eyes, stumbling along.
Pan: (wildly) We’ll get the coppers. We’ll report...a missin’ person.
Her voice dies away hopelessly.
Fran: (laughing hysterically) Yeah, get the jacks, get Sergeant Tinkerbell.
Fran sinks down by the fountain, half laughing, half crying.
Mac: Did you see anything Fran?
Fran: (wary now) That’s a copper question.
Pan: (accusing) You was asleep by the fountain.
Fran: I never slept the whole bloody night. I was in the back bar of the Wex, I was at the Cwest an’ Tina’s, an’ Costellos, an’ the Wayout Bar an’ Gween Park. Ask Wudi. I screwed 'im too last night. It’s all wight for yous. You’re all on full pensions for bein’ unable ter cope wiv weality, but me. I'm just a workin’ girl.
Sitting on the edge of the fountain Fran begins to sob.
Mac: Where’s Ern? The Alpha’s gone.
Ern enters from the right and stands watching them, in full control now.
Ern: You can stop lookin’. Its all over the Cross tonight. They’ve taken 'er away.
Pan: Taken her where?
Ern: Taken her for a ride, and who knows where. Who’d wanta know. If you wanta die you mess with them big babies, if you wanta stay alive you play it cool. And I'm committed now, I’m not goin’ to let anyone get in the way. I know how good and dangerous it is just to be alive.
The Village stares a Ern. Fran still sobs under the fountain.
Ern: (savagely) Shuddup you!
Ethel: (sadly) Oh Ern you was once such a nice, good boy...
Ern:
(coming centre)
And you think I should’ve walked
the plank for a gabby ol’ pro who wanted to
die to change the world. Not me, not Ern Malley.
(To Pan) We’re
all on our own now. Only
sometimes, crawlin’ out of our holes feelin a
bit lonely, lookin’ for someone, we call it love. It’s
not love. Nobody loves anybody.
I love whoever
I’m fucking.
Mac: And what about the Village?
Ern: The Village, the Village! Screw the bloody Village! You save it Galahad. You’re inter this nostalgia trip, but not me, I got no nostalgia left to spare. (Ern waves his arms around the Village .) It was your bloody Village did her in. The shit hit the fan, and all you pious do-gooders and stay-putters, you murdered Prim.
Goose: (moaning) Primavera! Printemps! Spring!
Pan: (softly) There’s a beast let loose in the Village and we must hunt him down.
Ern: Ah! I’m goin’ down to the Texas Town an’ Country Tavern to tune in on Emmy Lou Harris and the Hot Band.
Ern flings out past the fountain, then hesitates, his back to them all.
Pan: (spreading out her arms) My old powers are returnin’.
Fran: An’ about bloody time too.
Pan: The fire’s dyin’ down and it’s all over Ern. All that lovely rompin’ with the devil on darkened heaths. Every god must die. His death is foreseen and not resented. He’ll rise from the dead again in his own or some other form, but for life to continue we need a death as well as a birth. It’s death I’m bargainin’ with tonight.
Ern turns, stares up at her, hesitates, and is lost.
Pan: I need all the power I can raise tonight. She stands in the full goddess position, feet astride, eyes closed, arms outstretched.
Pan: (petulantly) Its the dark side of the moon, Goose. You know I can’t work on the dark side of the moon.
The Goose rises and moves up the stairway to Pan, and stands behind her, his black cloak held out like giant wings.
Goose: Dread Lord of Shadows, god of life and giver of life, yet is the knowledge of thee, the knowledge of death. Open wide the gates through which all must pass. Let those who have gone before return this night that we may meet and know and remember.
The muffled sobbing of Ethel crouched over Prim’s pyjamas punctuates the incantation. Mac sits at his table staring at nothing, Fran sits hunched by the fountain, Ern stands in the shadows like a ghost. There is a total blackout. A high sweet flute plays offstage, as the cut-out cardboard images of Mac, Pan, Goose, Prim, Ethel, Ern, Fran, Tink and Rudi are placed by The Village on each step of the moving staircase. During the whole of this scene the cutout figures continually move like ghostly dualities on the escalator, and the dummy of Mac is placed at his table.
Goose: The naked and the blind hear nothing, but the tread of bare feet, the clink of the knife, the smell of the incense.
Pan: (chanting) Queen of Heaven, Queen of Hell,
Horned Hunter of the Night
lend your power unto my spell
by all the night of moon and sun
as I do well so must it be.
All: (chanting) Choose the spell and let it be.
A dim blue light suffuses the stage. Pandora in her white robe and tiara stands in the goddess position, arms and legs outstretched. The Goose stands behind her, arms folded in the God position over his breast. The candles burn and flutter behind them. The flute music dies away. Em barefooted, blindfolded, in his white silk shirt and velvet trousers stands in front of the fountain, splashing him with blue light. Ethel and Fran stand with bowed heads at the bottom of the stairs waiting. Mac's dummy sits at his table, and at the piano a second Goose, in top hat and tails and white gloves, waits for his cue.
