Veronica’s Room by Ira Levin (1973)

TW: Xenophobia, Rape Mention, Child Molestation, Incest, Gaslighting, Nudity, PTSD, Psychosis, Demonized Mental Illness

 

SYNOPSIS

            Susan and her new boyfriend have arrived at the Brabissant manor to see a photo of the middle daughter, Veronica, that Susan looks strikingly similar to. John and Maureen, the old retainers, convince Susan to pretend to be Veronica for just a few minutes because Veronica’s sister, Cissie, is dying of cancer and believes her sister to be alive and angry with her. Susan hesitantly agrees and they refresh the room while Susan changes into Veronica’s clothes from 1935. Everything is in order when the boyfriend goes downstairs until John and Maureen leave to get Cissie and bolt the door shut. Maureen returns with warm milk completely changed into 1935 dress and dismisses any remarks Susan makes about their charade while relentlessly referring to her as Veronica. John returns, also dressed for 1935 and referring to Susan as Veronica. They have become Mr. and Mrs. Brabissant and act as if Veronica has gone mad and call for the family doctor. Just when Susan has almost given up, she hears her boyfriend knocking on the door only for him to enter as the doctor. Susan continues to refute the nonsense until the doctor holds up a syringe to sedate her. Susan then complies an admits to being Veronica who’s locked in her room for killing her younger sister that found out she had been molesting their younger brother. Once Susan confesses, Mrs. Brabissant suffocates her to death. The three begin undressing and the doctor also undresses Susan’s body while they argue and discuss this being the last girl. The doctor admits to hating his role in this and only participants to get the bodies. He leaves with Susan’s corpse. The remaining man and woman reveal themselves to be Veronica and Conrad, the younger brother, while the doctor is actually their son that Veronica wanted to kill when he was a baby. They put on this ruse so that Veronica can punish “herself” for what she did to Cissie and Conrad as children. Just as Conrad thinks Veronica is finally free of her afflictions she starts slipping into a psychosis believing herself to be Susan and then back to a younger version of her actual self that’s still locked in the room, begging for her parents to let her out even though Conrad freed her once their parents died and the door is fully open at the moment.

 

CHARACTERS

Young Woman – Polish German-American, Susan

Young Man – Belgian-American, Plays the boyfriend Larry and Dr. Simpson

Man – Belgian-American, Conrad, Plays John Mackey and Mr. Brabissant

Woman – Belgian-American, Veronica, Plays Maureen Mackey and Mrs. Brabissant

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES

            Woman has a monologue as Mrs. Brabissant explaining why Veronica is locked in her room to Susan. It’s lengthy and could use a few cuts not only for timing but keeping the monologue self contained. Even then, it’s a list monologue and may not hold up well for cattle call auditions.

            Young Woman has a monologue that stands better alone where she rants about who she actually until she sees the needle an back pedals into agreeing to be Veronica. I would suggest cutting from her term paper being do to the line asking about the needle and then cut to her going “No No!” I highly recommend stopping when Young Woman says she was only pretending instead of getting into the grittier details.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            Well it’s certainly a dark show. The first act takes a while to get going, but once the latch is locked and we move into Act II the audience understands that Susan is a prisoner. The gaslighting goes quickly getting worse and worse for Susan before the illusion begins to drop with the girl being murdered. The reveal of the truth is quite twisted and I could see this being made into a short horror film.

            About the trigger warnings, while the people playing them are descended from Belgians, Larry makes multiple pejorative remarks about them bring Irish as John and Maureen speak with a brogue accent in addition to the term welshing being used as a synonym for swindling someone.

            Although the stage directions clearly say that the doctor removes the bra from Susan’s body, it would be easy to have him take the body while she’s still dressed in undergarments if a theatre wishes to avoid nudity on stage. She keeps her panties on so any theatre that just doesn’t want the actress’s bare breasts exposed could also have her wear pasties under the bra and be carried out with her chest hidden from the audience.

