Palm Sunday, Welcome to the Monkey House
Page 53
JEKYLL AND HYDE UPDATED
LEE Guber, the Broadway producer, became a friend of mine when we served on the New York State Council for the Arts. During the summer of 1978 he asked me to write a modern version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the musical stage. The original, by the way, is a tiny thing, no more than sixty pages. There is very little characterization in the original, which is surprisingly sketchy and sparsely populated. It was the first piece of writing for which Stevenson was paid.
I never got paid for my version. I consider it excellent, if a little slapdash and short. It is called The Chemistry Professor, and it goes like this:
THE TIME: THE PRESENT, SPRINGTIME. THE PLACE: SWEETBREAD COLLEGE, A SMALL, LIBERAL-ARTS INSTITUTION OUTSIDE PHILADELPHIA.
SCENE 1: THE COLLEGE GATE, NOON.
[At the rise: A chorus of male and female students is discovered, desperately unhappy, making extravagant demonstrations of grief. A particularly pretty and scatterbrained coed is named KIMBERLY. Her studious boyfriend is named SAM. Each person has a fresh copy of the student newspaper, which has told them that the college is bankrupt, and will probably close forever.]
KIMBERLY: I can't stand it!
SAM: What kind of a world is this, where a thing like this can happen? STUDENT 1: What a rotten, stinking society this is!
[And so on. The cries become more musical and the milling more formal, so that a song and dance about outrageous fortune materializes. No mention has yet been made, however, as to what the misery is all about. The number ends with the students strewn about in poses of dejection.]
STUDENT 1: I feel like getting drunk.
SAM: What good would that do?
STUDENT 1: At least I could throw up.
KIMBERLY: You always do.
[SALLY CATHCART, a Judy Garland look-alike, enters boisterously in cheerleading garb, carrying pom-poms high. She has not heard the news.]
SALLY: Hey, gang—what's there to be so blue about? It's springtime!
KIMBERLY: Where have you been, Sally?
SALLY: Cheerleading practice. [A sample cheer] With an S, with a W, with an E, E, T! With a B, with an R, with an E, A, D! Sweetbread! Sweetbread! Sweetbread!
SAM: The college is bankrupt, Sally.
SALLY: Oh, no!
SAM: [Handing her a paper] It's in the Daily Pancreas.
KIMBERLY: They wouldn't dare print it, if it weren't true.
SALLY: [Reading] "Bankrupt! Closing its doors forever in two weeks' time." The most innocent college in the world.
SAM: Drop your pom-poms, Sally. Nothing to cheer for here anymore.
SALLY: I won't drop them yet, Sam—but I'll carry them low.
CHORUS: [Singing as one, a rich chord]
Lowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
[JERR Y RIVERS, a Mickey Rooney look-alike and president of the student body, enters with his stepfather, FRED LEGHORN, shrewd hayseed king of the mechanized chicken industry]
SAM: Hey—it's Jerry Rivers, the president of the student body.
JERRY: Gang—this is my mother's fifth and possibly final husband, Fred Leghorn, the largest producer of chickens in the world.
SALLY: Do you ever get tired of chickens, Mr. Leghorn?
LEGHORN: Anybody who is tired of chickens is tired of life.
SAM: You hear about the bankruptcy, Jerry?
JERRY: Yeah. I keep wondering what an ordinary bunch of kids like us can do.
[JERRY puts his hands behind his back, does a tap dance as he ponders the problem. He stops, speaks to the chorus.]
JERRY: You kids got any ideas?
[Members of the chorus put their hands behind their backs and duplicate his steps in unison. They stop and sing the next line with a gorgeous choral effect.]
CHORUS: [Singing] What can ordinary kids like us do about anything?
LEGHORN: Maybe you could have a cake sale.
SALLY: Mr. Leghorn—couldn't you give us a few million buckaroonies or so?
LEGHORN: I came down here to see what this stepson of mine was getting for ten thousand dollars a year, and I must say I'm not overwhelmed with respect. It looks like Disneyland without the rides to me.
KIMBERLY: But we're your nation's future!
LEGHORN: That's what I mean.
JERRY: Wait a minute! I've got it! We'll put together a Broadway musical with all the talent we've got right here!