Pan: I consecrate this ground, yet even as I stand inside he dwells outside this circle with his secret seed, his seed of flesh, his seed of stars. Therefore the wise rejoice. Call up the death.
Goose: Who is the questioner?
Pan: The Jack of swords.
Ethel and Fran move to Ern like zombies and bring him to the staircase.
Pan: I give you leave to come into the circle and I kneel to welcome you.
Ethel kneels at the staircase foot, Pan kneels at the top of the stairs, the Goose behind her. Fran guides the blindfolded Ern up the staircase to confront Pandora, then she is given a candle by The Goose and stands at his left hand.
Pan: (to Ern) Are you willin' to suffer and to learn?
Ern: I am.
Pan: (with gaiety) Then I kiss you wherever you choose, and I lie with death tonight.
Pan gives Ern the fivefold kiss of love and death, kissing each foot, each knee, just above his pubic hair, on his breast and his mouth. She tears off his blindfold and they stand, feet to feet, breast to breast, lip to lip. The Goose places the ceremonial sword between their bodies.
Goose: (chanting)) Ern be sharp, Pandora bright
thread of Venus bind them tight
sun by day, moon by night
bring them hourly new delight.
Metaphorically tearing up the script Ern turns deliberately masking Pandora and the Goose. He is powerful and challenging now, no longer the stripling, the playboy, the poet-devil, but nearer to Dionysias. He stretches out his arms over the Village.
Ern: (gaily) It’s the moment of truth mes enfants. Look in my eyes. The tables turn, and I’m the glass man who reflects you all, the whole Village existing only to end up in my book. All of you, Ern Malley’s grotesque children. The story’s over and what do you think of that Mac Greene?
Mac in his Goose disguise swings round on the piano stool and shoots Ern. Ern cries out once, topples, rolling down the staircase clutching at the cardboard figures as he falls, overturning them like a deck of cards. He lands at Ethel’s feet. Ethel gives a wild cry and cradles Em’s head on her lap. Mac stands staring at Em, the revolver in his hand, the other clutching his own heart.
Pan: (powerfully) Seal the gate!
Ern: (defiantly) That’s twice...you've wiped me
out...Mac.
Mac: I owe the devil a death.
Ern: (half-raising his head) We may not again this time round Pandora, but next time, keep that old appointment with me.
Pan: You’ll always be too late.
Quietly Ern dies. Pan, struggling for control.
Pan: I wish I could bless you Ern. I wish I could.
Ethel: He’s gone.
Pan: He expected it.
Mac: And now you’re a cold, sweet, sickly, stinking corpse Ern Malley.
Ceremoniously the men pick up Ern’s body and in a slow funeral march to the beat of a drum Ern is carried offstage followed by Fran and with head bowed, like a chief mourner, Pandora. The Village circle the stage and exit, leaving Ethel centre, alone, stricken, still on her knees. She looks up, addressing the audience, sadly.
Ethel: Ern never said nothin’ about writin’ poetry. He was very ill before his death last March, and it may have affected his outlook. He was always a bit pasty. I enclose a 2‘/ 2d stamp… and oblige.
(Ethel’s voice wavers, she continues in a whisper.) Yours sincerely ... Ethel Malley.
(In her white nightgown Ethel rises,
takes a globate suitcase from behind the bar and begins to sing as she exits.)
Oh! do not tell the priest of our art
For he could call it sin.
But we will be in the woods all night
Aconjurin’ summer in...
Ethel disappears into limbo carrying her suitcase to the music of her conjuring song. Dawn is breaking, sparrows twitter, a currawong gives its harsh cry. The jackhammers begin on the city skyline. In the pale light The Goose enters, places his top hat and gloves on top of the piano, and sits, stretching his fingers, preparing to play. Mac goes to his table, looking hung over, Fran takes up her usual position on the corner, Pandora moves gracefully up the stairs in her white robe, yawning and stretching theatrically. She leans over the balcony, scratching the calf of her leg with her big toe. Goose begins to vamp softly.
Goose: I imagine one day I’ll leave for Venice, fall asleep to the lapping of the canals, wake up to the bells of St Mark, and think I’m in heaven.
Sunlight fills the Village. Rudi and Tink (in uniform) enter carrying life-size classical fibreglass figures of Ern and Primavera. Ern is bent on one knee and naked, Primavera wears pasties and G-string. Rudi and Tink set the statues in place beside the fountain, Ern gazing Narcissus-style in the fountain pool, Prim as centrepiece with upthrust breasts.
Tink: Be careful with his privates.
Rudi: And don’t knock ’er tit orf. Prim alwaysdid have a great pair of knockers.
Tink: Credit to the municipality.
Pan: Ah! Well I still got me cats.
(She leans out over the balcony calling themdown from the rooftops.) Puss, puss, puss.
(elaborate pause as Tink and Rude take up theirpositions stiffly on either side of the fountain)
Feel like a tia maria Rude?
