Fin Keegan

This short play was produced by Painted Filly Theatre (as part of their 10×10 series) at Temple Bar’s Filmbase in Dublin, May 15th-20th, 2006.

Hibernian Rhapsody

by

Fin Keegan

Action takes place in a radio studio in Hibernia, a doomed
counter-capitalist utopia established in Ireland two years from now, and
features the following characters:

DICTATOR: Absolute Leader of Hibernia
MADAME: Insane wife of insane dictator.
ENGINEER: Operates on-stage ’soundboard’. Diligent functionary.
SECRET POLICE OFFICER 1: Thuggish sadist in a polyester tracksuit.
SECRET POLICE OFFICER 2: Ditto. Appearance mirrors colleague.
HOSTESS: Unseen. Her passionless voice is like hat of a UN Translator (or
Radio Moscow announcer) and comes through a cheap PA. Her inflexions should
be a little odd. Tamping down her emotions in the obvious places only
produces slight strangeness elsewhere.

All visible functionaries should have short-cropped hair or hair tucked in
under revolutionary headgear. In a number of cases, stage directions are
deliberately echoed, not quite verbatim, as utterances of the HOSTESS. A
sign upstage illuminates the words ON AIR when indicated. If possible please
use music cited below. Failing that, opening bars of the loudest movement of
Thomas Adès’ Asyla. Failing that, some like (and non-electrified) brutalism.

~

DICTATOR at desk, facing audience. To his left, an ENGINEER in a booth; on
the ground to his right, the prone figure of MADAME, face down, in a white
cocktail dress and pearls: blood stains her clothes and lies pooled by her
body. At the back of the stage, on either side, are two SECRET POLICE
OFFICERS, weapons bulging in their pockets. Strewn about desk and floor are
a dozen fat brown envelopes: a further few stick out from the unbuttoned
dress uniform of the DICTATOR, whose chest is heaving audibly as a spot
lights him up.

HOSTESS: Hibernia, Year 27 of the Grand Experiment. Irish Dictator at desk,
facing audience. He is a comical figure, at whom it is fatal to laugh. To
his left, an Engineer in a booth; on the ground to his right, Madame, face
down, in a white cocktail dress and pearls: blood stains her clothes and
lies pooled by her body. Behind her in this Gaelic Tableau, on either side,
two thuggish secret police, their weapons scarcely concealed. Strewn about
desk and floor are a dozen bulging brown envelopes: a further few stick out
from the unbuttoned (and abundantly decorated) dress uniform of the
Dictator, who has just stabbed his wife.

DICTATOR looks up slowly from MADAME as if in a stupor. He mops his face
then raises a finger. A sign upstage illuminates: ON AIR.

DICTATOR: Beloved children, Comrades, Heroes of the Dail Siege and Ulster
Campaign, today is a day of celebration in our beloved island Nation: your
leader is very moved. Every day of course is a blessed day for us, in the
Happy Swards of 32-county Hibernia, who have thrown off the weighty yoke of
Anglo-American Perversions and Sectarian Persuasions. Rejoice, Sons and
Daughters of Hibernia: today your leader is mountainy satisfied.

OFF AIR.

DICTATOR casts a hairy eyeball at the immobile figure of MADAME, then
resumes.

ON AIR

DICTATOR: This morning, freckled Celts, votaries of Agri-Toil, Snortable
Powders, and Rebel Song, let us pause in our labours and think on the Mother
of our Darling Nation, Second Metaphysician and Most High Bitch of
Immaterialism, whose very dugs have nursed old and young Hibernians alike on
their long march into History, whose loins sated me–us in the shape of me,
that is–on the Day of Revolution itself, whose dagger it was Your Leader
sank into the fetid guts of the stout-swilling, strumpet-consorting
anorak-adorned chameleon Eurocrat who used to run this poor wee country.
[Drifting] Happy days, the Dail and Four Courts burning, the mobile phones
flung in their millions onto bonfires up and down the four greeny-browny
fields, the Anglo-American pigs and the their swinish hench dropped
squealing into the Liffey. Oh Happy Day when the light of Celestial
Immaterialism dawned on this green isle benighted in the fog of Eurocash and
alcohol and snortable powders and awash with borrowings and loose morals and
Belgian interest rates!

DICTATOR gazes with bovine mournfulness at MADAME

DICTATOR: Until that night, dear children of Hibernia, we had never been
intimate. Those breasts you now know so well from your postage stamps and
shoe coupons were as unknown to me as the new moons of distant Jupiter,
those warm tofu thighs untouched by your Leader’s hands.

The POLICE OFFICERS exchange a glance.

HOSTESS: The police dare to exchange a quick glance. Already the feminine
arch-putchist has the upper hand.

DICTATOR: But that night, melodious Hibernians, first and second generation
of Celestial Eireann, we trashed about like desert vermin fighting to the
death, devouring each other’s flesh in the searing heat of the Inferno Atha
Cliatha.

