DINNER WITH THE HORNBLATTS

A SHORT PLAY

B y L e s E p s t e i n

Copyright MMVII by Les Epstein All Rights Reserved

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DINNER WITH THE HORNBLATTS

DINNER WITH THE HORNBLATTS By Les Epstein

SYNOPSIS: On a small porch by a bend in a highway across from a cemetery, Sid and Hazel Hornblatt settle down for supper. Sid is demanding and takes Hazels efforts for granted. She prepares a tremendous meal, but Sid offers no appreciation. He obsesses that this meal will be his last as he prepares for medical exams. His gruffness leads Hazel to rebel. Her rebellion and his witnessing the Plumbs kissing in the cemetery allow Sid to realize that a kiss with Hazel is the most delicious part of the dinner.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

(1 MAN, 1WOMAN)

HAZEL HORNBLATT ................A stout woman, past middle age, with a

poof of white hair, large round glasses

and moxie. (93 lines)

SIDNEY HORNBLATT ...............A wiry, aging man with soft eyes able to

burn at a moments notice. (89 lines)

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AT RISE: From the porch of a house that overlooks a bend in the road, the sound of fresh lettuce being munched can be heard. SIDNEY and HAZEL HORNBLATT sit on their porch eating salads. They face forward, behind standing trays, so they can watch cars pass on the highway. Though not seen, a small cemetery rests directly across the highway. They crunch vegetables in silence. Each wears a napkin tucked into their short collar. A car flies by, and SIDNEY and HAZEL move their heads left to right following the car. Once it has passed, they look forward and chew the lettuce like Holsteins chewing cud. A second car passes and the couple watches the car move left to right. They chew some more. SIDNEY: (Holding up a tomato on his fork.) Tomato? HAZEL: (Too busy chewing lettuce.) Tomato! SIDNEY: Beefsteak? HAZEL: Prudens purple. Comes in pink, too. That reminds me. I

saw Alisa Craig today. SIDNEY: (Starting to eat again.) Shes a tomato. HAZEL: Watch it, Sidney. Shes had a rough go of it. Her uncle on

her mothers side fell and broke three ribs. Then her dog died, her son ran away and eloped, and its tax season.

SIDNEY: (More chewing. Holding up what appears to be a different looking tomato.) Prudens purple?

HAZEL: Stupice. SIDNEY: All right! Im sorry for saying Alisa Craigs a tomato. I take

it back. HAZEL: No! Stupice. Its a tomato from Czechoslovakia. SIDNEY: Sos Alisa Craig. Nice lettuce. Boston? HAZEL: (Sounding irritated.) Bib. SIDNEY leans over and wipes his mouth with his napkin.

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SIDNEY: (Silence, except the crunch of the lettuce. SIDNEY then breaks into an exercise routine without standing.) Ball heel change/Ball heel change/Toes in, Toes out/Toes in, Toes out/Give your head a roundabout. Come on, Hazel. Join in. Get your blood flowing. (She quickly joins in and continues to speak.)

HAZEL: Sidney, last night I dreamt I walked into the room overlooking the highway, the one with the bay window. You know the one I am talking about?

SIDNEY: I know the one youre talking about. The one with the bay window overlooking the highway.

HAZEL: - and the cemetery. Where that couple comes, kisses, pulls the kudzu, and then cries.

SIDNEY: I hate when they come and kiss. You never saw that in the old days. When we first moved, it was quiet here. Now we got his and hers lechers smooching among the expired.

HAZEL: Sid, my dream. SIDNEY: Yeah, what about it? HAZEL: Sid, I am dreaming about looking out my own window, and

when I look up, all I can see are spiders. SIDNEY: Spiders? HAZEL: Dozens of them. SIDNEY: I hate spiders. Thats disgusting, Hazel. Come to think of

it, sos kissing and smacking lips in the graveyard. Durnamned middle-aged degenerates.

HAZEL: (She ignores him and continues.) Thats not all. In the window, there are penguins. Pear-shaped penguins flying about the window eating the spiders and knocking down all the webs.

