New Writing

THE COMEDY OF FLECK
a modern verse imitation of Goethe’s “Tragedy of Faust”
by Alasdair Gray

SCENES:

Prologue outside heaven, with angel choir
Act One: Fleck’s study
Act Two: a casino
Act Three: the media world, with chorus of publicists
Epilogue outside heaven, with angel choir

CAST in order of appearance:

Raphael, Gabriel, Michael: angels in Prologue and Epilogue
Nick: a cosmopolitan with an international gift of tongues
God: has a distinct local accent, Scottish in Scottish productions
Fleck: a great scientist
Earth Spirit: a giant face projected on the backdrop – Act One
May: a sweet, demure, petite heroine
Martha: an older, plumper friend of May
Bill and Jill: university students – Act One
Two beauticians and a hairdresser – Act One
Loudspeaker: a voice – Act Two
Waiter: who serves the right drinks before customers ask – Act Two and Three
MacDuff: a procurator fiscal – Act Two
Jock: a young Glasgow drug dealer – Act Two
Toady: his cockney henchman – Act Two
Honey: his lover, perhaps female in male attire – Act Two
Smellie: councillor and online entrepreneur – Act Two
Chang Lee: chairman of Global Employers Federation – Act Two and Three
Kodak: Lee’s American henchman – Act Two and Three
Kay: a glamorous press woman – Act Three
Pee: a gutter press man – Act Three
Cue: a Liberal press man – Act Three
Television Presenter – Act Three

[A line of asterisks in Act 3 indicates a part not yet written.]

PROLOGUE

SOUND: Grandly solemn chords of religious music by Handel, Haydn or Bach as, centre stage back, a rich dark blue drop curtain slowly rises upon:

LIGHT: Backdrop of dawn sky with huge crimson sun also rising, much more slowly than the curtain, while changing through orange and gold to white.

THREE ANGELS in robes coloured like the curtain stand before the sun and chant:

RAPHAEL: The sun-star, glorious as ever,
bathes all his worlds in golden light
still rolling round the galaxy
midst nebulae as vast and bright.
Planets and moons attend his glory,
reflect his beams in sparkling ray
while angels, heralding this story,
announce the dawning of a day.

GABRIEL: Swift, unimaginably swift
the mighty earth is rolling too
from darkness of profoundest night
to skies celestially blue.
while winds contest with ocean waves
or drive them on like fleeing crowds
against the base of granite cliffs
whose summits penetrate the clouds –

MICHAEL: Storm clouds, whose snow and hail and rains
in stream and cataract pour down
to flood and irrigate the plains
ensuring growth is nature’s crown –
that seeds take root and creatures feed
from humble worm to beast of prey,
while angels, heralding the Lord,
announce the dawning of his day.

LIGHT: The sun has disappeared upward, leaving the sky clear blue.

NICK has approached jauntily through the audience wearing black jeans and scarlet sweater. He mounts the stage as the angels look upward, raising their arms.

LIGHT: a spot shines down on them as they recite the chorus.

ANGELS raise their arms, looking upward to the light while reciting the final verse in unison, and NICK bends knees in servile caricature of a courtly bow, raising both arms to the source of light in mocking imitation of the angels.

ANGEL CHORUS: And sounding colour glows and leaps
twixt star and sun and world and moon –
God is the harmony that keeps
all nature’s orchestra in tune!

LIGHT: the spot swings out onto NICK.

NICK jumps up, standing to attention and giving a Nazi salute before speaking with the overdone bonhomie of an experienced gate-crasher.

NICK: Good Lord, it’s wonderful to have you here,
and – God Almighty – since you condescend
to let me supervise this bad wee globe,
I’m bound to greet you as a long-lost friend,
my oldest chum. Excuse my slang these days
but since expulsion from your Heavenly choir
I’ve never seen one thing deserving praise
in jargon your angelic mobs admire.
Creation is perhaps a giant joke
that pleases you. Not me! I deal with folk –
men – women – shit, in short. Why give these clods
intelligence? A gift that damned immortal Gods
like me – your deputy! Men would be less bad
without the sciences that make them glad
to torture, kill themselves, their planet too.

GOD: Do you like nothing here?

NICK: Nothing. The whole mess gars me grew.

GOD: Do you know Fleck?

NICK: Professor Fleck? O yes.
A muddled soul. I laugh at his distress.
A mammy’s boy. A teacher’s pet. A swot
who hoped the girls would find him fascinating
for knowing what the other lads did not.
That did not fetch them. Missing youthful pleasures
he groped in books for intellectual treasures
till, master of three sciences or four,
he finds professoring a deadly bore
and knows his over-stimulated brain
has done no good, and left him half insane.

GOD: Fleck is unhappy like all honest folk
who do not think the world a giant joke
and find the prize they worked for, hard and long,
is worthless, and has put them in the wrong.

NICK: Aye aye! These very intellectual pains
come easily to men who have no weans
and wives to feed, and do not hear the pleas
of homeless millions, dying of disease.

GOD: Fleck is bewildered. Science and art are born
by those whose inner selves are almost torn
apart by pains that will not let them rest
until they reach the highest and the best.

NICK: Reach you, in fact! How lovely! What if I
prevent that? How about it? Let me try!

GOD: You tried before.

NICK: [in Yankee] – in three-six-nine BC
with Job, your servant? Yep, he sure fooled me.
I knocked his house down, killed his children quick,
stole all his money, left him poor and sick,
his skin one itching scab from head to toe,
then friends arrive, appalled to see such woe,
and to console him, busily explain
he must be wicked to deserve such pain!
Despite the evil things you let me do
that poor sap Job never lost faith in you!

GOD: People with nothing else have only me.

NICK: The wealthy are my business? I agree.
Professor Fleck owns nothing rich and fine.
I’ll give him all he wants, to make him mine
– if you allow me?

GOD: Do your wicked best.

NICK: Indeed I will! Good Lord I am impressed
by your permissiveness. Moses talked rot
when parroting his slogan, Thou Shalt Not.
God forbids nothing. Why do folk forget
the first word that you ever spoke was Let –
Let There Be Light! Let there be Lucifer,
and the pervading brightness lets all see
the brightest of your eldest sons is me.

GOD: A fool.

NICK: – who’s licensed by your Holiness,
the jester of the universe, no less!
Forgive me levity. I must feel gay
since you are letting me make Fleck my prey.

GOD: Demons like you, Old Nick, I tolerate
because your antics undo something worse –
those smooth routines upholding every state
where management makes government a curse.
Fleck keeps rich managements in good repair.
His well-attended academic courses
turn youths into exploitable resources.
Remove him from his academic chair!

NICK: Dead or alive?

GOD: Alive.

NICK: [Australian] Good on you, God!
I hate tormenting ghosts. It’s much more nice
to toy with living souls, like pussy toys with mice.

LIGHT: GOD’s spotlight swings back from NICK to his ANGELS.

GOD: My better children, come back to the sky
and there enjoy the better things we do.
Make life the loveliest form of energy
that every day creates the world anew!

SOUND: Great Amen chords.
Curtain closes, leaving NICK on stage facing the audience to whom he familiarly remarks –

NICK: I like to see the old dear dropping in
when weary of his land of endless light
that gave me heatstroke once. He needs Old Nick,
and toffs like him are never impolite.

Exit NICK.

Click here for Act 1