Smiling Rudi begins to move up the staircase to Pandora’s attic. Mac pours himself another glass of meth.
Mac:
Three streets cross at the top of William Street
with their resident ghosts; Chris Brennanin
Rockwell Crescent, Mary Gilmore inDarlinghurst
Road, Ken Slessor in WilliamStreet,
Ern and Ethel and Primavera in theVillage.
There’s a few changes, but the Crossabsorbs
us, the dead and the living. We survive.
Pan:
Dulcie Deamer cornin’ home in herleopard
skin from the Artists’ Ball...
Rudi: (grinning) Darcy Dougan at the WaysideChapel...
Tink: Bea Miles in her tennis shorts...
Fran: Frangipanni Waterfall by the fountain...
The lights fade, the voices die away. Only a spot stays on The Goose. The city sounds envelop him at his piano; car horns, fire alarm, police siren, an ambulance wailing, the rumble of the demolition squads. As the sounds die away The Goose begins “The Pyjama Girl Rag" and the others exit quietly.
Goose: (sings/plays) They call her the Pyjama Girl
she does the twist, she does the twirl,
she takes her clothes off one by one,
gyrates her hips and grinds her bum,
she does the strip for everyone...
the Pyjama Girl.
Before the patrons of the Cross
she counts the profits and the loss,
and when the lights begin to zing,
she starts to take off everything
the Pyjama Girl.
The Goose rises from the piano and begins to exit.
Goose: Then with a glitter and a glow,
she waves her hand, she has to go,
the neons fade, the lights go down
she lays aside her gilded crown.
Standing at the exit at the top of the stairs the only light on The Goose illuminates his sad clown’s face.
And calls a cab for out of town,
the Pyjama Girl.
The Goose exits. The fountain begins to play, and the last light leaves the statues of Ern and Primavera.
------------------
NOTES
Quotes used:
1. Frederico Garcia Lorca
2. Kenneth Slessor
3. Ern Malley
4. Ezra Pound
Song: “Rudi Roderiga Song” — lyrics by Merv Lilley
Song: “The Green Ban Song” — lyrics by
Shamus Gill, Dennis Kevans, Merv Lilley,
Dorothy Hewett
End of Play
---------------------------------
Publications
Hewett, Dorothy, Pandora’s Cross – a musical play by Dorothy Hewett with music by Ralph Tyrell, Paris Theatre, Sydney, 29 July 1978, 1 folded sheet (6p.). Program.
-----, Pandora’s Cross [script], Theatre Australia, Sydney, September – October 1978.
-----, Pandora’s Cross, International Theatre Institute / Centre hongrois de l”I.I.T., Magyar Kozpont, Budapest, 1979, 106p.
-----, The Man from Mukinupin, Currency Press, Sydney, 2011.
Kilby, Jordie, The dawning of the age of rock musicals and pop operas in Australia, ABC Radio National, 15 February 2015.
McCallum, John, Belonging: Australian Playwriting in the 20th Century, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2009.
Archives
* Paris Theatre Performing Group Ltd. aka The Paris Company, 1978, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, ML MSS 6964/Box 1X. Includes the following: Video recordings. Pandora's Cross, by Dorothy Hewett. 6 U-matic, 1 VHS. (Call No.: VT 938 - VT 944).
* Tivoli Theatre shows and artists : collection of photographs, ca. 1928-1978, State Library of New South Wales, PXA 808. Item 121 - John Paramor who plays a copper with a difference in "Pandora's Cross" [Paris Theatre] / Branco Gaica; Items 122-150. ["Pandora's Cross" with Robyn Nevin (nos.122,127,128), Steve J. Spears (nos.124, 131), Neil Redfern (nos.123), John Gaden (no.124), Jon Paramor (nos.121,123-125), Julie McGregor (nos.125-126), Brian Thomson (no.134), Arthur Dignam (no.133), Geraldine Turner (no.130) (see program in the Ephemera collection under "Paris House")] / Branco Gaica.