SIDNEY: Listen, Hazel, penguins dont fly. And they dont eat spiders.

HAZEL: What do you mean penguins dont fly? I saw them, in my dreams, flapping their wings and picking off those hairy bastards one by one.

SIDNEY: Penguins dont fly.

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HAZEL: (Rising and leaving to get the main dish.) What? Youre arguing with me over a dream? Finish your salad. (She removes his salad plate while he tries to eat.)

SIDNEY: HEY! STOP! This is my last chance at solid food till Friday.

HAZEL: (From the other room.) Those eight legs crunched in the beaks like those crab legs we get at the Chinese buffet.

SIDNEY: Those are good. But penguins dont fly. HAZEL: (Returning with the main course.) They do now. SIDNEY: Hazel. Penguins dont eat spiders, neither. They eat fish.

(Taking a bite of food.) Lox. HAZEL: Those penguins were flying in our window and eating

spiders. SIDNEY: Hazel . . . did it seem like these penguins were doing

something else . . . ? Didnt you have this dream before? HAZEL: Something else? SIDNEY: You know . . . something else. Like in the closet of your

mothers Catskill cabin something else. HAZEL: Oh, that something else. You know, come to think of it, after

each penguin ate a spider, they would kiss. Then they would eat another spider and make a smacking noise like the noise Ken Berkman and his girl made when they were in the closet.

SIDNEY: Yeah. It sounded like they were eating potato chips. I remember you were always worried that your mother would find out what everyone was doing in her closet. You were dreaming about your mother again. Its your eatable complex again. Youre feeling guilty about something. Thats my interpretation.

HAZEL: (She looks at him and then changes the subject. Holding up two florets of cauliflower.) Hey, Sid. Who invented the cauliflower?

SIDNEY: How would I know? I dont spend my days contemplating cauliflower. (Somewhat to himself.) I dont even like to eat them, they taste like paste.

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HAZEL: Sid, see if you can guess who I am now. (She holds the cauliflower over her eyes.)

SIDNEY: Now come on, Hazel. Dont play with your food. HAZEL: No, really. Who do you think I am? (She holds the

cauliflower and leans into SIDNEY.) SIDNEY: I dont know. That Feldman guy. HAZEL: What Feldman guy? Maury Feldman? SIDNEY: No. Not the Feldman guy from the temple, the movie

Feldman guy. HAZEL: Wrong. Guess again. SIDNEY: Hazel, you look like Marty Feldman. HAZEL: Wrong. Eisenhower! (Said with a Bronx blast of Hower

OW! UH!) SIDNEY: Eisenhower? You dont . . . HAZEL: Guess who I am now? (She holds the cauliflower to her

ears.) Guess. SIDNEY: Alfred E. Newman. HAZEL: Nooo! Paul Newman in that boxing movie where hes

Rocky Marciano. SIDNEY: Oh . . . yeah . . . I can see it. (He turns away like shes a

little crazed.) Ball heel change/Ball heel change/Toes in, Toes Out/Toes in, Toes out/Give your head a roundabout.

HAZEL: Sid, youre not in the spirit of things. SIDNEY: Hazel. See if you guess what I am now. (He holds a

mushroom over his head.) HAZEL: I dont know. I give up. SIDNEY: Im a mushroom cloud going up if you dont stop this stupid

game. HAZEL: Time to exercise. (Both exercise.) SIDNEY/HAZEL: Ball heel change/Ball heel change/Toes in, Toes

Out/Toes in, Toes out/Give your head a roundabout. SIDNEY: (Grabbing his stomach.) Jiminy Cricket, that hurts. HAZEL: Sid, its for the blood flow. Be thankful your blood flows. Itll

all be fixed Thursday morning.

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SIDNEY: Durnamned toes. Never turn in or out fast enough. I am always the slowest in class. Blasted instructor keeps calling out my name and shouts: MR. HORNBLATT! KEEP UP! MR. HORNBLATT, YOURE FALLING BEHIND. Well, if she didnt blast that music so loud, she wouldnt have to shout. Ding-blasted phalange-defiler.

