Robert Holman
WHO Jonah Teale, twenty-six, from Knutsford in Cheshire.
TO WHOM Otto Banister, sixty-two, a clergyman.
WHERE An area of open ground on the East Sussex coast.
WHEN Present day, summer.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED The play tells the story of a chance meeting between Jonah, a young man waiting with his baby daughter for the midnight ferry to France, and Otto, a sixty-two-year-old clergyman. Jonah happens across Otto in a secluded public garden late one summer night. Jonah is dressed in a hoody, and at first it seems as though he is going to rob Otto. However, as the story proceeds, we realise that Jonah is gentle, and, as the two men talk about their loves and losses, we learn more and more about them. In this scene they have moved from the garden to an open area of land. It is the following day and Otto is asking Jonah about his father. The speech that follows is made up of Jonah’s response.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
• | Jonah suffers from epilepsy. |
• | He studied English at Hull University. |
• | His best friend committed suicide when he was thirteen. |
• | Jonah is something of a magician and enjoys card tricks. |
• | His girlfriend and the mother of his six-week-old daughter is French. Her name is Emilie. |
• | The men spend just under twenty-four hours together. They form a bond and develop a friendship that is out of the ordinary. Read the play to understand fully its mysterious nature. |
• | In many ways, Otto becomes a surrogate father to Jonah, and Jonah in turn takes on the role of the son that Otto always wanted. |
• | Both men feel a pressure to be the absolute best they can be. |
• | To share his pain. |
• | To find relief from his loneliness. |
• | Sympathy. |
KEYWORDS Heaven hell good cried hate
NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.
Jonah
There’s nothing to say really. He climbed the ladder to Heaven when I was a child. […] He got cancer. He had bowel cancer. He farted a lot, then he passed away. All in about nine months. I was only nine. Nines are everywhere. That’s the other thing I had to have done. I had to have a colonoscopy. I wouldn’t have minded really, but all the students had to look up my bum as well. […]
It’s not funny. […]
He was the best dad in the world.
[…] He was only forty-six. I missed him like hell. I used to go to my mum, and try and be good an’ that. I used to really try. I used to bake. To be extremely honest with you, I could make cakes and stuff. I used to do little butterfly buns with a Smartie on top as an extra. She did her best to cover up. I wish she hadn’t really. I wish we’d all sat down and cried. My mum had two miscarriages between my brother Richard and me. It’s why he’s a bit older. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Except it made a difference really. My mum told me what it was like to lose two children. So I always felt a bit responsible. I always felt I had to try really hard. You said there must be something funny in the family. There isn’t. My sister’s at college. She’s going to be a doctor. The only thing that’s funny is that I’m the thick one. And my mum. She teaches infants. She works hard for us all. I do my best not to be private with her. Except I am a touch. I wasn’t as a boy. It just got that way as I grew up. I know it hurts her a little bit when I don’t say much sometimes. I do try. I think you have to have one of your parents pass away, for you to sit down and talk to the other one. The trouble is, my dad passed away when I was too young for it to be possible. I hate him for that. I don’t. I hate him for dying. I’d know my mum better if he hadn’t died. It’s odd. It should be the opposite. It isn’t. 