You Fancy Yourself
Page 1
You Fancy Yourself
MAJA ARDAL
PLAYWRIGHTS CANADA PRESS
TORONTO | CANADA
Song Credits
“Sofdu Unga Astin Min”
Icelandic traditional (written as pronouced)
“The Massacre of Glencoe”
Words and music by Jim MacLean. Published by Duart
Music, London. Permission granted.
“Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad”
by Robert Burns
“Highland Fairy Lullaby”
Scottish traditional
“A Red, Red Rose”
by Robert Burns
“Scotland the Brave”
Scottish traditional
To my theatre mentor, the late George Luscombe.
Introduction
I began by writing poems about characters—shadowy memories of childhood. The first to appear were Estelle and Jamie. They represented my first encounter with urban poverty. They were ostracized in school but they captured my heart. I soon realized that these characters were too active to stay on the page. Elsa appeared, others quickly followed, a story emerged and a play was born.
Edinburgh in post–Second World War Scotland was grey and grim. The working-class areas were characterized by tenement row housing blackened by soot from coal fires. In the flats lived penny-pinching families, fast-growing with baby boomer-children. People were now coming from all over Europe, most refugees, but some, like Elsa’s father, came to study at Scotland’s famous universities. She is the foreign child who enters Edinburgh with a Nordic imagination and a desire to become Scottish as quickly as she can. She seizes on a dramatic and famous historical event as her guide to all things Scottish. “The Massacre of Glencoe” becomes her guiding theme. Ultimately, as she discovers in the end, massacres can be a difficult metaphor for life.
Elsa’s journey tells the story of what it takes to fit in and how difficult it is to stay loyal to your friends in the process.
Playwright’s notes
There is a conscious rhythm in the writing. At times it feels poetic. But the immediacy and urgency of the story must always be at the heart of the work.
The performance of this work depends on the actor’s ease with swift character changes. The actor must immerse her body in the world of the play.
There is no need for any realism, except for a basic costume for the actor that gives the sense that this story occurred in the 1950s – 60s.
As characters appear they must be defined by a clear and simple physicality.
The vocal changes are dependent on that physicality and on the needs of each character.
Notes on music and language
The language Svana speaks in the play is Icelandic.
The song at the beginning of the play, “Softhu Unga Astin Min” is Iceland’s most commonly sung lullaby. Although the words are tragic, every Icelandic child is comforted by it. (This is a particular conundrum for the Nordic people.) The story of the song originates in an old play about Iceland’s most famous sheep thief, Fjalla Eyvindur, (Eyvindur of the Mountains). He and his wife escape capture and hide in the mountains for several years. During this time she gives birth to a girl. When the girl is four years old the bounty hunters come after them and nearly capture them. As they run it becomes clear that the child is slowing them down. The mother makes her decision. She sings the lullaby to her child and then throws her into the waterfall.
Near the end of the play Elsa chants “Fagur Fiskur I sjo.” This is a chanting game about catching a big fish.
The Massacre of Glencoe
The massacre of Glencoe, 1692, is a famous event in Scottish history. The MacDonald clan was already enemies with the Campbells, who had claimed a great amount of MacDonald land and refused to give it back. The MacDonalds would raid the Campbells’s herds of cows in retaliation.
King William of England was trying to control the Scottish Highland clans at that time, so he made them swear an oath of allegiance to the English throne. The Campbells had sworn the oath, but the MacDonalds had not.
One night delegates from the Campbell clan went to visit the MacDonalds, who lived in the valley of Glencoe. No clan would ever refuse hospitality to anyone. The MacDonalds invited the Campbells in, fed them, gave them drink and beds for the night.
During the night the Campbells killed the MacDonalds in their beds and set fire to their homes.
This event still resonates among the Scots today, and there are those who insist they can hear the screams of the MacDonalds when they stand in the windy valley of Glencoe.
You Fancy Yourself was first produced by Contrary Company at the Factory Studio, Toronto, as part of the Summerworks Festival 2006 with the following cast and crew:
Performed by Maja Ardal
Directed by Mary Francis Moore
Designed by Julia Tribe
Stage managed by Silvia Maria Wannam
You Fancy Yourself was workshopped by Contrary Company in June 2006 with the generous support of the Toronto Arts Council.
January 2009: You Fancy Yurself produced by Contrary Company in association with Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, with the following cast and crew:
Performed by Maja Ardal
Directed by Mary Francis Moore
Designed by Julia Tribe
Characters
Elsa is the central character. She transforms into each character as they appear. Character changes happen without costume changes, and scenic elements should be minimal. The period of the play spans eight years. Elsa is four years old at the outset and eleven years old by the end.
ELSA: 4-11 years old. Vigorous, imaginative, optimistic.
ESTELLE: 4-11 years old. Shy, poor, lives upstairs.
