THE MIRACLE MAN

by Douglas Maxwell

This play was first performed at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow in a National Theatre of Scotland production on 10 March 2010.

OSSIAN MACDONALD (OZZY) is a thirty-something-year-old PE teacher with a famous father who is dying of cancer. He is drawn to a group of teens in his school who are struggling to find their identity (albeit through a cult that demands a virginity pledge). However, it is Paula, his father’s nurse who helps him the most. In this monologue, OZZY tells her that he wants his father to die and believes these thoughts have (deservedly) ‘infected’ him with cancer as well. The only way in which he can voice these feelings aloud is through the third person.

OZZY

Make it

Make it there’s this guy. And this guy’s dad is dying – everybody says so. And even though he never really got on with his dad he goes to the hospital every day. Because that’s what you do.

And he even tells people that he’s trying to help his dad. He tells people…he tells this one person, that he’s making up stories in the hope that these stories will bring him back to life. His dad was a writer see. This guy’s not a writer. This guy’s nothing. But he tells her that he hopes the stories will help.

But it wasn’t really true. In his heart…

See. In his heart he hopes the dad’ll die. Because it’s awful living with him. The fact that his dad is dying makes living – just simple day to day living – impossible. And he can’t stand it anymore.

So he wishes him away. Secretly. Whisper, whispered it, in his heart. And he tells the stories because he knows his dad will hate it. Absolutely hate it. He’ll hate hearing every dumb word coming from this guy’s mouth. And the wish is, that he’ll hate it so much that eventually he’ll give up and go.

But that wish, that tiny black, bad, bad, wish, can’t stay hidden. It can’t. It grows into a heart where the whole world can see it. A broken heart. And that broken heart slowly fills with his dad’s cancer.

He takes the cancer from his father. Takes the death from him. That’s what he gets. And it serves him right.

This guy’s had it coming.