CHORUS: [Thunderstruck, as one] Wow! Do you think we really could?
JERRY: Why not? We could take a piece of meretricious kid crap up there and make enough in a season to keep this academic bucket shop running for years!
CHORUS: [As one] Holy smokes!
SALLY: Jerry—just one question: Are we still in love?
JERRY: You mean in spite of the bankruptcy? It's too early to tell.
SALLY: I'll wait.
[ELBERT WHITEFEET, the beloved old college president and philosopher, enters wild with grief over the bankruptcy. He is comforted by DR. HENRY JEKYLL, the venerable head of the chemistry department, and by POPS, the doddering campus cop. WHITEFEET and JEKYLL wear academic caps and gowns. POPS is uniformed like a Keystone Cop. It is a wild scene. Students look on in horror and pity as WHITEFEET tears out handfuls of his own hair, rends his garments, dumps a trash container over himself, and so on.]
WHITEFEET: I don't want to live anymore!
POPS: Please, sir—the student body is watching.
WHITEFEET: I don't care!
POPS: They shouldn't see the president of their college in this condition. They might write home.
WHITEFEET: They should hang me from the Senior Elm for what I've done.
JEKYLL: Elbert—you haven't done anything a million other nincompoops might not have done.
WHITEFEET: [Embracing Jekyll] Ah—Dr. Henry Jekyll— the head of the chemistry department and my closest friend. Faithful old Henry, the only faculty member with a statewide reputation.
JERRY: President Whitefeet—Dr. Jekyll—what happened to the endowment, which was supposed to be so big and well invested—the Xerox, the Polaroid, the IBM.
WHITEFEET: [Echoing tragically] The Xerox, the Polaroid, the IBM.
CHORUS: The Xerox, the Polaroid, the IBM.
[This sets off a terrific rhythm number that builds and builds, and consists of the chanting of the names of common stocks. Everybody is caught up in a mad, slobbering war dance about wealth. It ends in panting exhaustion.]
LEGHORN: What did happen to all those stocks?
KIMBERLY: [Sexually aroused by wealth] All those woozum, coozum, squoozum blue chip stocks. Yum, yum! Yum, yum!
WHITEFEET: A clean-cut young investment counselor with a silver tongue came into my office two months ago. I was reading Plato at the time.
SAM: What part of Plato, sir?
WHITEFEET: [Indignantly] I don't have to answer pipsqueak questions like that anymore. I was reading Plato. Period.
SAM: Yes, sir.
WHITEFEET: It's all kind of one big mixed up thing anyway. Can't tell where one thing stops and the next thing begins. This investment counselor said to me, "Lift your bloodshot eyes from the yellowed page, old philosopher. Look at the world as it has come to be! There's money to be made! In two months' time, Sweetbread College could be twice as rich as Harvard!"
SALLY: But Harvard's too big!
KIMBERLY: Harvard's too hard!
SAM: They're really serious up there.
WHITEFEET: "Put everything you've got into cocoa futures." he said.
LEGHORN: Oh Lord.
WHITEFEET: Please, for the love of God, don't anybody ever mention cocoa in my presence again.
SALLY: What are cocoa futures?
WHITEFEET: I still don't know.
KIMBERLY: I'll go to the library and look it up.
WHITEFEET: That's what you're here for—to learn how to look things up.
LEGHORN: [To Kimberly] Look under "C."
KIMBERLY: [Sincerely] Thanks for the tip.
[KIMBERLY exits
.]
WHITEFEET: If my doctor's thesis had not been about philosophical arguments against suicide, I would be a dead man now.
JERRY: Dr. Whitefeet—?
WHITEFEET: [Indicating that he is non compos mentis with self-loathing] Bluh, bluh, bluh.
JERRY: Sir—I've been talking to the rest of the kids, and we thought maybe we could put on a Broadway musical.
WHITEFEET: Uck.
LEGHORN: The smartest thing you ever said.
JERRY: I haven't figured out what it should be about.
SALLY: You're a show business genius, Jerry. You can do anything. SAM: We could do the story of Jesus Christ.
JERRY: Maybe.
