A Farce By Michal Jacot Performance Rights It is an infringement of the federal copyright law to copy or reproduce this script in any manner or to perform this play without royalty payment. All rights are controlled by Eldridge Publishing Co., Inc. Contact the publisher for additional scripts and further licensing information. The author s name must appear on all programs and advertising with the notice: Produced by special arrangement with Eldridge Publishing Company. ELDRIDGE PUBLISHING COMPANY 2015 by Michal Jacot Download your complete script from Eldridge Publishing http://www.histage.com/playdetails.asp?pid=2605
- 2 - DEDICATION To my TBP theatre friends. You know who you are. STORY OF THE PLAY Ray Chambers is a sales executive whose company invests in small businesses to franchise them. His target this time is surly Kirby Muldoon, the owner of Kirby's Pizzeria. Kirby has taken a vacation to a mountaintop lodge to work on his anger management. Ray, with the help of his fiancée Julie and his woman-crazy assistant Tony, schemes to win over Kirby. It s complicated by Tony's infatuation with Kirby's waitress Lisa and the shrill owner of the lodge, Cyndi, who can't seem to stop shrieking at an unseen handyman. After being turned down the first time, Ray utilizes the leftover costumes from an annual meeting of stage performers. Posing first as a cowboy named Prissy, then an Australian named Kangaroo Kelsey, then as a Russian with too many names to list, the schemes get more and more insane. This action-packed comedy will keep your audience laughing. About 90 minutes.
- 3 - CAST OF CHARACTERS (4 m, 3 w) RAY CHAMBERS: An up-and-coming sales executive. JULIE FOSTER: Ray s fiancée. She imagines herself as a wild and impetuous crazy woman, but in reality is rather stuffy and dull. TONY PERELLI: Ray s best friend and assistant. Goodlooking, and always on the prowl for women. LISA BURNS: An attractive waitress at Kirby s Pizza. KIRBY MULDOON: Lisa s boss, the owner of Kirby s Pizza. Large of build and intimidating of demeanor. CYNDI: The manager of the lodge. Attractive; she also wears an eye patch. ARTIE: An employee of the lodge. Only heard offstage, never seen. The time is the present. Act I Scene 1: A mountain lodge. Scene 2: A few minutes later. Act II Scene 1: A few minutes later. SYNOPSIS OF SCENES
- 4 - SETTING The set is a mountaintop lodge, the sort of place that people go to for vacations or for business get-togethers. The stage is divided into two rooms. The main room takes up about 2/3rds of the stage area. It is furnished tastefully, and has a small bar on the dividing wall. There is a main entry door in the UR corner; when this door is open, we see part of a tall wooden barricade fence. There is another door DR, and there is a window on the wall space between them. The other third, at stage left, is a parlor with minimal furniture and a small window at the upstage wall. There is a large storage trunk in this room. There is also a door DL which presumably leads to a bathroom. There is a half-wall dividing the two, and a parlor door on the half-wall allows entry between the rooms. There is a large picture window at the back wall with vertical window panels on either side, affording a breathtaking view of a wooded valley. Note that the left window panel will open out later, but only opens about six inches. STAGE LAYOUT
- 5 - ACT I Scene 1 (AT RISE: RAY CHAMBERS and JULIE FOSTER enter from UR door. When the door opens, we immediately hear a heated argument in progress going on offstage between CYNDI and ARTIE, talking over each other. As with all exchanges like this, we catch them in mid-sentence.) CYNDI: (Off.) must have told you three times to take care of the leaky faucet in cabin number seven! We ve got guests coming in! Fix the leaky faucet first and then take care of the yard ARTIE: (Off.) taking care of the yard! I had to take care of the yard first! Or maybe you think that s not important enough. Well, it doesn t take care of itself, you (The exchange abruptly stops when RAY closes the door behind them. In this and future exchanges like this, CYNDI and ARTIE s conversations will be heard only when the door is open, and no matter where they are in their dialogue they stop as soon as the door closes.) JULIE: Someone s getting chewed out. (Looks the place over admiringly.) Ooooh! Nice! RAY: I just hope Tony s tip was right. If Kirby doesn t show up here, this whole trip will be a waste of time. JULIE: He ll be here, don t worry. RAY: I really want this to work out. JULIE: Technically, it s Mr. Weiler who really wants this to work out. RAY: Well yeah. The boss is always right, you know. He told me to come back with Kirby s signature on a contract or don t come back at all. (TONY PERELLI enters, wearing a trench coat. When the door swings open we again hear the argument in the background.)
- 6 - CYNDI: (Off.) pay a plumber when I ve got you on staff? What do you think I m paying you for? Some handyman you turned out to be, huh? ARTIE: (Off.) drive all the way into town just to pick up gas because someone forgot to do it the last time she was there even though I (TONY shuts the door; again, the noise simultaneously stops.) TONY: Whoa! Nice place! RAY: Yeah, and the cabins we re staying in are pretty nice. You got the one right next door to ours, right? TONY: Right. JULIE: And that s a pretty little town at the base of the mountain. TONY: Prettier than ours, that s for sure. RAY: Hey, it s not so bad. Most of the people living in our town would never move out of the area. TONY: Mostly because their probation won t allow it. JULIE: This will be perfect for your meeting with Kirby. RAY: It would be even more perfect if Kirby actually knew about it. TONY: Hey, trust me, this will work. RAY: Tony, come on. You know I hate it when you say trust me. It never ends well. TONY: When s the last time I told you to trust me that it didn t work out for you? RAY: (Imitating TONY.) Hire me as your assistant and you ll never have to do another thing. Trust me. TONY: Okay, so you have to do a few things. (Grins.) But look at the great catch you got for an assistant. RAY: (Laughs.) Yeah, I guess you re not so bad. TONY: Not so bad?! Is that all? Who set all this up for you? RAY: (Conceding.) You did. TONY: There you go. I got the inside track on this guy for you and here you are.
- 7 - JULIE: (To TONY.) So you found out that Kirby Muldoon is going to be here for the weekend? TONY: The one and only Kirby Muldoon. Owner of Kirby s Pizza Kitchen, home of the best pizza in the state. RAY: He does make good pizza. TONY: Not just good pizza. The best pizza. Pizza to die for. If his pizza was a woman, it would be in a tight sweater and short skirt. RAY: (To JULIE.) Terrific pizza. Which is why Old Man Weiler is so interested in him. He wants to invest in Kirby s Pizza Kitchen and franchise it. He thinks it ll be a gold mine. And he s probably right. JULIE: I thought you told me your boss already approached Kirby with this idea. RAY: He did. He got shot down. From what I hear, Kirby Muldoon is not exactly the friendliest fellow on Earth. For whatever reason, he didn t care for Mr. Weiler and decided he didn t want to do business with him. TONY: (To JULIE.) That s when I stepped in and saved the day. I go to Kirby s Pizza Kitchen all the time. There s this waitress there, and we make a lot of small talk when she s at my table. She told me a lot about her boss. JULIE: Like what? TONY: Well, for starters, he s got a bit of a temper. It doesn t take much to set him off. So he sees a therapist to figure out ways to keep calm. JULIE: She told you all this? TONY: Sure. I m an easy guy to talk to. Anyway, she told me that Mr. Muldoon was planning a weekend trip up to this mountain retreat, at the advice of his shrink. Sort of a spiritual getaway you know, all that hoity-toity New Age crap. RAY: You have such a way with words. TONY: So I started thinking JULIE: Which is always dangerous. TONY: What if Ray just happened to be up here at the same time? He could strike up a conversation with Kirby as a fellow guest, not as a businessman. It could all be in this nice, cozy setting everyone would be relaxed
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