Little Shop of Horrors – Book & Lyrics by Howard, Music by Alan Menken (1982)

 

TW: Domestic Violence, Self Harm, Prostitution Mentioned

 

SYNOPSIS

            Seymour Krelborn has recently found a strange and interesting new plant that seems to be just what Mr. Mushnik’s flower shop needs to drum up the customers its desperate for, however Seymour discovers that the plant requires blood to keep it alive. At first Seymour feeds the plant his own blood, but soon Audrey Two’s demands become too much to keep up with. There’s fame and fortune on the line and Seymour witnesses a glimpse of just how horribly Audrey’s boyfriend, Orin Scrivello, DDS treats her, giving him the perfect target. Seymour can’t quite go through with killing Orin himself, but patiently lets the dentist asphyxiate on laughing gas and feeds the body to Twoey. Mushnik adopts Seymour in a bid to keep him loyal to the shop that’s now doing better than ever, but when he witnesses Seymour cozying up to the newly single Audrey, he starts putting two and two together about Orin’s disappearance. Seymour tricks Mushnik into climbing into Audrey Two as a means to avoid being taken to the police. Realizing the horrible things he’s done, Seymour vows to finish off the plant, but tries to wait until he can get in a photo op with Life Magazine. In the meantime the plant grows hungrier and hungrier. With Seymour refusing to kill for it anymore, the plant lures Audrey into the shop and fatally wounds her before Seymour rescues her. Audrey chooses to be fed to Twoey so that Seymour can prosper from the sacrifice. In the morning, yet another opportunist visits to harvest saplings from Audrey Two so that every home in America can have one. Realizing Twoey’s ultimate goal, Seymour lauches an attack against the plant that horribly fails and ends with him being Audrey II’s last on stage victim. The plant indeed conquers America from coast to coast preying on jerks that are willing to kill for fame and fortune.

 

CHARACTERS

Crystal, Ronnette, & Chiffon – Three Black female street urchins who function as participants in the action and a Greek Chorus outside it. They’re young, hip, smart, and the only people in the whole cast who really know what’s going on. In their “Greek Chorus” capacity, they occasionally sing to the audience directly. And when they do, it’s often with a “secret-smile” that says: “we know something you don’t know.”

Seymour – Mid-twenties and perhaps balding a little. Our insecure, naïve, put upon, florist’s clerk hero. Above all, he’s a sweet and well-meaning little man. He is not a silly, pratfalling nerd, and therefore should not be played as the hero of a Jerry Lewis film.

Audrey – The bleaxhed-blond, Billie Dawn-like, secret love of his life. If you took Judy Holiday, Carol Channing, Marlyn Monroe, and Goldie Hawn, removed their education and feelings of self-worth, dressed them in spiked heels and a low-cut black and then shook them up in a test tube to extract what’s sweetest and most vulnerable – that’d be Audrey.

Mr. Mushnik – Their boss. A failure of an East Side florist. His accent, if he has one, is more of middle class New York than of Eastern Europe. He seldom smiles but often sweats.

Orin – A tall, dark, handsome dentist with a black leather jacket and sadistic tendencies. He is not, however, a leftover from the movie version of Grease. Think instead of an egotistical pretty-boy – all got up like a greaser but thinking like an insurance salesman and talking like a radio announcer. (The actor who plays him also plays A Voice not unlike God’s, Wino #2, Customer, Radio Announcer, Mr. Bernstein, Mrs. Luce, Skip Snip, and Patrick Martin.)

The Plant (Audrey Two) – An anthropomorphic cross between a Venus flytrap and an avocado. It has a huge, nasty-looking pod which gains a shark-like aspect when open and snapping at food. The creature is played by a series of four increasingly large puppets, manipulated by one Puppeteer. (Who also plays Wino #1 in the first scene.) The first time we see The Plant, it is less than one foot tall. The last time we see it, it fills the entire stage.