SALLY: [Singing to tune of "Ach Du Lieber Augustine"]
Oh, I am Mary Magdalene,
Magdalene, Magdalene—
I am Mary Magdalene.
How do you do?
POPS: [To same tune]
I have got the leprosy,
Leprosy, leprosy.
I have got the leprosy.
Who will cure me?
JERRY: No, no. Kids have done Jesus Christ to death onstage. (A double take) Say, Pops, I didn't know you could sing.
POPS: I was on my way to being a star of stage, screen, and radio. But then my dog was run over, and I entered a period of deep depression from which I never recovered. Nobody starts out to be a campus cop.
JEKYLL: Cripes—you know, I ought to be able to do something to help. Come up with a chemical discovery of some kind.
WHITEFEET: You've already given the world the recipe for Betty Crocker banana cake.
JEKYLL: I'm thinking of something really dangerous, Nobel prize stuff. You can't scare the pants off people with a banana cake.
JERRY: Come on, kids! Let's get cracking! Let's go over to the Mildred Peasely Bangtree Memorial Theater, and see what we can put together. We'll stay up all night! JEKYLL: I'll stay up all night, too! This is exciting! This is just the kind of a kick in the butt I've needed for years.
[All students exit.]
LEGHORN: Who was Mildred Peasely Bangtree?
WHITEFEET: Beats me.
[KIMBERLY enters.]
KIMBERLY: Excuse me—
[LEGHORN, JEKYLL, WHITEFEET, and POPS gather together as a barbershop quartet, and sing a heart-rending ballad, "How Can We Help You, Little Girl?"]
KIMBERLY: You all through?
LEGHORN, JEKYLL, WHITEFEET, POPS: [Still singing in harmony] All through.
KIMBERLY: Which building is the library?
CURTAIN
SCENE 2: DR. JEKYLL'S LABORATORY. TEN O'CLOCK AT NIGHT. A PAINTED BACKDROP WITH AN OPERATING WINDOW AND DOOR IN IT.
[At the rise: Library clock strikes ten. Dog howls. DR. JEKYLL is alone and going through hell, trying to think of something really good to discover. The theater is within hailing distance.]
JEKYLL: Gosh darn it to heck. Let's put on the old thinking cap, and cogitate. Jesus, this is really a doozy, trying to think up something nobody ever thought up before. Everything I think of has been thought of.
[JERRY appears in the window. He is dejected.]
JERRY: Dr. Jekyll—looks like you're going to have to save the college singlehanded. We can't think up a story.
JEKYLL: Things are none too brisk in the lab, my boy. Why is it that every time you need a Nobel prize-type idea, you never can think of one?
JERRY: I'm sending over some inspiration for you. Hope it helps.
JEKYLL: Inspiration? JERRY: You'll see.
[JERRY exits. LEGHORN knocks on the door.]
JEKYLL: Entrez.
[LEGHORN enters with a bottle containing a green chemical.]
LEGHORN: I wonder if you'd run an analysis on this for me. It's some kind of dope one of my competitors is feeding his chickens. I'd like to know what's in it. I'll pay you well.
JEKYLL: That's like asking Albert Einstein to balance your checkbook.
LEGHORN: He couldn't tie his own shoelaces. Everybody knows that. [Spotting a row of bottles] A half gallon of LSD! Amphetamines! Barbiturates! Quaaludes! Vitamin E! What are you doing with this stuff?
JEKYLL: Taken from students at different times.
LEGHORN: No wonder they think they're so talented. I'll give you five hundred bucks if you can give me an analysis of this stuff before I get out of here—tomorrow at noon. That's only in the event, of course, that your Nobel prize project falls through. Good night.
[LEGHORN exits. JEKYLL sniffs the sample.]
JEKYLL: Whoooeee! That'll put hair on your chest! Smells like a mixture of crème de men the and athlete's foot to me.
[SALLY knocks on the door, calls through it seductively.]
SALLY: Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Jekyll. JEKYLL: Entrez.
[SALLY enters at the head of a line of coeds in diaphanous nightgowns. They have come to inspire him. KIMBERLY is among them.]
JEKYLL: [Petrified, retreating] What kind of a frame-up is this? I've never had anything to do with sex in my life!