Pause

DICTATOR [Softly]: The next day my dear kitten was up early, out with the
firing squads in Foxrock. As we lay together that night, heaving like
intoxicated seals on a lonely beach, she cried out to me: “Leader, dear
Leader, today I shot ten of the Celtic Tiger cabal-profiteers. take me now
ten times and fuck me, dear Leader.”

POLICE OFFICERS step upstage, staring grimly at the audience, pouncing on
any untoward response to these words. DICTATOR screws up his face then looks
sheepish.

DICTATOR: She always was an ardent revolutionary.

DICTATOR signals to the ENGINEER, who blasts out the opening bars of John
Adam’s “Harmonliehre”. DICTATOR toys idly with truncheon, dropping it
thoughtfully onto his palm, while SECRET POLICE and ENGINEER do a silly
choreographed dance in perfect synchrony. Music runs for a minute or two,
then fades.

DICTATOR: I never did satisfy women all that much. Your Leader is sad now,
thinking about this. I had trouble going to the toilet too, in those days.
The doctors said I almost poisoned myself. Life is so resolutely base, even
without euros and powders and alcohol. Now the country is a rubbish dump and
I have all but murdered my wife and you all hate me, dear Children, you all
long to laugh yourselves sick at me, to laugh until your ribs hurt, and the
tears come, and wash away these nightmare decades of Entropic Unmaterialism,
these twenty-seven years of Me, Me, Me your Dear Leader.

Pause. DICTATOR suddenly tense as a rat.

DICTATOR: Only joking.

Pause

DICTATOR: If anyone laughs in the next two seconds I will shoot them myself
in the morning.

HOSTESS: Dictator stares at audience. He has regained his old vigour and the
putchist lies alarmed in her own cooling blood. [Pause ]. An hour or two
pass in an uncomfortable silence.

DICTATOR stares at audience. Ten seconds pass. The lightest cough or shuffle
is entered into the SECRET POLICE OFFICERS’ notebooks, who take out electric
torches and shine them into the faces of real or imagined culprits. To
conclude, the POLICE OFFICERS show their notes to the DICTATOR, who nods and
signals to the ENGINEER.

DICTATOR: Good. I will set my alarm clock. Yes. Continuing my joke. I killed
her eight minutes ago now, stabbed her with a bread knife. Guess why? I was
trying to kill myself and missed. No, that’s a joke within a joke. I meant
to kill her: her humanness–the skin, the thighs, all that–was getting on
my nerves, quite contrary to the spirit of the Revolution she was really.
She had bones and teeth and arteries in her: all sorts of the basest, most
corporeal elements. Not what a man is looking for in a Metaphysician: a man
has his needs!

Pause

DICTATOR [Softly]: Only joking. Sharks have no bones. I should have been a
Tiger Shark with cartilage holding me together and married a Tiger Shark and
bit the legs off the Anglo-Americans when they went swimming.

Pause

DICTATOR [Softly, from a daydream]: Only joking. [Nodding] If I didn’t have
bones I couldn’t stand up. Should I have told you more jokes, dear Children?
Rather than teach you about clouds and rainbows, should I just have told you
the One About The Dictator’s Wife? [Pause, then sharply] If I commanded you,
would that make it easier?

The ON-AIR light goes off. The POLICE OFFICERS nod heavily, then step
forward in slow lockstep towards the DICTATOR. They put their hands on his
shoulders. DICTATOR takes no notice. The ENGINEER steps behind them and
blindfolds the DICTATOR, who is then handcuffed. The brown envelopes and his
epaulettes and medals are torn from him.

DICTATOR [with immense self-pity] I am alone and afraid. Help me, my
children. [Pause]. Only joking.

HOSTESS: Sound of a gunshot. Dictator grasps his chest, disinterestedly, as
though to symbolize, rather than experience, a mortal wound.

Sound of a gunshot. DICTATOR grasps his chest.

DICTATOR: I am alone and afraid.

HOSTESS: Reportedly alone and afraid, he is carried off stage. The police
officers and engineer resume their positions. The On-Air light is
illuminated. At this, Madame arises, gathers up every brown envelope without
exception, and sits at the microphone.

DICTATOR is carried off stage. The POLICE and ENGINEER resume their
positions. The ON-AIR light is illuminated. At this, MADAME arises, gathers
up all brown envelopes including some that had previously been hidden, and
sits at the microphone.

MADAME: Beloved children, Comrades, Heroes of the Dail Siege and Ulster
Campaign…

Her speech begins to fade out and be gradually drowned by the rising volume
of Adams’ music reprised.

MADAME: ..today is a day of celebration in our beloved island Nation: Your
Leader is very moved.
Every day of course is a blessed day for us, in the Happy Swards of
32-county Hibernia, who have thrown off the weighty yoke of Anglo-American
Perversions and Sectarian Persuasions. Rejoice, Sons and Daughters of
Hibernia…

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