TIME AND PLACES
Spring to winter, essentially the 1940s, preserved in present day New York. Greenwich Village. A diner remarkably like the one in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942); and in Scenes 3 and 4, a Greenwich Village apartment with an upstairs bedroom akin to Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles (1889):
CHARACTERS
TOM, 30s, the diner sitting by himself at the counter in Hopper’s Nighthawks.
LYDIELLA in Scene 1 is a young woman, horribly disfigured (imagine, if you can, a female Elephant Man), wearing a savage mask covering the upper part of her face above her lips. She is also sometimes called Eris, or the Unicorn, or Nighthawk. The actress playing LYDIELLA need not be disfigured in any way.
LYDIELLA in Scenes 2-6 is a most beautiful young woman, played by the same actress playing LYDIELLA in Scene 1, but with no mask. She is also sometimes called Eris, or the Unicorn, or Nighthawk
RJ, waiter/manager of the diner.
WOMAN, in red, sitting in the diner.
MAN, sitting next to her in the diner, with a cigarette.
MARS, Lydiella’s husband. Also called Thorin. Large and muscular, with thick black, uncombed hair.
POLICEWOMAN.
SCENE 1 – THE DINER, LATE NIGHT
Stage left: A spring night. The diner from Hopper’s Nighthawks (with its outside door offstage, stage left). TOM, RJ, the WOMAN, and the MAN are seated/standing, dressed as in Hopper’s painting. At the rise the scene is frozen for close to half a minute as a homeless woman (LYDIELLA) enters stage left, and hunches past the diner, pulling her possessions in a wagon behind her. Her hair is up, held by decorative ivory-colored hair combs. TOM stands to look at her. As he is speaking, LYDIELLA turns at the corner of the diner and proceeds down the street behind it, and out of sight.
TOM
O my, dear God, would you look? Just look at her!
Who can live like that?
Who would God create to live that way this time of night? And why?
LYDIELLA has passed by and turned the corner.
TOM
I can’t stand it. Not doing a thing. Nobody doing a thing.
No greeting. No smile. Hardly a look.
Some, I’ve heard, call the poor beast “Mug Rat.” Where she can plainly hear.
How can you ever forgive me, God, for hating what you’ve done to her?
TOM stands, leaves money, and walks out of the diner, still speaking (to himself) –
TOM
She is. A soul forsaken in a body broken. An outcast.
And who am I? Forgive me, God. Again. I think I hate myself.
I’ve been nothing better than graffiti on the wall. Watching her, rummaging through trash, as painfully naked to human kindness as ugly can get.
TOM stands outside for an instant, staring back into the diner and down the street behind it. Then he half runs behind the diner, out of sight, and returns with LYDIELLA walking beside him (still pulling her wagon). As the two of them cross in front of the diner MARS passes them on the street and exits. They proceed to the diner’s offstage door and enter, taking seats at the far, stage-left end of the counter.
RJ approaches them.
RJ
What are you about, Tom?
TOM
Nothing.
Mathew 25.
I don’t know.
I just can’t stand to watch it anymore, RJ.