------------------------
Newspaper & magazine notices and reviews
* Jill Sykes, Producers resign over Old Tote changes, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1977. Jim Sharman and Rex Cramphorn withdrew yesterday from the Old Tote Theatre Company's 1978 season. They were to have been two of the four artistic directors taking over next week from the outgoing artistic director, William Redmond. But last week the Old Tote announced that the combined Cramphorn - Sharman responsibility — a season of five contemporary plays at the Seymour Centre — had to be cancelled. The company hoped to present the plays in their usual venues later in the year. In a letter delivered yesterday to the president of the Old Tote, Mr Dale Turnbull, Mr Sharman and Mr Cramphorn wrote: "ln May of this year, at the invitation of Robert Quentin (vice-president), we presented a proposal to use the Seymour Centre as a contemporary arts centre, combining performances of new plays, modern dance, one-off contemporary music and rock concerts and film. This was considered, rejected on economic grounds and, a compromise, a season of five plays to be presented in the Seymour Centre's York Theatre in the first half of 1978 was agreed on. "This has now been reduced, on economic, grounds, to the presentation of two of the plays in unrelated productions, in conventional venues, in the second part of the year. This final revision has eroded the original conception to a point where to accept it would be to embrace the status quo we so enthusiastically set out to change. In retrospect, and particularly in light of the face-saving press statements of the last week, we feel our names and reputations have been used from the beginning of the Seymour season planning to elicit public interest and funding without a genuine commitment to the idea of the season and without the means to present it. We wish to terminate our involvement with your organisation." Mr Turnbull denied the accusation yesterday. He said the company was still hoping to present all five plays, not two — the number quoted in the letter. He said that as he had received the news from Messrs Sharman and Cramphorn only a few hours before, it was too early to comment on the future of the five plays: Pandora's Cross by Dorothy Hewett, Angel City by Sam Shephard, Visions by Louis Nowra, The Fool by Edward Bond and A Cheery Soul by Patrick White. "We will have to look afresh at the situation," Mr Turnbull said. Jim Sharman said yesterday that the original idea — a far more radical one — had involved much more than putting on plays. It had been an alternative way of thinking about how theatre could be presented. "But it has finished up as the same old thing — business as usual," he said. "Finally, we realised the situation was untenable. Our plays would have been the left-overs after the main course." He and Rex Cramphorn are considering the idea of "creating a situation that is more sympathetic to the kind of theatre we envisage," going back independently to their original, multi-faceted plans. Mr Sharman has been directing plays for the Old Tote since 1968. This year his productions of The Season at Sarsparilla and Big Toys were two of the company's biggest drawcards. He resents what he feels is an apologetic approach by the company to the five plays he chose, in the way they are referred to as experimental and innovative. "So far as I am concerned, there is nothing experimental about them," he said. "I think that Sam Shephard has a fair idea of what he is doing, that Patrick White, Dorothy Hewett, Louis Nowra and Edward Bond might have a bit of an idea what they are doing as well. I think the only people who were experimenting were the members of the board of the Old Tote."
* Plays for today from new theatre, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 March 1978. Plays for today from new theatre - A group of Australian actors, directors and designers have formed a theatre group to "tell the story of our times." The "all-star ensemble," as the group described itself yesterday, intends to tell the story through performances at the Paris Theatre, Liverpool Street. Announcing the formation of the Paris Company at a press conference in the theatre, author Patrick White and the group's artistic managers, Rex Cramphorn and Jim Sharman, declared the "longed-for" birth of a totally independent acting company had come. The first performances of the group will be financed from gifts and all wages will be kept to a minimum. The company members have agreed to forgo wages during the four-week rehearsals for the first production as "a mark of enthusiasm." Foundation members of the company include Kate Fitzpatrick, Julie McGregor, Jennifer Claire, Arthur Dignam, Robyn Nevin, John Gaden, Neil Redfern and Bryan Brown. They will open at the Paris Theatre on June 15 with a season of Pandora's Cross, a musical play by Dorothy Hewett. The play is one of the "stories of our times" the group wants to tell. Pandora's Cross deals with King's Cross and contains all the elements of the nightlife, Bohemian attitudes and crime that could be found there.
* Who’s doing what, Filmnews, 1 April 1978. A group of directors and actors have formed the Paris Company, and will lease the Paris Cinema from the City Council to present top Australian talent in top Australian plays. Jim Sharman and Rex Cramphorn will direct, with actors including Arthur Dignam, John Gaden, Kate Fitzpatrick, Robin Nevin and Bryan Brown. Their first production will be Dorothy Hewitt's play, Pandora's Cross, with Patrick White's A Cheery Soul to follow.
* Paris Theatre Company fundraiser, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 April 1978. Photograph of Martin Sharp taking a portrait of Jennifer Claire, along with a note regarding fund raising activities for the Paris Theatre group.
* Who’s doing what, Filmnews, 1 June 1978. Elizabeth Knight is the administrator for the Paris Theatre Company, which is now in rehearsal for their first production, Pandora's Cross, by Dorothy Hewett, which will open the new venture at the Paris Theatre on June 29. Steve Spears, just back from London where The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin is having a successful run, has decided that some acting will help him relax for a while, and has joined the cast of Pandora's Cross. His new play, The Death of George Reeves, may have an off-off-Broadway production' soon. (George Reeves played Superman in the original TV series.)
* Cross live to the Paris, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 1978 - The first fruits of the Paris Company, formed in March to present plays at the Paris Theatre, will be seen late this month with the opening of Pandora's Cross. Jim Sharman, director of hit shows such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, the Rocky Horror Show and also the new Patrick While film The Night the Prowler, is a principal of the Paris Company. He has directed Pandora's Cross, a play by the Australian writer Dorothy Hewett. The cast includes John Gaden, Jennifer Claire, Robyn Nevin, Neil Redfern, Geraldine Turner, Steve J. Spears and Arthur Dignam. Ralph Tyrrell has written the music. Pandora's Cross brings together people and incidents from the Cross's history, mixing pub humour and songs with romance. It opens on June 29.