SCRUBBING LADY: Ancient, hard working. She works off her rent by scrubbing endlessly up and down the stone tenement stairs. She is reminiscent of the terrifying mountain witch from Elsa’s Nordic stories. Elsa’s version of this crone steals and eats children.
SVANA: Elsa’s mother. Tall and statuesque. She seems rather fierce to those who do not know her. She speaks with strong Nordic accent.
MUMMY: Estelle’s mother, bedridden by an unexplained chronic condition.
DENNIS: Estelle’s brother. 9-11 years old. Tough. Protector of Estelle and Mummy.
MISS CAMPBELL: Elsa and Estelle’s teacher from the infant (senior kindergarten) class to the senior graduating class. Rigidly authoritarian, her strictness is born of some romantic disappointment. Her surname represents the Campbell clan, who are still to this day remembered as the cruel murderers of the sleeping MacDonald clan in “The Massacre of Glencoe.”
JAMIE MacDonald: 5-11 years old. A child of the urban underbelly of Edinburgh. He has a perpetual sinus condition. Jamie has seen too much already.
JUNE MacReady: 5-11 years old. Middle class, nicely dressed, very pretty. The psychological leader of the girls’ playground.
FRANCES Green: 5-11 years old. Tall and vindictive. She does June’s dirty work in the playground.
MARTIN Bailey: Eleven years old. Fabulously handsome. The girls have already pegged him as the boy of choice before he even knows it. He has dark hair, black eyes and he knows how to stop a playground with his whistle.
Locales
The deck of a ship at Leith Docks, Edinburgh.
Elsa’s tenement flat: the kitchen, the closet, the scullery, the bedroom.
The stone stairwell of the tenement.
Estelle’s tenement flat: the hallway, the kitche
n.
The Meadows: A large expanse of green in the centre of Edinburgh. Here men play football after work, dogs run around, people take evening walks and lovers lean against trees in the shadows to kiss.
Bruntsfield School: A huge, red, sandstone building. The playgrounds are divided into the boys’ side and girls’ side. Each playground has an enormous double door leading to the school. Each entrance indicates BOYS or GIRLS with the letters carved into large stone slabs above the doors.
The classroom.
The original production was performed on a bare stage with a wooden box / trunk with lid, in the centre. The box was used to stand on, hide behind, sit on, it contained a kilt which was pulled out at the end of act one.
Act ONE
Leith Docks, Edinburgh, Scotland, September, 1953
ELSA, four years old, sings:
ELSA
Sofdu unga astin min [Sleep my darling, go to sleep]
Uti regnid graetur [While the rain is weeping]
Mamma geimir gullin thin [Mamma will your treasures keep]
Gamla leggi og voluskrin [Old jawbones and legs of sheep]
Vid skulum ekki vaka [The dusky night will watch you]
A dimmar naetur [While you’re sleeping]
The ship is quiet now
My tummy feels empty
But not woozy and sick like the last three days
When green foamy sea
Pulled us forward to the new land, then sucked us back to the old
The air is foggy and smells of oil and fish
The drizzle has washed the colour away
And I see no land
Only a curtain of grey
Pabbi carries the bags
And a cigarette hangs from his lips
Making his eye screw up like he’s winking
My Pabbi never got seasick
For three whole days
He stood at the front of the ship
And laughed and sang into the wind
Like a Viking warrior, he shouted
“I am coming to raid the halls of Scottish learning!”
While Mamma and I
Sat bundled up on the heaving deck
Trying to remember that in this new place
We’ll have to speak only English
And practising words like
“Do you have a flat for rent?”
And “Hallo, my name is Elsa”
Today is the end of the in-between
Pabbi walks fast like it’s exciting
He leads us down the wet deck
And steps up on the gangway
Which squeaks and clangs and shakes
From the ship far down to ground
Like it’s going to break
Pabbi! Biddu! Wait for me!
Steps up, looks down and freezes.
(narrating) Oh no! There’s a gap!
It’s waiting to suck me down
Into the oily black sea!
Mamma steps past, loaded with bags
She’ll leave me here all alone, stuck on the ship
Because I won’t cross that terrible hole
I’ll slip right through, and fall down, down
And disappear forever into the hungry black sea—!
My mamma calls back over her shoulder—
MAMMA
Kondu, Elsa, kondu! Hang on to my coat!
ELSA
—as she wobbles down the gangway, carrying our whole life in each big suitcase.
(screams) Mamma!!!!
And I wish I’d never left
Never left the place where lullabies are born
Where it’s bright all summer night
And we run up in the mountains
Picking berries and singing
To the elf children hiding in the lava
Mamma!
And all of a sudden I am in my father’s arms
And I smell cigars and last night’s whiskey
I bury my face in his wool jacket and hold on so tight
So tight that he’ll never let go—
And he laughs
And now we’re all together again standing on stone
Mamma strokes my head and wipes my tears with her perfumy hand.
