Aimez-vous Ionesco? was first performed by the Beau Jest Moving Theatre at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival on September 24, 2015. The director was Davis Robinson; the set design was by Judy Gailen; the costume design was by Rafael Jaen; the lighting design was by Colin Dieck; the sound design was by Rew Tippen; and the stage manager was Colin Dieck. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:
FRANCINE: Lisa Tucker
DELPHINE: Robin Javonne Smith
MARLENE: Larry Coen
MR. COPPITT: Nick Ronan and Jordan Harrison
A drawing room with large, heavily draped windows. Francine and Delphine are seated.
FRANCINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE: Who is Mr. Coppitt?
[Francine chuckles evilly.]
DELPHINE [calling]: Marlene?
[Maid enters.]
DELPHINE: Tea for two, two for tea.
MARLENE [in bad high school French]: Ave des petit-fours ou sans des petits-fours?
DELPHINE: Sans.
FRANCINE: Avec.
DELPHINE: Pour moi, sans petit-four. Pour Madame, avec petits-four. Compree?
MARLENE: Comprendo.
DELPHINE: Scat. Skidoo. Out, cow! Excuse me, Francine, darling what were you saying when that cow came in?
FRANCINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE: I asked you who that is and you didn’t answer.
FRANCINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE: I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about. Have you any idea what you are talking about?
FRANCINE: Play me a bit of Chopin on the harpsichord, darling, and I will say no more about Mr. Coppitt.
DELPHINE: I cannot play the piano, let the harpsichord alone, I mean let alone the harp. Pardon me. Sichord.
FRANCINE [rising grandly]: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE [calling]: Marlene.
[Maid returns with tea-service.]
Never mind that now. Mrs. Axminister isn’t staying for tea, she’s had a sudden attack of migraine and repeat-it-itis and must go at once to see her personal physicians, who are already in consultation about her and have already decided against the removal of her brain since X-rays have disclosed that she doesn’t have any. Good afternoon, my dear, we had a lovely visit, we did have such a nice visit, but all good things come to a close, they say, and they said a true word when they said it.
FRANCINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE: I must admire your carriage: it’s really superb, like a queen’s.
FRANCINE: Oh, like Mr. Coppitt’s?
DELPHINE: Do that once more, around the sofa, lightly. Sweep, sweep, that’s it, don’t lift the skirt, just arch your wrist as if you were going to lift it, it sounds so beautifully when it sweeps the floor and when it sweeps the floor it simplifies housekeeping. And since I have only one cow on my domestic staff, any little expedient is a blessing. Sweep, sweep, darling, sweep like a peacock once more about the sofa.
FRANCINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE: Mr. Coppitt seems like an old friend now, and you have referred to him so repeatedly that I feel as if I know him and could almost answer your question about his condition. How is he? Well, let’s see.
MARLENE [announcing]: Mr. Coppitt.
[Mr. Coppitt enters: a charming young man in a swallowtail coat and dove-gray ballet tights.]
DELPHINE: Oh. Ha ha. Mr. Coppitt. We were just speaking of you, your ears must have been burning like coals of fire. Sit down, if you can in those trousers and we will change the subject if your natural modestly makes it embarrassing to you, ha ha. [Then aside to Francine.] Now I see what you mean about “Dear Mr. Coppitt”? [Tinkles with delicate social laughter.] Whom do you know that I know who is in a grave condition or do you have only young friends who are in a perpetual state of narcissistic euphoria? Do you talk, Mr. Coppitt? Or are you just to be looked at? Well, do you dance, Mr. Coppitt? What do you do, Mr. Coppitt, please do whatever you do, I mean make yourself at home here.
COPPITT: Où est le pot-de-chambre?
FRANCINE: Pas ici.
COPPITT: Ce n’est pas necessaire. Pardonnez moi un moment. [He disappears behind the window drapes.]
FRANCINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
DELPHINE: Oh, pshaw, how is anybody. Who cares but anybody.
FRANCINE: Nobody. And how is dear Mr. Coppitt . . .
DELPHINE: When he comes out, will he dance?
FRANCINE: Naturellement, Chere. Terpsichore is the muse of his heart, but I feel that he was deeply offended by your vicious question.
DELPHINE: Which vicious questions? I asked several.
FRANCINE: Yes, I know you did, dear. All your questions are vicious, some more, some less, but all a true reflection of the meaninglessness and brutality which is the— what?— What?— I need help now.
DELPHINE: You don’t look the least bit helpless.
[Coppitt has emerged from the window drapes and is going through some basic ballet positions.]
FRANCINE: I have risen above it.
DELPHINE: Or dropped below it.
FRANCINE: The same difference.
DELPHINE: I dig you but don’t quite agree.
