Protest

Protest (a comedy/social satire)

Running Time Approx 75 - 90 mins

Protest emerged out of a desire to write about the failings of the British care system.

I read an article in a magazine about a five-year old boy who was the domestic mainstay/carer of his frequently sick mother.

For a five-year-old child to be the one person placed on standby should her condition deteriorate seemed a shocking indictment of our cash-strapped system.

The article highlighted, in fact, that the boy's plight was not unusual.

The denuded funding system in the UK is the backdrop against which the character of NATHAN PORDYKE has a belated political awakening.

Basic Plot Outline

NATHAN PORDYKE arrives home, looking troubled. He has just mounted a protest at his local council offices and has subsequently been arrested for the first time in his life. 

He was on hand to help a young single-mother who collapsed in the mall. However, he then discovered that the little boy accompanying her is, actually, her main carer.

The tight financial constraints placed on the local council by the Government has led to a situation which NATHAN finds intolerable.

His subsequent protest at the council offices grew out of a sense of disbelief.  He can scarcely relate such to the country of his birth.

However, this is a bad time to run foul of the law. NATHAN'S partner EDIE is about to throw a lavish party later that same evening. The party is to celebrate the five-year long refurbishment of the house they share.

EDIE is a both materialistic and an avowed patriot. She has thus arranged the party to coincide with The Last Night of the Proms.

She arrives home soon after NATHAN and berates him for his (to her) selfish act.

Later, her brother MERVYN and his wife HERMIONE arrive ahead of the other guests and are told of NATHAN'S protest.

The play ends with EDIE cancelling the party and demanding NATHAN leave their home.

Despite the seriousness of the theme, the play is a comedy that deals in issues of materialism and the funding shortfalls at a time of Austerity. It poses a negative contrast between the economic orthodoxies of the UK and those which have proved so successful in places like Scandinavia.

Running Time Approx 75 - 90 mins

CAST OF CHARACTERS

EDIE RIPPENSHAW                       Manageress at a Health Clinic.

                                                            Early forties.

NATHAN PORDYKE                      Employed at one of the Oxford

                                                             Colleges. Mid-fifties. Edie’s

                                                             live-in partner for the last two years.

MERVYN RIPPENSHAW                Psychiatrist. Edie’s brother.

                                                             Mid-to-late forties.

HERMIONE RIPPENSHAW           His wife. Mid-to-late forties.

POLICEMAN/WOMAN                  Thirties/forties.

LOCATION

The living room of Edie’s home in a quiet suburb of West

Oxfordshire.

September 2016

NATHAN PORDYKE enters looking rather troubled. He pauses by a table full of Proms related merchandise. Picking up a Union Jack napkin, he pulls a face. He then goes to sit on the sofa but is immediately   by the sound of a door slamming shut. EDIE enters looking rather frantic.

EDIE: Do you mind telling me what’s going on?

NATHAN: You need to calm down….

EDIE: I’m not calming down until you tell me what’s going on. I got a text from Miriam Hardacre saying that you’d been arrested. That can’t be true. (a slight pause) Is it true?

NATHAN: I won’t talk to you unless….

EDIE: Is it true?

NATHAN: You only got her side of it and there’s more to what happened – if you just let me explain.

EDIE: Oh, my God, it is true!

NATHAN: Edie, I’m trying to put you in the picture but you have to promise me not to overreact.

NATHAN tries to explain a little of what happened in the mall.

NATHAN: Edie, I came to the assistance of a woman who collapsed. Okay? One minute she was fine and the next minute she was on the pavement jibbering and shaking. I was struggling to work out what I could really do. I had to cradle her head.

EDIE: (appalled) You touched her hair?

NATHAN: I cradled her head – so she wouldn’t bang it on the pavement.

EDIE: But who else was there?

NATHAN: I don’t know - other people. We all pitched in. Somebody ran to get a seat-cushion from a shop nearby to use as a pillow. Someone else took off their overcoat. And then the ambulance arrived.

EDIE: So, is that it?

NATHAN: When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics seemed to know them both quite well. They knew the mum and they knew him - the little boy.

EDIE: She wasn’t drunk then?

NATHAN: No, she wasn’t drunk. She was ill. After a while, the stretcher came out, they strapped her to it and started wheeling her away. I watched him follow her into the ambulance - this boy - so small he could hardly make it up the steps on his own.

EDIE: And she was conscious?

NATHAN: Yes. When one of the paramedics closed the back doors, I asked him if the boy would be alright. He looked a bit - I don’t know - out-of-it.

Nathan recounts how he postponed his errand to go and find answers at the council offices.

NATHAN: The management guy put it to me straight. The council wanted to do more. They wanted to do more but the imperfections of the system are such, that he - the boy - and all the others like him are considered less important than the like of some mercantile big shot who needs his tax bill down below that of a bank clerk. The system needs overhauling - right down to how we fund these things….

EDIE: Nathan….

NATHAN: I told them this is no adequate provision. They’re at the business end of this and he agreed - but their hands are tied.

EDIE: If you were more patriotic then you wouldn’t see these things.

NATHAN: You measure what a country is by what it can provide.

EDIE: (exasperated) Oh! This is too much! You can map out all sorts of things in your head, but how much of that can you afford? This is what they wanted to tell you but you wouldn’t listen. This is not a case of maladministration. This is just a case of what is out there - and which, yes, works for some but not for others. My father never doubted for one minute that life could be challenging but this is where we are. ‘Society has to be unfair for it to work.’ I heard him say so many times – and he was right. (a slight pause) I still don’t understand. So, you proved yourself to be an opinionated fool and they arrested you for it?