Voice of the Plant – Provided by an actor on an offstage microphone. It is important that this actor have clear visual access to the puppets onstage, so that he can provide accurate lip-synch. The sound is a cross between Otis Redding, Barry White, and Wolfman Jack. Think of The Voice as that of a street-smart, funky, conniving villain – Rhythm and Blues’ answer to Richard the Third.

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES/SONG CUTS

            While Seymour has enough spoken dialogue during “Da Doo” to make a monologue with, it lacks the kind of merit needed for cattle call auditions. It’s something you’d use to test a potential Seymour’s stage presence during call backs. “Grow for Me” is a great song that can be cut to just the last stanza for actors that need more time for their monologues in a combined audition. It’s a well known song, so folks wanting to use something less known from Seymour might consider some of his parts from “The Meek Shall Inherit” which I believe was cut from the movie version.

            Audrey has her I Want song, “Somewhere That’s Green.” Personally I like the dark humor in the first two stanzas and it should feed alright to jump from them to the last stanza, but music isn’t my strong suit. Still I know it’s a song that’s used regularly enough for auditions.

            Orin’s “Dentist” is a hilarious song for character singers, but it’s hard to compete with Steve Martin’s film version of the song. I don’t suggest using this overly well known song unless it’s the best thing you have in your book.

            While Mushnik does have enough singing lines in Mushnik & Son, it’s generally regarded as one of the weaker songs in the musical. What Mushnik does have is enough lines that can be strung together just before “Suppertime” when he’s accusing Seymour of offing Orin. His threat about telling the cops himself if Seymour doesn’t come with him will be a wonderfully threatening way to end the monologue even without the minor chords playing underneath it.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            This was the first show I performed in when I started high school and will always hold a place near and dear to my heart. It’s campy and unafraid of it and for that I love this show that continues to do well with audiences ever since the earliest versions of it that pull from John Collier’s “Green Thoughts” (1934) and Aurthur C. Clarke’s “The Reluctant Orchid” (1956.) Having grown since 2009, I was worried that Mushnik’s character would seem like an antisemitic portrayal revisiting it but discovered that Jewish allusions aren’t confined to that one character. The show only exists in this form through the comedy of Jewish humor to the point that the 80s movie version was featured in the 2020 lineup of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. Of course, a Jewish person’s opinion on antisemitism will always outweigh that of a goy.

            This is a fun and dark musical that pulls from science fiction, B movies, and even the Faust legend. You get a good picture of it seeing the show, but reading the script opens up more references than a viewer can catch in just one performance, especially if their approaching the show with fresh eyes. Howard Ashmen put a lot into how the book was written if you can’t tell from the character descriptions.

The Odd Couple by Neil Simon (1965)

TW: Suicide Attempt, Suicide Encouragement, Emotional Manipulation

 

SYNOPSIS

            Felix is missing from the weekly poker game. It turns out his wife is divorcing him and he’s in a terrible state, but the guys band together to keep him from making a rash decision. The night ends with Oscar, already several months divorced and living alone in an eight bedroom apartment, inviting Felix to move in with him. Oscar is a complete slob that eats out for every meal and is six months behind on his child support payments. Felix is the type to try and clean the very air they’re breathing while also being an excellent cook that pinches every penny and dearly misses his married life. They don’t get along well sharing the same apartment to put it lightly. Oscar attempts to reconcile by going on a date, thinking it’s the lack of women in their life causing so much frustration. The Pidgeon sisters arrive for a good time, but Oscar arrives late and Felix’s London broil goes from over cooked to burned to a crisp. Oscar tries to stall by making drinks to keep everyone’s spirits high, but Felix quickly brings on a somber mood in Oscar’s absence. The three of them are in tears over their failed marriages by the time Oscar returns and he retaliates by making Felix aware of the state of his broil. Thankfully the Pidgeon sisters just want to moved things upstairs to their overheated apartment and leave to get things started. Felix refuses to move still blaming Oscar for ruining their dinner and feeling like he’s cheating on his wife. The night is ruined and the next day Oscar is on a war path. The two disrespect each other to the point of Oscar chasing Felix through the apartment and kicking him out, but not without Felix making Oscar feel terribly guilty for it. The guys arrive for poker but all Oscar can think about is poor Felix. That is, until Gwendolyn Pidgeon arrives to collect his things. The sisters are all but forcing Felix to stay with them for at least a few days and Oscar gets a call from his wife. He’s finally doing right, or at least decent by her, even though he’s got a long way to go if he wants to get his family back and Felix has a place to stay where he can process his own divorce. The two men say their goodbyes addressing the other as their wife and bury the hatchet.