FRANCINE: Who agrees about anything? Anybody?
DELPHINE: We’re getting mired in sentimentality, now, but young Mr. Coppitt is preparing to dance.
FRANCINE: Dance him, let him dance.
DELPHINE: He will because he wants to, with or without our permission. The young ones follow their directions, the older one don’t, they’re directed toward making more of the hard stuff, the loot, but Mr. Coppitt will dance for the pure love of it, the way we used to, once, too.
FRANCINE: Does he want music?
DELPHINE: He can use it if it doesn’t use him.
FRANCINE: Then I think he should have brought his own music with him.
DELPHINE: He did.
FRANCINE: Did he indeed? I thought he entered with nothing but his costume.
DELPHINE: He entered with his costume and his make-up and his interior music.
FRANCINE: Skepticism is the cornerstone of my nature but I can put it aside on this special occasion.
DELPHINE: We’ve changed parts. Have you noticed?
FRANCINE: Shh, be still, Mr. Coppitt is dancing.
DELPHINE: And how is dear Mr. Coppitt?
FRANCINE: Shut up, please. Tais-toi. Watch him dance to his interior music.
DELPHINE: Marlene, my lorgnon.
[Marlene hands it to her.]
FRANCINE: Divine.
DELPHINE: Yes, divine.
FRANCINE: You’re not even looking at him. What are you looking at?
DELPHINE: The stage of the City Center, my own, built in me.
FRANCINE: I’m looking at Isadora Duncan dancing on the Acropolis, in the Parthenon, and at Vaslav Nijinsky practicing on the boat that took him to South America where he is going to marry his dreadful death as an artist. She is watching him, too, with her Budapest eyes, full of worship of him and a longing to kill him. Isadora died of a scarf that caught in the wheel of a touring car as she drove off, waving a mad, gay goodbye, lovely children having died in a car, too. The brakes weren’t on. The car rolled into a river. Nijinksy had no brakes, either, and he died in a moving vehicle that plunged into much deeper waters, slowly. Oh, I’ve resumed my part. You’d better go back to yours.
DELPHINE: Be still a moment: I’m seeing.
FRANCINE: What? In your City Center?
DELPHINE: No, it’s the Met, it’s the Met with the Diamond Horseshoe, I’m in the Diamond Horseshoe with a pair of pearl-handled opera glasses, now, dear. My sick old husband beside me, snoring lightly. Dreaming of me as I was the evening that he bought me. I’m weeping.
FRANCINE: Crocodile tears for what?
DELPHINE: The springtime of my existence.
FRANCINE: And your dear dead husband’s?
DELPHINE: It’s all confused, run together, like a water-color painted in a rain storm.
FRANCINE: Dear dead husbands one always more dead than dear.
DELPHINE: The obvious shouldn’t be said as if it leapt from the lips of a sibyl.
FRANCINE: Isn’t it rather late? By your stopwatch?
DELPHINE: Sweep around the sofa once more before you go, darling.
FRANCINE: Yes, your linoleum-imitation of a parquet-floor is still dusty.
DELPHINE: Sweep, sweep, sweep, all around, yes, wider, wider, sweep in a wider orbit, Francine.
FRANCINE [sweeping widely about]: Yes, a new broom sweeps clean, or cleaner.
DELPHINE: Sweep out, swing out, my darling.
FRANCINE: I’m swinging, sweeping and swinging, way out.
DELPHINE: Wonderful. Enough. Stop, now. Can you stop?
FRANCINE: I can defeat self-momentum. [Stops sweeping.] What’s become of—
DELPHINE: You swept him off the make-believe ballroom, my dear, but he appears to be poised in the wings for another entrance.
FRANCINE: That’s why I have returned from the Imperial Russian ballet and the divine Isadora on the Partenon in her Grecian draperies, posing for Arnold Genthe. A moment of existence, no matter how ecstatic with the euphoria of the self-infatuated artist, is not outside of time. Is anything outside of it? Questions can be as obvious as answers. [To Mr. Coppitt.] Sir?— I am going, let’s go. [A little pause.]
DELPHINE: Your call is being answered by silence.
FRANCINE: Sit down, dear Delphine, and see if he will resume his performance for you.
[Francine sweeps out of the drawing-room. Delphine waits for the young man to reappear but he doesn’t.]
MARLENE [entering]: May I go, now, Madame?
DELPHINE: No, sit down and have tea with me. One always has tea with a domestic who hates you and wants to go, now, when the curtain is falling.
[Marlene sits opposite her.]
Why isn’t it falling? Has the stage manager walked out on us?
MARLENE: Yes, he said you would only need the lightman this evening, Mme.
[The stage is slowly dimmed out as Delphine touches her under eyelids with a petal plucked from a tea-rose.]
THE END