MAMMA
(drying ELSA’s tears) Ekki grata, Elskan. Don’t cry. We’re going in a taxi, and we’re going to find a flat to live in, a new home.
ELSA
(narrating) The fog is lifting, and now I see
Rows and rows of chimneys sending smoke into the sky
Like the breath of a thousand dragons
Edinborg
Skotland
A few days later, in a tenement flat in Edinburgh
ELSA
(narrating) Mamma is scrubbing. She says she has never seen such a dirty flat. It’s the bottom floor, and there are bars on the windows. Pabbi is unpacking his books. He says he is getting ready to raid the halls of Scottish learning. There’s nothing for me to do. I’d better go and find out if there are any other children in Skotland.
Steps outside the door of the flat into the stairwell. She gazes up the flight of stairs.
In the stairwell the stone steps wind up and up and up, and right at the top peeking through the railing bars I see a face. A tiny white face. A girl!
Waves and smiles.
(to the girl) Hvad heitir thu? Hvad heitir thu? [What’s your name?] Villtu leika med mer? [Come and play with me.] Kondu ath leika— [Come and play]
Remembers and tries again in stilted English.
Hallo! My name is Elsa!
(narrating) Estelle Munro lives in the flat at the top of the stairs. I live in the flat at the bottom. She is like the elf children who hide in the mountains and never wash. But you can see how beautiful she is if you have the gift. I have the gift. She’s scared of my mamma because she is very tall and she speaks like a foreign person.
ESTELLE knocks on the door, MAMMA opens. She is statuesque and has a rather harsh accent. To ESTELLE she is a giant.
MAMMA
You heff komm to see Elssa again?
ESTELLE
(cowering) Yes please.
MAMMA
Elsa! Kondu! Estelle bidur eftir ther! [Come! Estelle is here.]
ELSA
(appears holding her book) Hullo, Estelle.
(narrating) Estelle looks like she wants to run back upstairs, so I take her hand to stop her being scared.
(to ESTELLE) Do you want to hear a story?
ESTELLE
(relieved) Yes please.
ELSA
(narrating) So we sit on the stone landing in the stairwell and I open my Golden Wonder Book that Pabbi gave me so I can learn to read English.
Performing for ESTELLE.
The fairy godmother waved her wand, and in a shower of sparkles like the northern lights the mousetrap became a golden chariot of the Viking gods.
ESTELLE
(uncomprehendingly) A what?
Ignoring the interruption ELSA starts to demonstrate melodramatically, totally caught up in the story.
ELSA
Cinderella’s dress twinkled like the summer snow on the mountaintop…
ESTELLE
(with wonder) Ohhh!
ELSA
And her shoes were made of ice crystals from the cave of the Mountain Queen…
ESTELLE
Ohhh!
The SCRUBBING LADY appears out of nowhere, bucket and scrubbing brush in hand.
SCRUBBING LADY
Get out ma road ye brats!
EL
SA
(narrating) The scrubbing lady has come to wash the stairs. She lives in the coal cellar and I think she eats children.
The SCRUBBING LADY snarls at ESTELLE.
SCRUBBING LADY
Go on upstairs ye dirty wee thing, and don’t come down till I’m done!
ELSA
(gazing up the stairs) Estelle has disappeared so fast!
(to the audience) She’s just like the elf girl who becomes invisible whenever there’s trouble.
Sings from the lullaby as she gazes up the winding stairwell.
Thad er margt sem mirkrid veit [There is much the darkness knows]
Minn er hugur thungur [My soul is filled with gloom]
Oft eg svartan sandin leit [I gaze across volcanic sand]
Svida graena engi reit [Burning up the sweet green land]
I jokklinum hljoda [The glacier’s rumble]
Daudar djupar sprungur [Calls out for our doom]
(narrating) I have not seen Estelle for a lot of days. Maybe she’s not feeling well. I want to tell the story of the Little Match Girl to Estelle because she looks like the picture. Estelle is thin and sad looking, like the little girl who sells matches in the street (dramatically sorrowful) and dies in
the snow (starts to weep) outside the rich people’s house, (cheers up) but then God takes her and turns her into an angel. I’ve never been to Estelle’s, but today I’m going to
sit by her bedside and make her happy as she lies there all pale and dying.
Mamma went out to buy fish for tea. I don’t want to go with her because she calls it “fiss.” She says, “Do you heff fiss?” and the man pretends he does not understand. I put on my going-out dress. It’s red with butterflies.
Steps outside the door. The SCRUBBING LADY is right outside.
Oh. Hallo.
SCRUBBING LADY
(furiously scrubbing) Mind the soap! You’ll fall and break yer neck. Tell yer mother to keep you in the house when I’m scrubbing. Watch ma bucket! Watch you don’t kick it down the stairs and it hits someone on the head and kills them!
ELSA
(narrating) It’s a long way to the top.