NATHAN: No, I told them I wouldn’t leave without some form of guarantee -

MERVYN and HERMIONE arrive and immediately sense that something is amiss.

MERVYN: Well, this is not the ‘Hail fellow, well met,’ I was expecting. What’s up, sis?

EDIE: Mervyn, we have a problem. (turning to Nathan) Him.

MERVYN: Alright….

EDIE: He’s done a bad thing - a very bad thing.

NATHAN: What, so bad he’s not allowed to shake hands with me?

EDIE: Nathan, you may greet my brother in the familiar way.

                                      NATHAN GETS UP AND SHAKES HANDS

                                      WITH MERVYN.

NATHAN: (sarcastically) Can I hug his wife?

                                      EDIE IGNORES THE REMARK. NATHAN

                                      AND HERMIONE HUG.

HERMIONE: Good to see you, Nathan.

                                      NATHAN RETURNS TO THE SOFA.

MERVYN: The poor man looks quite chastened, sis. What have you done to him?

EDIE: Nothing yet - or at least that will show.

MERVYN: (attempting to lift the mood) A kick in the crucial nodes you mean - or should that be the nodal crux? (EDIE is unmoved) I joke, of course.

EDIE: I’m working up to something, Mervyn. Maybe I should go easy on

          him and only sandpaper his gums.

EDIE gives her worries free rein and wonders what the cost of NATHAN'S actions might be in social terms.

EDIE: So, have you told them what you did, Mr Street Fighting Man?

MERVYN: He was about to.

EDIE: The man I let move in with me - the man I had such plans for - got himself

When eventually left alone with NATHAN, MERVYN and HERMIONE push for answers as to why he acted in such an uncharacteristic way.

MERVYN: (contd) But where does it come from, Nathan? It feels as if you’re holding out on me. Are you holding out on me?

                                                       PAUSE

NATHAN: For a while now - say, the last six months - I’ve been working through a few things in my head.

MERVYN: Such as?

NATHAN: I’ve noticed political stuff a bit more in the last few months.

MERVYN: By which you mean?

NATHAN: Political stuff - the like of what there is around us.

MERVYN: Which would be what exactly?

NATHAN: People at the rougher end of the arrangement - how we sort for them,

NATHAN narrows down his observations as he ponders the issue. He points to the example set by Scandinavian countries in providing for the vulnerable of their society. 

NATHAN: (a slight pause) Well, every now-and-then they publish these global tables. You know the kind of stuff: ’Which are the happiest countries worldwide?’ ‘Where can you find the best quality of life?’And in nearly everyone I’ve seen, the Scandinavians are plumb top every time - or near the top. Canada and Switzerland apart, most other places hardly get a look-in. Forget the UK - we’re down there with the likes of Azerbijan. (a slight pause) Scandinavia. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway - they seem to work off the same settings. Taxation is up at a high level but, boy, do they make it work - pouring money back into the System, all the way down the line. Every single region is given its due. They seem more galvanized than we are into doing something structural. In Scandinavia, what they have they have across the board. It means that when you ask some office manager from Copenhagen, for example, to up sticks and move with his or her family to some other region of Denmark - it could be anywhere - it’s not the big deal that it would be here in the UK. They at least could count on a lot of stuff being the same: transport links, Child-care - that sort of thing. But ask some trader in derivatives from Clerkenwell to move to Rochdale; ask the owner of some chintzy shop in Notting Hill to start afresh in Walsall; some Hedge Fund Manager to add to his experience by moving to Batley. Get a Sales executive from Clapham Old Town to apply his or her skills on a permanent basis in Bury - not Bury St Edmonds but Bury. Salford, Wigan, Grimsby, Hull, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Nottingham, Keighley. We’ve let these places slide as part of what we think is a natural process. Like some rotting hulk which the sea has spewed back. There is it clogging the horizon (a slight pause) The North. You can tell I’m not welcome there.

EDIE slowly becomes more intoxicated and she strays into into more personal attacks on NATHAN'S character and background.

EDIE: This one - this ageing tyro - is from somewhere north of here: Acomb in York. What do you say to a young man from Acomb in a suit? “Guilty as charged, milord.” That’s one of his. You’d think that being from Acomb, he would somehow want to cauterise the memory of it but, no. Acomb is the equivalent of Arkensaw - only smaller. Tornado bait. (directly to Nathan) You’re for the hard way. No more

saving.

With the arrival of a squad car (its defective siren resonating loudly through the neighbouring streets) EDIE lapses into more tears.

The policeman/woman has been asked to relay a message that there will be no charges brought against NATHAN and he receives just a mild caution.

However, even this proves too much for EDIE and she is forced to act.

EDIE: (tearfully) You can all go. I’ve texted everyone to say the party is

          off.

MERVYN: What?

HERMIONE: Edie, you can’t.

EDIE: No, please. I shall have a few more drinks and watch the thing

          alone. (more decisively) Pack an overnight bag, Nathan. Be off

          with you! Collect the rest of your things tomorrow. I don’t want

          you in my house anymore. (contd).

                                                NATHAN EXITS

EDIE: (contd). No one will see those razor-tight borders but at least

          the house is full of wine.