* Katharine Brisbane, An act of faith, Weekend Australian, 24 June 1978
* Jill Sykes, Romantic about supermarkets, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 June 1978. Story on set designer Brian Thomson.
* [29 June – premiere of Pandora’s Cross]
* H. G. Kippax, Air throbs with high hopes at first show, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July 1978
* Grand opening—and no glitter, Sun Herald, 3 July 1978
* Jill Neville, Cross hard to bear, The Australian, 3 July 1978
* Taffy Davies, That Bohemian Cross Recalled, The Sun (NSW), 3 July 1978
* C. Dance, Pandora's Cross - Paris Theatre, Campsie News and Lakemba Advance, 5 July 1978
* Norman Kessell, Pandora's cross not one out of the box, Daily Telegraph, 5 July 1978
* Slasher at the cross, Daily Mirror, 6 July 1978
* Jon Fogarty, New life for the old Paris, The Manly Daily, 7 July 1978
* Ken Healy, Giants of old Kings Cross don’t quite come back, The Canberra Times, 9 July 1978. If 'Pandora's Cross', which I saw last Monday night in Sydney, had been just another play by Dorothy Hewett, I should have simply reported, sadly, that the play has too much superficial dialogue passing for talk, too little of the outrageous theatricality which we applauded in 'Joan', and is under-using some of Australia's finest actors by casting them neither as people nor as giants. But this play is the first fruit of a new company, nourished by an idealism so bright that no one took any salary during the rehearsal period. What is more, Sydney needs a fresh company employing the best talent available, because the Old Tote has sunk into a financial and artistic morass from which it may never arise. No one who has ever thrilled to a sight or a sound across a footlight can wish the Paris Company anything apart from a painless birth, a dashing adolescence, and a glowing maturity. If the company's birth with 'Pandora's Cross' has been painless one can only thank the numbing kindness of shock which shields us from too much pain. Unfortunately, theatrical Sydney awaited this opening as if it were a Glorious Coming, so much does the city and the profession need success from the matchless talents of Jim Sharman, John Gaden, Robyn Nevin, Arthur Dignam, Brian Thomson and their colleagues. The Pandora of the play's title resembles that famous 'witch' of Kings Cross, Rosalie Norton. This character is virtually the only one in the play who is based on a single person. Among the others is an ex-stripper who combines elements of Juanita Nielson and the Pyjama Girl with others less remarkable. There is a prototype of a broken-down hooker, a cop who is on the take and into dressing in drag, a bully boy employed by Mr Big, and finally two non-people created by a pathetic drunken writer. The creations are Ern Malley and his sister Ethel. Ern turns out to be a bore. In case I am giving the impression that this is anything but an exciting 'dramatis personae', I must hasten to say that the scenario is full of promise. And that there is a good deal of fulfilment - intermittently. Ralph Tyrell's songs, while derivative and in need of an up tempo number before interval, are evocative. They also provide vehicles for Hewett's wonderful lyrics. I especially liked the cop in drag, (John Paramor) singing 'I'm just a pig in a wig', and the reminiscence of Steve J. Spears as the hoodlum who had been a toecutter for the painters and dockers. If the Australia of the past thirty years has a seamy period, the scam of which was laden with pure theatrical gold, then it was Kings Cross from the 40s until now. But Dotty Hewett, herself our most colourful personality among poets and playwrights, and so wonderfully described once by Bob Ellis as 'the Ma Kettle of Australian theatre', has failed to write the block-busting entertainment that she has within her. At its best the play is a poem rhapsodising the shades of the giants who once inhabited the Cross. Too often the rhapsody is marred by exchanges of short sentences containing superficial reminiscences. Director Jim Sharman seems to do his best work when his characters are larger than life; witness his magic touch with 'Superstar' and 'This Rocky Horror Show'. The Judas-type who should dominate the play is Ern Malley, historically no more real than a literary hoax, but transformed by Hewett into a cold pragmatist. But Malley achieves neither an heroic action nor a memorable escape as the developers move in to reclaim Pandora's Cross. The struggle fizzles out for want of focus; Malley the anti-hero is irritating instead of shocking and Pandora herself continues as nothing more than a bystander. I believe that there were giants inhabiting the Cross in those days. Giants and Heroes. And Dorothy Hewett has tried to recapture the days of their glory. She has succeeded only in peopling the stage with ill-defined figures and disappointing all of us who have such high hopes for the Paris Company. Incidentally, the towering strengths of the company inside the designing talent of Brian Thomson who has made a three-storey proscenium opening without wings look like an inspired piece of junk-stained glass; the diminutive Robyn Nevin whose presence as she sat primly as Ethel Malley yielded only to the power of her maidenly walk; Geraldine Turner belting out songs with the megawatts of power that her well-stacked stripper's figure generates; Arthur Dignam sitting high in the tall set, a ghoulish pianist in tattered tailcoat; and Julie McGregor encompassing within her skinny frame all the dumb streetwalkers of the Cross. It is a major disaster for this young company that such an array of talent should have come together in a performance which is only a tiny fraction of the sum of its considerable parts.