 

CHARACTERS

Murray – Middle Aged Man, Police Officer

Roy – Middle Aged Man

Speed – Middle Aged Man, Smoker

Vinnie – 42 Year Old Man

Oscar Madison – 43 Year Old Man, Pleasant and Appealing, Carefree

Felix Ungar – 44 Year Old Man

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES

            Not counting phone conversations, Oscar has the first monologue where he’s trying to convince Felix that he’s not so bad by rattling out all the ways he’s been a terrible husband. He’s got another where he’s finally telling Felix off for all the annoying things he does and it can be combined with a later line that’s telling Felix to stay out of his way if it needs to be made longer. This being such a character show, those are really the only two examples without getting into piecing together one sentence lines to try to make a cohesive 30 second monologue.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            The Odd Couple has become an established literary trope. You see a slob and a neat freak and the rest in history, with this play being the blueprint. It’s become such as classic that there’s three stage versions, a movie, and multiple sitcoms just based on Oscar and Felix with one play being a gender bent version that I performed a scene from for my senior showcase. It was funny then and it’s funny now, though the third stage version is just an update to keep it more contemporary.

            About the trigger warnings, Felix is described as a love-me-or-I’ll-jump kind of man almost verbatim by one of his friends. With his divorce being finalized, his friends all assume the worse and even though the audience is treated to the situation as a comedy, the characters all treat it very seriously. The hilarity is that they don’t want Felix to know that they know he’s in a bad spot and they’re trying to distract him while also keeping him away from anything hazardous like an open window or going to the bathroom alone. The suicide encouragement comes at the end of Act II when it seems to Oscar like Felix is never going to change or put himself out there. He opens the window and tells Felix he lied earlier about it not being so high up before leaving the stage. I think that’s up to the individual production how dark that moment is. The way things kick off in the third act makes me lean toward Oscar being serious and tasteless since Act III has him ready to resort to physical violence and Felix being nearly just as upset. At the end of the climax, we have Felix leaving and saying that whatever happens to him will be on Oscar’s head. Oscar takes it as a literal curse, but Felix is just quick to play the victim and lay on guilt trips in the heaviest handed of ways. Honestly for the context of the play it makes for good balance though. Neither of the men are the kind of person an audience member would want to live with. Oscar is inconsiderate, but you could almost feel like Felix is being treated completely unfairly for doing all the cooking and cleaning until his passive aggressive guilt-ridden gambits pop up.

 

The Nerd by Larry Shue (1981)

TW: Pedophilia Mention, Child Spanking

 