SALLY: This isn't sex.
JEKYLL: It isn't?
SALLY: We're Muses. Jerry had us dress up like Muses, and told us to come over and inspire you.
JEKYLL: I'd hate to have to explain that to the state police.
SALLY: You just relax and enjoy it.
[The music starts up, and the girls do a sort of here-we-go-gathering-nuts-in-May dance with and around JEKYLL, tickling him, blowing in his ears, decking him with flowers, and so on. The dance ends with JEKYLL in a sensationally compromising position.
WHITEFEET enters without knocking, and is scandalized.]
WHITEFEET: I am revolted! I am disillusioned! I am scandalized!
JEKYLL: It isn't what it looked like.
WHITEFEET: It looked like a full professor playing here-we-go-gathering-nuts-in-May.
SALLY: It was our fault, Dr. Whitefeet.
WHITEFEET: What do you foolish virgins know? You couldn't find your own behinds with both hands.
KIMBERLY: [Proudly, innocently] I just found mine.
WHITEFEET: [Pointing to JEKYLL] There is the man I hold responsible. He is not only a Dr. Jekyll—he is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. SALLY: [Echoing wonderingly] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. [More firmly] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! That's it!
JEKYLL: Who's Mr. Hyde?
SALLY: That's the story for our musical! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—it's never been done. Wait till I tell Jerry!
WHITEFEET: Just a minute! What about this moral outrage I saw here?
SALLY: [On her way out, leading the other coeds] Buster— when you peed away the endowment on cocoa futures, you ceased to exist as a moral leader for me. You don't have the brains God gave a clay pigeon.
[SALLY and the coeds exit.]
WHITEFEET: I suppose I had that coming. It's probably good for me that people speak to me like that from time to time.
JEKYLL: Who's Mr. Hyde?
WHITEFEET: From the famous story, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," by Clare Boothe Luce. JEKYLL: I never heard of it.
WHITEFEET: Your name is Jekyll, and you never heard of one of the most famous stories in all of our literature—a story with your own name in it?
JEKYLL: I don't make you feel like something the cat drug in because you don't know any chemistry. Don't you make me feel like something the cat drug in because I don't know any literature.
WHITEFEET: It's about a man who discovers a substance that changes his whole personality and appearance when he drinks it. He changes from nice Dr. Jekyll to terrible Mr. Hyde.
JEKYLL: He drinks it himself?
WHITEFEET: And becomes a monster.
JEKYLL: Doesn't give it to somebody else. He drinks it himself.
WHITEFEET: That's right. JEKYLL: [Inspired] Boy—that's what I call balls.
[Cheers come from the theater as SALLY delivers the good news.]
JERRY: [Off, far away] That's it, kids! Jekyll and Hyde!
CURTAIN
SCENE 3: THE BARE STAGE OF THE MlLDRED PEASELY BANGTREE MEMORIAL THEAT
ER—A FEW MINUTES LATER.
[At the rise: All the students, except for JERRY, SALLY, KIMBERLY, and SAM, are onstage. They are excited about doing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. POPS is looking on. The girls are still in nightgowns.
Accompanied by scary music, they experiment with turning into monsters, uttering maniacal laughs, and generally trying to scare the hell out of each other.
JERRY, SALLY, KIMBERLY, and SAM enter, loaded down with Victorian costumes and props.]
JERRY: Okay, kids—we found all this stuff in the costume loft. Come and get it.
[They throw down the costumes, and people set about clothing themselves, including SALLY, KIMBERLY, and SAM.]
POPS: Can I pick a costume, too?
JERRY: No. You're perfect as you are. We need a comedy cop.
POPS: [Offended] There's real bullets in my gun.
JERRY: You're kidding! They shouldn't trust you with a squirt gun loaded with lemonade!
POPS: Thanks a lot.
JERRY: Any time.
[LEGHORN enters from the wings, impressed by a machine he has seen back there.]
LEGHORN: Mind if I watch you geniuses work? JERRY: Glad to have you, Dad.
[Everybody but JERR Y and LEGHORN and POPS turns his or her back to the audience, and applies monster makeup, becoming Dracula or Frankenstein or Wolfman or whatever.]