* David Marr, Dull theatre, beautifully boxed, The National Times, 10 July 1978.
* Pandora’s Cross [Advertisement], Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1978 - Last 2 weeks - The Paris Company. PANDORA'S CROSS - "Thumping brassy theatrical numbers . . . brilliant cast . . gloriously funny . . . Jim Sharman's production glitters with bravura." H. G. Kippax. S.M.H. "Everyone In the show has a stunning scene and Its these that make the show worth the visit . . . Arthur Dignam as the porno musician . . . stole the snow every time he opened his mouth . . . Julie McGregor as the hooker . . . bowled the house over with every phrase." Errol Bray. Nation Review. "A tender uproarious nocturne to a King's Cross forever dying and forever reborn." Bob Ellis. Theatre Australia. $5.50 and S7.50 (Students. Pensioners, Mon.-Thurs., $3). Nightly 8.00 p.m. and Sat. Mat. 2.00 p.m. - Book now 61 9193 or agencies. Paris Theatre, 205 Liverpool Street (opp. Hyde Park).
* H.G. Kippax, Pandora's Cross revisited, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 1978. The Paris Theatre invited me to take a second look at Pandora's Cross following cuts and other remedial action after the first night. I was happy to go. Though as unenthusiastic as most about the script, I felt that its pleasingly insidious score, good singing and acting, and vivid production had been undervalued. My second visit confirmed that impression. Moreover, quite radical cutting, especially at the end, has improved the script. It now has shape, a discernible direction, fashioned and an acceptable sentimental ending. Longuers remain, but the cuts highlight the virtues — good one-liner laughs ("It's an avant-garde world"); surprising zaniness (Ethel Malley's weirdly funny fantasy about Doris Day and Peter Loire); relish for eccentricity. The acting, always entertaining, is larger and more relaxed, more confident, commanding. Miss Jennifer Claire, Miss Robyn Nevin and Mr John Gaden — to name three much admired members of a brilliant cast — are now right on top of their material, making it work for them. That kind of devoted creativity is alone worth the money. The show did not have a good reception; it goes off at the end of the month. For all that, theatre buffs should not miss it. Certainly, Saturday night's audience seemed to enjoy itself. As I did.
* Barry Lowe, Pandora is not for everyone, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate, 21 July 1978
* Marcus Mann, Pandora’s Cross, Tharunka, 24 July 1978. Pandora's Cross - The Paris Theatre Company is a new company which embraces some fine talents and professes the noble and admirable wish to "bring exciting new Australian theatrical entertainment to Sydney". If their first effort, "Pandora's Cross" by Dorothy Hewett is an indication of the fare audiences can expect then the Paris theatre Company is doomed. The play explores the lives of nine characters from the "golden days" of Kings Cross. The plot is simple and consists of a series of episodes around the theme of a past era and the people in it crumbling in the path of inevitable "progress". In a last desperate ploy to stem the tide, Pandora, with Witch of the Cross (Jennifer Claire), regresses to the past by conjuring up Ern Malley, a poet and her idol, accompanied by his sister Ethel. This feat is made all the more extraordinary by the fact that Ern and Ethel were the imaginative creations of Maclyreen (John Gaden), a drunk with delusions of poetry. Ern Malley (Neil Redfern) is no help at all. An ageing, ex-stripper, Primavera (Geraldine Turner), makes an abortive attempt to resist but finally the agents of MR BIG; Rudi (Steve J. Spears), a young tough and Sergeant Tinkerbell (John Paramor), a transvestite policeman, triumph and "The Village" is lost. All that remains is to kill off Ern and Ethel and flee to the Western Suburbs. The standard of performances varied a great deal but generally the production lacked energy and drive. The play meandered along and any sense of impending doom or approaching climax was completely lost. The one bright spot in the cast was Arthur Dignam. His performances as "Goose", an ancient, eccentric and dilapidated musician was sustained and interesting. His characterisation captured, with great sensitivity, the fragile dignity and mild disdain for life of a once-great man. Because: of the very shallow stage the set went the only way it could UP. The designer, Brian Thompson managed to make the most of it, using up to six different acting levels and a catwalk around the orchestra pit. But the use of a curtain across lower stage during some numbers was unnecessary and was a distraction. "Pandora's Cross" exemplifies Dorothy Hewett's style. The play paints its picture in brilliant colours and bold brush strokes, using every opportunity for unabashed theatricality. The characters are larger than life. It is a style of theatre long known and long accepted. Unfortunately for Miss Hewett, it is one which is not in fashion in Australia. "Pandora's Cross" is now on at the Paris Theatre, 205 Liverpool St. The show starts at 8pm and finishes at about 10.30pm. The tickets at $5.50 and $7.50 may be cheaper than some "commercial theatres" but the fact that there is no student concession is a false economy which will not endear them to the youth. If you are a made Dorothy Hewett fan, as I am, or you are interested in seeing drama which operates on conventions which are different to "commercial theatre", then go and see "Pandora's Cross". However, if you are after a pleasant night of light dramatic entertainment and have no academic interest- in drama, then put "Pandora's Cross" at the bottom of your list. Marcus Mann.