SYNOPSIS

            It’s Willum’s birthday but the only people able to come celebrate are his friend Axel, romantic interest Tansy, and the hotelier Willum is designing for Waldgrave – including wife Clelia and young ill-behaved son Thor. It’s set up to be a sad affair until Willum checks his messages and receives word that Rick Steadman, who he’s never met despite the man having saved his life in Nam, is finally coming for a visit. Everyone is excited until Rick arrives believing it to be a costume party and unknown to anyone else, terrifying Thor. He insults Waldgrave and his wife thinking they’re also in costume before boring them by explaining what he’s been doing since the war month by month. When dinner is served Rick ruins everyone’s appetite and complains that it’s exactly what he had or lunch and asks Tansy to make him spaghetti instead, of which he only eats two strands before declaring he’s full. Rick then ruins the game the gang is trying to play and insists on having them play his own requiring them to remove their shoes and put bags over their heads with only one eyehole. Waldgrave puts his hole too high up and trying to help, Rick repeatedly jabs at his eye trying to make a new hole but only resulting in irritating Waldgrave’s eye and his nerves. Rick has them spinning around and then reveals that to continue the game he has to read from a bible, which Willum doesn’t own. With the game unplayable Rick goes to get everyone’s shoes and knocks them down into the water below. If the party wasn’t ruined already Waldgrave discovers that his son has fainted after seeing Rick’s hanging costume and been stuffed into the closet by Willum. Everyone leaves except for Rick and just when Willum thinks the night can’t get any worse, Rick reveals he’s staying indefinitely and starts practicing the tambourine and singing loudly and offkey as Willum tries to sleep.

            It’s been two weeks and Willum is at his wits end with his houseguest. Rick’s family has moved without leaving a forwarding address so he assumes all his stuff will be sent to Willum’s. That’s what pushes Willum past his breaking point. Axel convinces Willum to listen to his friend Kemp’s advice to make Rick homesick and weirded out by Terre Haute culture. Everything they try ends up backfiring from inside jokes to strange food and even having Willum fake turning into a were-pig. Of course, that’s when it turns out that Rick invited Waldgrave and the events cost Willum his job with the man. Finally, Willum loses his cool and blows up at Rick, kicking him out. Free of his pest, Willum realizes it’s the happiest he’s been in forever and he resolves to take the job in Virgina he’s been offered so he can stay with Tansy. The stinger is that Kemp has been pretending to be Rick and is also the man who’s been offering Willum the job in Virginia. The whole charade was arranged by Axel as an elaborate way to get Willum to stand up for himself, which also fulfills Tansy’s challenge to have Axel perform an anonymous favor.

 

CHARACTERS

Willum – Adult

Tansy – Adult

Axel – Adult

Ticky Waldgrave – Adult, “The last time Mr. Waldgrave smiled was forty-seven years ago, and then it was gas”

Clelia Waldgrave – Adult, Tasteful, Patient

Thor Waldgrave – 8 Years Old, a Monster of a Child

Rick/Kemp – Adult

 

POTETIAL MONOLOGUES

            Willum technically has a monologue where he’s explaining who Rick Steadman is to him and how the man saved his life but that’s all it is. It’s not a particularly dynamic monologue so I don’t recommend it for auditions. The same is true for Willum’s recap of the two weeks that get skipped between Act I and Act II, but I will say that if you’re determined to do one of the two, the latter one is better. His best by far though, is when he’s finally telling Rick off, especially if you include the hilarious line that Rick didn’t hear a word Willum says.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            So, I almost didn’t finish reading the play the first time I picked it up. As you can see in the trigger warning there’s pedophilia mentioned. The specific instance is Rick talking about a girl he proposed to at an elementary school. She was eight and he was thirty and her parents ran him out of town. It’s played as a joke to show just how out of touch Rick is and how boggled down the other characters are with being polite. Regardless, for me the play should’ve stopped right there because there are some lines you just don’t cross, but apparently it was fair game in 1981. Still the play is performed fairly regularly. In fact Milwaukee REP does it every 12 years and in 2019 Willum was played by a non-white actor while Axel was played as a gay character. Still, I pushed through and finished the play for the reveal that it was a farce within a farce. I still don’t care for the joke, but it’s just bearable with the understanding that even in the world of the play it didn’t happen.

            One thing that is worth talking about is Rick’s traits that play up his nerd status. He misses or misinterprets nearly every social cue, eats strange food in an odd manner, talks in a decidedly strange voice, and has interests that are perceived as boring. The exact words aren’t used of course, but most, if not all of Rick’s nerdy quirks are also autistic traits. It’s something that should be considered. As of Sept, 17^th, 2021 there’s a free PDF of the play available through Jocular Theatre.