Seascape Read online

  BY EDWARD ALBEE

  The Zoo Story

  The Death of Bessie Smith

  The Sandbox

  The American Dream

  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

  Tiny Alice

  Malcolm

  A Delicate Balance

  Everything in the Garden

  Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

  All Over

  Seascape

  Listening

  Counting the Ways

  The Lady from Dubuque

  Lolita

  The Man Who Had Three Arms

  Finding the Sun

  Marriage Play

  Three Tall Women

  Fragments (A Sit-Around)

  The Play About the Baby

  The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?

  Occupant

  At Home at the Zoo

  Me, Myself & I

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performance of SEASCAPE is subject to payment of a royalty. The Play is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention, the Universal Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including without limitation professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical, electronic and digital reproduction, transmission and distribution, such as CD, DVD, the Internet, private and file-sharing networks, information storage and retrieval systems, photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the Author’s agent in writing.

  The English language amateur stage performance rights in the United States, its territories, possessions and Canada for the Play is controlled exclusively by DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE, INC., 440 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. No nonprofessional performance of the Play or either of its acts may be given without obtaining in advance the written permission of DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE, INC., and paying the requisite fee.

  The English language stock and regional theatre stage performance rights in the United States, its territories, possessions and Canada and the English language amateur stage performance rights in for the Play in the British Commonwealth of Nations (excluding Canada), Ireland, and South Africa are controlled exclusively by Samuel French, Inc, 45 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010. No stock or regional performance or nonprofessional performance, in the aforesaid countries, of the Play or either of its acts may be given without obtaining in advance the written permission of Samuel French, Inc., and paying the requisite fee.

  Inquiries concerning all other rights should be addressed to William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC, 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019. Attn: Jonathan Lomma.

  Copyright

  This edition first published in the United States in 2008 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  New York and London

  NEW YORK:

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected], or write us at the above address.

  LONDON:

  Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.

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  Copyright © 1975 by Edward Albee

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  ISBN 978-1-46830-754-2

  For

  Ella Winter

  and

  Donald Ogden Stewart

  with love

  The first performance of SEASCAPE was presented by Richard Barr, Charles Woodward, and Clinton Wilder on Sunday, January 26, 1975, at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre, New York City.

  DEBORAH KERR as NANCY

  BARRY NELSON as CHARLIE

  FRANK LANGELLA as LESLIE

  MAUREEN ANDERMAN as SARAH

  Directed by EDWARD ALBEE

  Scenery and Lighting by JAMES TILTON

  Costumes by FRED VOELPEL

  General Manager, MICHAEL KASDAN

  Production Stage Manager, MARK WRIGHT

  Lincoln Center production at Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street, New York City 10/28/05 (preview); 11/21/05–12/31/05.

  FRANCES STERNHAGEN as NANCY

  GEORGE GRIZZARD as CHARLIE

  FREDERICK WELLER as LESLIE

  ELIZABETH as SARAH

  Written by EDWARD ALBEE

  Directed by MARK LAMOS

  Scenic Design by MICHAEL YEARGEN

  Lighting Design by PETER KACZOROWSKI

  Sound Design by AURAL FIXATION

  Costumes by FRED VOELPEL

  LCT General Manager, ADAM SIEGEL

  LCT Production Manager, MICHAEL MCGOFF

  Contents

  By Edward Albee

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Act One

  Act Two

  ACT ONE

  The curtain rises. NANCY and CHARLIE on a sand dune. Bright sun. They are dressed informally. There is a blanket and a picnic basket. Lunch is done; NANCY is finishing putting things away. There is a pause and then a jet plane is heard from stage right to stage left—growing, becoming deafeningly loud, diminishing.

  NANCY

  Such noise they make.

  CHARLIE

  They’ll crash into the dunes one day. I don’t know what good they do.

  NANCY

  (Looks toward the ocean; sighs)

  Still … Oh, Charlie, it’s so nice! Can’t we stay here forever? Please!

  CHARLIE

  Unh-unh.

  NANCY

  That is not why. That is merely no.

  CHARLIE

  Because.

  NANCY

  Nor is that.

  CHARLIE

  Because … because you don’t really mean it.

  NANCY

  I do!

  CHARLIE

  Here?

  NANCY (Expansive)

  Yes!

  CHARLIE

  Right here on the beach. Build a … a tent, or a lean-to.

  NANCY (Laughs gaily)

  No, silly, not this very spot! But here, by the shore.

  CHARLIE

  You wouldn’t like it.

  NANCY

  I would! I’d love it here! I’d love it right where we are, for that matter.

  CHARLIE

  Not after a while you wouldn’t.