* Bad box office, The National Times, 29 July 1978
* Dorothy Hewett, Playwright, The Australian, 12 August 1978
* Bob Ellis, Pandora’s Cross, Theatre Australia, August 1978.
Legend of Ern Malley - PANDORA’S CROSS
Pandora’s Cross by Dorothy Hewett. Paris Theatre Company. Paris Theatre. Sydney NSW. Opened 29 June 1978.
Director. Jim Sharman; Designer. Brian Thomson;
Costumes, Luciana Arrighi; Lighting. Bill Walker; Musical Director. Roy Ritchie; Choreography. Graham Watson; Stage Manager. Bill Walker.
Band: Piano, Steve Doran; Bass. David Ellis; Sax, Geoft Oaks; Guitar. Ned Sutherland; Drums, John Swanton.
The Goose, Arthur Dignam; Pandora. Jennifer Claire; Mac Greene, John Gaden; Frangipanni Waterfall, Julie McGregor; Sergeant Tinkerbell. John Paramor; Primavera, Geraldine Turner; Rudi, Steve J Spears; Ethel Malley, Robyn Nevin; Ern Malley, Neil Redfern.
Pandora’s Cross, Dorothy Hewett’s tender, uproarious nocturne to a Kings Cross forever dying and forever reborn, at long last gives to Sydney what London, New York and Paris have always had (and have always hymned on stage and screen), an urban mythology. Men must have legends, wrote Les Murray, else they will die of strangeness; and to this myth starved metropolis Dottie with her usual Chaucerian generosity has bequeathed a subterranean dreamscape all our citizenry know by heart. Taxi driver and barrowman, barman and bookie know it well, and join in the lunar chorus easily, as bushmen without a quibble resound to Henry Lawson. Only the intelligentsia seem to have missed the point and called this wonderful evening scrappy and formless and even tasteless. They would have called Under Milkwood a silly chaotic attack on a valuable fishing port, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream bad Athenian history. The intelligentsia can go fuck themselves. Pandora’s Cross, its music and its uproarious characters, will long survive their petty footnotes, and dance the tango on their forgotten graves. The story (though story is not quite the point) concerns a number of once prominent Satanist bohemians remembering better days, and the developers’ efforts to replace their dreams with high-rise buildings. Out of the mind of one of them, Mac Greene the shabby novelist (John Gaden) long dipped in the bottle, comes his famous creation Ern Malley, the great Australian soldier-poet who never was (Neil Redfern) to save them from their doom, but Ern like all of us is more corruptible these days and goes off chasing sex instead of resisting the multinational invader and their save operation falls into a melancholy autumnal shambles: the old dreams grow, and engulf them, until they are no more; the Cross absorbs them all. Even them, the grubby titans, the special tawdry circle round Pandora the witch (Jennie Claire) whose funnel web of fading lust unites them till the end. And they did cut fine figures in their day (porn peddling, poeticising, painting panthers ravishing women on the pavement) and on those long-reiterated nights when it was their night to howl. They lived out homerically (or their Pymble visions of homerically) their innocent horny ideals of Art, Free Love, Free Though and so on, making, in the words of Goose the decaying Prospero (Arthur Dignam) perched high like Poe’s raven among light bulbs and cruel iron scaffolding lugubriously crooning at his cracked piano, a modest contribution to the culture of their city (in his case filthy postcards and intimate rubber goods), but all to what end? The nearing sound of Mr Big’s jackhammers. A long rippling sojourn at the harbour’s bottom in cement boots courtesy Rudi, the great m an ’s eager sadistic disciple (Steve J Spears, typecast again). Banishment in perpetuity to Mount Druitt of all places, along with other wartime refugees. “Mount Druitt!” shrieks Primavera (Geraldine Turner), the sturdy stripper and good lapsed Catholic in one of the play’s more brilliant illuminations. “What the fuck would we do in Mount fucking Druitt?” Jim Sharman’s production, witty and moon-drawn, and by the third performance smoothed of all its first night wrinkles (all, that is, except Arthur Dignam’s electrifying dries, by now a traditional feature of the Sydney stage) is in my view the only thoroughly good production yet seen of a Dorothy Hewett play. Hung precipitously from Brian Thompson’s vertical Byzantine set (a breathtaking solution in girders, neon and lonely bedsitters to the problem of a tiny stage), the beautifully orchestrated cast, like saints in a stained-glass window, between them create a glowing sonata to a city and its people. From so much incidental genius on the one small stage, all of them here, athwart their chosen Paris barricade, acting their socks and other extremities off in the name of the workers’ revolution, the breaking of the oligarchies and the ruin of the Tote, it is difficult to pick. Dignam and Gaden purr smoothly in as usual, twelve feet in altitude above most male performers of their generation (though Gaden, who based his methylated writer on me, had better bloody watch it), and Steve J Spear, the multinational Sunday playwright, proves abrasive, spunky and menacing as a provincial Sunday actor. About Jennie Claire’s Pandora, however I am somewhat undecided. Her