HAZEL: Sidney, dear, its not a matter of how fast you turn your toes. Its just important to turn your toes.

SIDNEY: Well, heres me turning my nose. HAZEL: Sid, eat your dinner. SIDNEY: Nose right. Nose left. Nose up. Nose down. You know,

that says more than moving toes. HAZEL: Dinner, Sid. Its your last chance till Friday. SIDNEY: Nose up to that too. HAZEL: Din! Din! Sid. SIDNEY: (Shaking his head back and forth.) NOSE! NOSE! NOSE!

(HAZEL puts a forkful of food in his mouth and he says not convincingly.) Yum! Yum! Yum! Say, whats this crap on my plate, anyway? (Pouring through it with a fork.) Dang-burned crap. A cockroach would gripe over this.

HAZEL: Its stew, Sidney. SIDNEY: Stew! What are you serving stew for? This is new. We

never eat stew. HAZEL: A good old American meat and potato stew. Stew from the

old days. SIDNEY: Old stew, eh? My last meal till Friday is stew? We usually

have crab on Tuesdays, now its stew?

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HAZEL: Sid, its stew made with these two old wrinkled hands. Stew from the sweat of my brow. (Standing and making a dance of her recipe.) I take a pot and fill it with a little water. (Tossing out her hands.) PAH! I cut up carrots, celery and onions and into the water they go. (A ballet or basketball move for the vegetables.) PAH! PAH! PAH! I dice up potatoes. PAH! And PAH! And then the brisket. I chop the meat up: PAH! PAH! And pppah! And then into the pot. (Growing delicate with her movements.) PAH! PAH PAHHHHH!

SIDNEY: (Trying to contribute in his own way.) Plop. HAZEL: No plop, Sid. Just pah. The stew cooks on the stove. PAH!

I take it off the stove. PAH! I wipe the sweat from my brow, PAH! I slap it on a plate. PAH and PAH. And under your nose it goes. Any questions?

SIDNEY: No. HAZEL: Good. Now eat. (SIDNEY looks down at his plate. He

looks to HAZEL and she cuts him off with a rising pitch.) PAHHH! (SIDNEY puts down his fork.) Pah, Sid, pah. (He clears his throat and she replies with a husky pitch.) PAHHHHHHH! (Silence and then she speaks.) Alisa Craig says shes decided not to do her taxes anymore, since her sons run away and her dogs dead. I thought that was reasonable enough.

SIDNEY: (After a brief look at HAZEL.) Hazel, shes got to do her taxes. Its the law.

HAZEL: Sid, the law has to show some compassion some of the time . . . especially when it comes to runaway sons and dead dogs.

SIDNEY: Listen, I know something about the law business. HAZEL: Yes, dear. You do know the law business. SIDNEY: Practiced it for forty years, durnamnit. Prosecuted the

Whaleys in that Seattle kidnapping case. HAZEL: Whaleys in what Seattle kidnapping case? SIDNEY: The one in the 30s. Where they took the paper mill

peoples kid.

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HAZEL: Sid . . . SIDNEY: (While eating.) Demanded 200,000 for his return,

durnamnit bastards. I prosecuted them. Sent them to Alcatraz. With the Birdman. I sent them to be with the Birdman.

HAZEL: The Birdman? SIDNEY: Yeah! The Birdman of Alcatraz. HAZEL: What? SIDNEY: Burt Lancaster. Durnamned bastards. Went to jail with

Burt Lancaster. The wife did hard labor in Michigan. HAZEL: Sid . . . dear . . . SIDNEY: Made themselves look weak in the papers, Ill tell you.

Morons refused a lawyer, because they said they didnt have any friends and so who would defend them? Morons!

HAZEL: Sid, you didnt prosecute that case, dear. You read about it in law school.

SIDNEY: What? I did? HAZEL: Yes, dear. SIDNEY: I read about it in law school? HAZEL: Yes, Sid. You were only five in 1935. ThankyouforreadingthisfreeexcerptfromDINNERWITHTHEHORNBLATTSbyLesEpsteinForperformancerightsand/ora

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