Image from Wikimedia
TIME
Present day delusional.
PLACE
In the Georgetown brownstone of Robert and Patricia Greene, and, notionally, in the final scene, Mersea Island, Essex, England.
CHARACTERS
SENATOR ROBERT (“Bud”) GREENE, 55, a U.S. Senator and former university mathematics professor. Senator Greene – 15 years on with a heart transplant – is now endowed with the conviction/knowledge that his last few hours alive are upon him. He has miles to go before he sleeps.
PATRICIA (“Button”) GREENE, 45, wife of ten years of Robert Greene, long-suffering of her husband’s esoteric obsessions. Often at an opposite end from his intellectual expositions, she remains a woman deeply in love with a difficult husband.
Four others (essentially non-speaking parts, except for offstage lines that can be prerecorded).
NOTES
Senator Greene, when seated in the dining room with his hand calculators, papers, pens, laptop, briefcase, and whiteboard, is “lost” in a near chaos of page upon page of calculations and literary notes covering his end of the table – most of which are directed toward solving Fermat’s Last Theorem algebraically – a feat not before accomplished. In the historical/political arena, Greene, like few others, senses the dark implications behind the Kennedy and King assassinations, and the evisceration of the 1968 Kerner Commission Report (re: the Detroit uprising).
A screen [SCREEN], or screens, visible to the audience display Greene’s writing on the whiteboard (and possibly other events, in the Director’s discretion).
… in the dialogue indicates a thoughtful break.
… // signals the starting point of interrupting (but not overlapping) text.
This is our basic conclusion: Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal…. Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood – but what the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.
– Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, February 29, 1968.
SCENE 1 – THE WALK
A bleak, overcast, windy evening outside the Greenes’ Georgetown brownstone – thunder in the distance and paper blowing down the sidewalk and street. SENATOR GREENE enters alone, from stage left, carrying a briefcase and a closed umbrella, wearing an N95 mask, and walking briskly. Following him (at a distance) is a lady in red, fighting the wind while appearing to be involved in a conversation on her handheld. Her primary intent, however, is obvious: keeping eyes on Greene. Behind her walk three men wearing trench coats. SENATOR GREENE ascends the steps to the front door of his home (number 1729), unlocks it, enters, and closes the door behind him. A few seconds later the woman and the men reach the steps, and enter the brownstone without a key.
SCENE 2 – THE TALK
In the Greenes’ dining room – a room which Senator Greene has converted into his office and study. Handwritten on a whiteboard in the room and visible to the audience are mathematical equations (with ample space at the bottom for more):
An + Bn – Cn = Ø
[A + B – C]n = Dn = n(A + B)(C – A)(C – B)T, where
T = M(n–3)/2 – [(n–5)/2] ABCD (M)(n–7)/2 +[3(n–5)(n–7)/9·4·2] Q2 M(n–9)/2 + [(n–7)(n–9)/4·2] (ABCD)2 M(n–11)/2 – [3·3(n–7)(n–9)(n–11)/9·8·3!] ABCD Q2 M(n–13)/2 + [3(n–7)(n–9)(n–11)(n–13)/15·16·4!] Q4 M(n–15)/2 – [(n–9)(n–11)(n–13) /8·3!] (ABCD)3 M(n–15)/2 + [6·3(n–9)(n–11)(n–13)(n–15)/9·16·4!] (ABCD)2 Q2 M(n–17)/2 ETC. ETC. ETC., where:
M = [(A + B)2 – (AB + CD)] = [A2 + AB – AC + B2 – BC + C2]
Q = (AB – CD)(A + B)
Scene 2 begins, initially, in dim light. SENATOR GREENE (still in the N95 mask) is seated at one end of the long dining room table, hand calculators, pens, pads, a laptop with a pair of companion speakers, and stacks of loose papers all spread out in front of him. Buried in mathematical calculations, Greene’s thoughts can be reflected (displayed) on the SCREEN. Also at or near his place are a bottle of Scotch, a glass, a whiteboard, an open briefcase (in which a handgun is concealed), and copies of (1) the Bible, (2) the collected works of William Shakespeare, and (3) Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You – in each of which are stuffed loose sheets of paper marking pages, some with notes on them.
At the opposite end of the table sits PATRICIA GREENE, quietly and patiently watching her husband, from time to time writing in her own notebook, and occasionally sipping from a wineglass which she refills from a double large bottle resting by her on the table. Until her line (when lighting goes full), SENATOR GREENE is unaware of her presence.
Also on the table, halfway between the two of them sits a glass container that holds an indistinguishable and awful something – almost like a decapitated head floating amidst seaweed and formaldehyde.
Along the length of the table the woman in red and three men in trench coats will take their places – two on either side. They are non-speaking parts, and treated as invisible (except to the audience).
SENATOR GREENE removes his N95. In the dim light the lady in red and the three men in trench coats enter, taking seats along the sides of the table. One of them places a recording device down, which remains on the table throughout. It is raining outside. Spot on SENATOR GREENE. He is deep in thought, pen in hand, staring at his papers. Suddenly he slams his hand down, flat against the tabletop. PATRICIA GREENE remains quietly watching her husband at the opposite end of the table. (Lights go full on her initial line, which is the moment he first realizes she is there.)
SENATOR GREENE
Am I what I am? or what I’ve done?
The sin of what I’ve done, or nothing worth?
Which is it, God? if you’re there in the silence…. Tell me.
Nothing worth gets my vote. And betrayal, not dignity, is my destiny.
I’m tired of these fucking dreams.
I’ve got to talk to somebody before I go insane, or I am insane before I go.
So many places in our country are drowned in so much shit that people let truth and trust go down the toilet while they crawl into their convenient hiding places.
Who’s willing to share one moment’s weight of courage?
And I? Am I an ounce less cowardly? concealing what I know?…
Afraid to publish what I know?… Shame on me!
SENATOR GREENE slaps his forehead. Lights flicker, and a sound like a woman’s cry is heard from offstage –
SENATOR GREENE
My last flurry of heartbeats, and you’re still there?
What do you want from me? Go away!
Surely I’ve been haunted enough.
These past few weeks especially, when time’s so short.
Jesus! Must I doctor my guilt on my own?…
[beat] Those people are right, you know: I did lie. And I confessed it….
Every time I knew the truth and kept quiet, I lied….
[beat] Nightmares, down the nights and down the days. There’s no end … //
PATRICIA GREENE
[in a raised voice] Rock bottom.
SENATOR GREENE
[surprised and embarrassed] O my God! I didn’t know you were still here.
PATRICIA GREENE
I never left.