darkling maternal carnality I fear I have suffered before, and when, as a devil-summoning witch, she should have chilled the blood and made each individual hair start up like quills on the fretful porpentine, she merely seemed a corpulent spinster with a quaint hobby; and yet her warmth and her blooming sorrow abide in the memory, and unlike all recent Dottie surrogates she out-Hewetts Hewett in the now obligatory earth-mothering chore. As Tinkerbell the transvestite walloper John Paramor, the original O’Malley, alternately radiant in a Harlow wig and huskily snide in a cap and truncheon, shows courage, taste and dramatic precision beyond the call of constabulary duty; and Neil Redfern, as a milksoppy Ern Malley, is in good brash voice b u t consummately miscast in a role both unplayable and underwritten; one becomes bored rigid after the first half hour with a plaintive puppet upbraiding his creator for creating him in the first place, and sulkily refusing one night stands to anything that moves. Geraldine Turner, on the other hand, who gave profound pause to several convinced homosexuals on the opening night with her ostrich-feather strip, has precisely that combination of qualities (dignity, vulgarity and enormous breasts) that should assure her place as a great lady of the Australian musical stage, if such a glory still exists in the gloomy nineteen nineties. It should. It must. For too long have we laboured in the sub-Williamson quagmire of bickery naturalism with casts of three in dingy rooms, on the stupid premise that this made more commercial sense than song, soliloquy and supernaturality (in short, theatricality) in an age of dwindling salaries and colour television. From O’Malley then to Ern Malley now, and back to Brecht and Shakespeare and music hall and beyond, it is clear that what people will come out on a cold night to see is theatre and nothing less . . . and theatre to them is a lot of actors on a big stage doing clever things to music they can hum on the way home in the car; like Ralph Tyrrell’s intermittently lovely music on this particular evening, at least one song of which, the elegiac “ Jack of Hearts” at the end of Act One, which should stand as Dottie’s epitaph, would in a slightly better world have achieved that place on the jukebox now bestraddled by Leonard Cohen. The honours of the evening, however, go to two ladies. Robin Nevin, as Ethel Malley, E M ’s constricted suburban sister forever quivering on the verge of radiant beauty and triumphant incest, once again, as she did in Season at Sarsparilla, creates and defines an archetype so truly that we feel we have known her all our lives. But best of all is Julie MacGregor as the scrubby little hooker Frangipanni Waterfall (“crack a fat or your money back”) whose profession reeks from every creak in her ill-used body and croak in her infantile voice. Her Lilliputian tragedy, her stupidity and her poignancy are conveyed with such exactitude and such poetic uproarious brevity it takes the breath away. . . . It might be appropriate to say one more thing. It is this. La Hewett, who is in no way inferior to Shakespeare in her breadth of vision, her verbal facility and her insights into character, does in fact lack one ability that the overpraised old hack was long on. This is the ability to knit things together so they seem (only seem) to both begin and end. To this long lack in herself she should devote some study, and rather less paranoia. May I direct her attention to that other great poet of the Australian theatre, just down the road, Barry Humphries, to see some part of how it is done. With that small reservation however (and it is a small one), go see it. Beat a path through broken bottles to its door. Australia needs you.
* Don Groves, Geraldine [Turner] Steps into the Future, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1978. …. She played a former stripper in Pandora's Cross, a play staged by the now-defunct Paris Company. That was another case, she said, of having a good cast and a script that needed rewriting.
* H.G. Kippax, Retrospective, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 December 1978. ….. 1978 saw the idealistic, very talented Paris Company come and go under Jim Sharman and Rex Cramphorn. Alas, entrepreneurial judgment did not match artistic idealism. Its first play, Pandora's Cross, was dramatically inert and could not be saved even by Sharman's bravura. The second, Visions, by Louis Nowra, was good — the best new Australian play of the year — but needed, for its realisation, stage resources far beyond the theatre's capacity.
* Commercial TV turns Arthur [Dignam] off, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 1979. …. He was a founder member of the Paris Company, which crashed after two productions. "It just wasn't right," he said, - "and I was happy to call it quits. We really could not cope with the venue and we pretended to be a rich theatre when we were a very poor theatre. 'The actors were paid very little, yet the set for Pandora's Cross cost $16,000."
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The abuse of Kate & Rozanna Lilley | Pandora's Cross 1978
Last updated: 14 June 2023.
Michael Organ
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