Doris Lessing - Play With a Tiger and Other Plays

DORIS LESSING Play with a Tiger and Other Plays

Contents

Title Page

Play With a Tiger

About Play With a Tiger

Authors Notes on Directing this Play

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

The Singing Door

Characters

The Singing Door

Each His Own Wilderness

About Each His Own Wilderness

Characters

Act One

Act Two

About the Author

Authors Note

Also by the Author

Read On

The Grass is Singing

The Golden Notebook

The Good Terrorist

Love, Again

The Fifth Child

Copyright

About the Publisher

Directed by Ted Kotcheff

The action takes place in Anna Freemans room on the first floor of Mary Jacksons house in Earls Court, London, SW5

At the opening of the play the time is about nine in the evening; at its close it is about four in the morning

Authors Notes on Directing this Play

Now this play is about the rootless, declassed people who live in bed-sitting-rooms or small flats or the cheaper hotel rooms, and such people are usually presented on the stage in a detailed squalor of realism which to my mind distracts attention from what is interesting about them.

I wrote Play with a Tiger with an apparently conventional opening designed to make the audience expect a naturalistic play so that when the walls vanished towards the end of Act One they would be surprised (and I hope pleasantly shocked) to find they were not going to see this kind of play at all.

But there had to be a bridge between the opening of the play, and the long section where Anna and Dave are alone on the stage, and this bridge is one of style. This is why Annas room is tall, bare, formal; why it has practically no furniture, save for the bed and the small clutter around it; and why there are no soft chairs or settees where the actors might lounge or sprawl. This stark set forces a certain formality of movement, stance and confrontation so that even when Dave and Anna are not alone on the stage creating their private world, there is a simplicity of style which links the two moods of the play together.

It is my intention that when the curtain comes down at the end, the audience will think: Of course! In this play no one lit cigarettes, drank tea or coffee, read newspapers, squirted soda into Scotch, or indulged in little bits of business which indicated character. They will realize, I hope, that they have been seeing a play which relies upon its style and its language for its effect.

DORIS LESSING

CHARACTERS

DAVE MILLER: An American, about thirty-three, who is rootless on principle.

MARY JACKSON: About ten years older than Anna: a widow with a grown-up son.

TOM LATTIMER: Who is on the point of taking a job as business manager of a womans magazine. About thirty-five, a middle-class Englishman.

HARRY PAINE: Fifty-ish. A journalist.

JANET STEVENS: In her early twenties, the daughter of an insurance agent American.

Act One

centre of it a round crimson carpet. There are two stiff-looking chairs on either side of the mirror, of dark wood, and seated in dark red. The life of the room is concentrated around the divan. A low table by its head has a telephone, and is loaded with books and papers, and a small reading light. At the foot of the divan is another low table, with a typewriter, at which ANNA works by kneeling, or squatting, on the divan. This table has another reading light, and a record player. Around the divan is a surf of books, magazines, newspapers, records, cushions. There is a built-in cupboard, hardly noticeable until opened, in the right wall. Two paraffin heaters, of the cheap black cylindrical kind, are both lit. It is winter. The year is 1958. At the opening of the play the time is about nine in the evening, at its close it is four in the morning.

[ANNA is standing at the window, which is open at the top, her back to the room. She is wearing slacks and a sweater: these are pretty, even fashionable; the reason for the trousers is that it is hard to play Act II in a skirt.]

[TOM is standing behind ANNA, waiting, extremely exasperated. This scene between them has been going on for some time. They are both tense, irritated, miserable.]

[TOMS sarcasm and pomposity are his way of protecting himself from his hurt at how he has been treated.]

[ANNAS apparent casualness is how she wards off a hysteria that is only just under control. She is guilty about TOM, unhappy about DAVE and this tension in her underlies everything she says or does until that moment towards the end of Act One when DAVE, because of his moral ascendancy over her, forces her to relax and smile.]

[A moments silence. Then a scream and a roar of traffic, which sounds as if it is almost in the room. TOM loses patience, goes past ANNA to window, slams it shut, loudly.]

TOM: Now say: I could repeat every word youve said.

ANNA [in quotes]: Ive scarcely seen you during the last two weeks. You always have some excuse. Mary answers the telephone and says you are out. I was under the impression we were going to be married. If Im wrong please correct me. I simply cannot account for the change in your attitude hows that?