  NANCY

  Yes, I would. I love the water, and I love the air, and the sand and the dunes and the beach grass, and the sunshine on all of it and the white clouds way off, and the sunsets and the noise the shells make in the waves and, oh, I love every bit of it, Charlie.

  CHARLIE

  You wouldn’t. Not after a while.

  NANCY

  Why wouldn’t I? I don’t even mind the flies and the little … sand fleas, I guess they are.

  CHARLIE

  It gets
cold.

  NANCY

  When?

  CHARLIE

  In the winter. In the fall even. In spring.

  NANCY (Laughs)

  Well, I don’t mean this one, literally … not all the time. I mean go from beach to beach … live by the water. Seaside nomads, that’s what we’d be.

  CHARLIE (Curiously hurt feelings)

  For Christ’s sake, Nancy!

  NANCY

  I mean it! Lord above! There’s nothing binding us; you hate the city …

  CHARLIE

  No.

  NANCY (Undaunted)

  It would be so lovely. Think of all the beaches we could see.

  CHARLIE

  No, now …

  NANCY

  Southern California, and the Gulf, and Florida … and up to Maine, and what’s-her-name’s—Martha’s—Vineyard, and all those places that the fancy people go: the Riviera and that beach in Rio de Janeiro, what is that?

  CHARLIE

  The Copacabana.

  NANCY

  Yes, and Pago Pago, and … Hawaii! Think, Charlie! We could go around the world and never leave the beach, just move from one hot sand strip to another: all the birds and fish and seaside flowers, and all the wondrous people that we’d meet. Oh, say you’d like to do it, Charlie.

  CHARLIE

  No.

  NANCY

  Just say you’d like to.

  CHARLIE

  If I did you’d say I meant it; you’d hold me to it.

  NANCY (Transparent)

  No I wouldn’t. Besides, you have to be pushed into everything.

  CHARLIE

  Um-hum. But I’m not going to be pushed into … into this—this new business.

  NANCY (Private rapture)

  One great seashore after another; pounding waves and quiet coves; white sand, and red—and black, somewhere, I remember reading; palms, and pine trees, cliffs and reefs, and miles of jungle, sand dunes …

  CHARLIE

  No.

  NANCY

  … and all the people! Every … language … every … race.

  CHARLIE

  Unh-unh.

  NANCY

  Of course, I’d never push you.

  CHARLIE

  You? Never!

  NANCY (Gay)

  Well, maybe a hint here; hint there.

  CHARLIE

  Don’t even do that, hunh?

  NANCY

  That’s all it takes: figure out what you’d really like—what you want without knowing it, what would secretly please you, put it in your mind, then make all the plans. You do it; you like it.

  CHARLIE (Final)

  Nancy, I don’t want to travel from beach to beach, cliff to sand dune, see the races, count the flies. Anything. I don’t want to do … anything.

  NANCY (Testy)

  I see. Well.

  CHARLIE

  I’m happy … doing … nothing.

  NANCY

  (Makes to gather some of their things)

  Well then, we’d best get started. Up! Let’s get back!

  CHARLIE (Not moving)

  I just … want … to … do … nothing.

  NANCY (Gathering)

  Well, you’re certainly not going to do that.

  (Takes something from him, a pillow, perhaps)

  Hurry now; let’s get things together.

  CHARLIE (Aware)

  What … Nancy, what on earth are you …

  NANCY (Busy)

  We are not going to be around forever, Charlie, and you may not do nothing. If you don’t want to do what I want to do—which doesn’t matter—then we will do what you want to do, but we will not do nothing. We will do something. So, tell me what it is you want to do and …

  CHARLIE

  I said. Now give me back my …

  NANCY

  You said, “I just want to do nothing; I’m happy doing nothing.” Yes? But is that what we’ve … come all this way for?

  (Some wonder and chiding)

  Had the children? Spent all this time together? All the sharing? For nothing? To lie back down in the crib again? The same at the end as at the beginning? Sleep? Pacifier? Milk? Incomprehensible once more?

  (Pause)

  Sleep?

  (Pause)

  Sleep, Charlie? Back to sleep?

  CHARLIE

  Well, we’ve earned a little …

  NANCY

  … rest.

  (Nods, sort of bitterly)

  We’ve earned a little rest. Well, why don’t we act like the old folks, why don’t we sell off, and take one bag apiece and go to California, or in the desert where they have the farms—the retirement farms, the old folks’ cities? Why don’t we settle in to waiting, like … like the camels that we saw in Egypt—groan down on all fours, sigh, and eat the grass, or whatever it is. Why don’t we go and wait the judgment with our peers? Take our teeth out, throw away our corset, give in to the palsy, let our mind go dim, play lotto and canasta with the widows and the widowers, eat cereal …

  (CHARLIE sighs heavily, exasperatedly)

  Yes! Sigh! Go on! But once you get there, once you do that, there’s no returning, that purgatory before purgatory. No thank you, sir! I haven’t come this long way.

  CHARLIE (Chuckles a little, resigned)

  What do you want to do, Nancy?

  NANCY

  Nor have you! Not this long way to let loose. All the wisdom—by accident, by accident, some of it—all the wisdom and the … unfettering. My God, Charlie: See Everything Twice!

  CHARLIE (Settling back)

  What do you want to do?

  NANCY

  You are not going to live forever, to coin a phrase. Nor am I, I suppose, come to think of it, though it would be nice. Nor do I imagine we’ll have the satisfaction of doing it together—head-on with a bus, or into a mountain with a jet, or buried in a snowslide, if we ever get to the Alps. No. I suppose I’ll do the tag without you. Selfish, aren’t you—right to the end.

  CHARLIE

  (Feeling for her hand, taking it)

  What do you want to do?

  NANCY (Wistful)

  If you get badly sick I’ll poison myself.

  (Waits for reaction, gets none)

  And you?

  CHARLIE (Yawning)

  Yes; if you get badly sick I’ll poison myself, too.

  NANCY

  Yes, but then if I did take poison, you’d get well again, and there I’d be, laid out, all for a false alarm. I think the only thing to do is to do something.

  CHARLIE (Nice)

  What would you like to do?

  NANCY (Faraway)

  Hm?

  CHARLIE

  Move from one sand strip to another? Live by the sea from now on?

  NANCY (Great wistfulness)

  Well, we have nothing holding us, except together; chattel? Does chattel mean what I think it does? We have nothing we need have. We could do it; I would so like to.

  CHARLIE (Smiles)

  All right.

  NANCY (Sad little laugh)

  You’re humoring me; it is something I want, though; maybe only the principle.

  (Larger laugh)

  I suspect our children would have us put away if we announced it as a plan—beachcombing, leaf huts. Even if we did it in hotels they’d have a case—for our reasons.

  CHARLIE

  Mmmmmmm.

  NANCY

  Let’s merely have it for today … and tomorrow, and … who knows: continue the temporary and it becomes forever.

  CHARLIE (Relaxed; content)

  All right.

  (The sound of the jet plane from stage right to stage left—growing, becoming deafeningly loud, diminishing)

  NANCY

  Such noise they make!

  CHARLIE

  They’ll crash into the dunes one day; I don’t know what good they do.

  NANCY (After a pause)

  Still … Ahhh; breathe the sea air.

/>   (Tiny pause; suddenly remembers)

  Didn’t you tell me? When you were a little boy you wanted to live in the sea?

  CHARLIE

  Under.

  NANCY (Delighted)

  Yes! Under the water—in it. That all your friends pined to have wings? Icarus? Soar?

  CHARLIE

  Uh-huh.

  NANCY

  Yes, but you wanted to go under. Gills, too?

  CHARLIE

  As I remember. A regular fish, I mean fishlike—arms and legs and everything, but able to go under, live down in the coral and the ferns, come home for lunch and bed and stories, of course, but down in the green, the purple, and big enough not to be eaten if I stayed close in. Oh yes; I did want that.

  NANCY

  (Considers it, with some wonder)

  Be a fish.

  (Lightly)

  No, that’s not among what I wanted—when I was little, not that I remember. I wanted to be a pony once, I think, but not for very long. I wanted to be a woman. I wanted to grow up to be that, and all it had with it.

  (Notices something below her in the distance, upstage. Offhand)

  There are some people down there; I thought we were alone. In the water; some people, I think.

  (Back)

  And, I suppose I have become that.

  CHARLIE (Smiling)

  You have.

  NANCY

  In any event, the appearances of it: husband, children—precarious, those, for a while, but nicely settled now—to all appearances—and the grandchildren … here, and on the way. The top of the pyramid! Us two, the children, and all of theirs.

  (Mildly puzzled)

  Isn’t it odd that you can build a pyramid from the top down? Isn’t that difficult? The engineering?

  CHARLIE

  There wasn’t anyone before us?

  NANCY (Laughs lightly)

  Well, yes, but everybody builds his own, starts fresh, starts up in the air, builds the base around him. Such levitation! Our own have started theirs.

  CHARLIE

  It’s all one.

  NANCY (Sort of sad about it)

  Yes.

  (Bright again)

  Or maybe it’s the most … difficult, the most … breathtaking of all: the whole thing balanced on one point; a reversed pyramid, always in danger of toppling over when people don’t behave themselves.

  CHARLIE (Chuckling)

  All right.

  NANCY (Above it)

  You have no interest in imagery. None.