Tales From - Dramatic Publishing8 Tales From The Daily Tabloid Act I exile as any immigrant. How, at...

Tales FromThe Daily Tabloid

A Play in Two Acts

by

JEANNE MURRAY WALKER

Dramatic PublishingWoodstock, Illinois • England • Australia • New Zealand

© The Dramatic Publishing Company, Woodstock, Illinois

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©MMII byJEANNE MURRAY WALKER

Printed in the United States of AmericaALL Rights Reserved

(TALES FROM THE DAILY TABLOID)

ISBN: 1-58342-133-5


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"'Produced by special arrangement withruE DRAMATIC PUBUSHING COMPANY of Woodstoc~ Illinois ~~


TALES FROM THE DAILY TABLOID won first placein the 1990 Washington Theatre Festival. It was first perfanned by the Source Theatre in Washington, D.C., in August 1990; Pat Murphy Sheehy) producing artistic director,Keith Parker, festival director and Randye Hoeflich, director; and included the following:

Rock Star. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. BUS HOWARD

Leonard Milgram. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. DAVID ROTHMAN

LeRoy Cronin , ARION BAILEYMelanie Schmidt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. KERRY WILSON

Lettie Engstrom/Anita 1vlorgan BRILANE BOWMAN

Liz Rickling BERNADETIE FLAGLER

Hank Engstrum/Father DAVID DOSSEY

Helen/Mother/Rosalee Truax STEPHANIE SOUTOURAS

Irving SchiffmanJElder Larsen DEAN AVERY

Angel KATE FLEMING

Stage Manager KERRI RICHARDSON

Light Design. . . . . . . . .. ELLEN BONE & JENNIFER GARRETT

Pre-recorded Sound Design NEIL MCFADDEN

Live Sound. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. BUS HOWARD & DAVID DOSSEY

Light Board Operator MYRA HOPE BOBBITT

Sound Board Operator AMY CHERIN

The playwright also thanks Nancy King, Nannan Jones andPeregrine Whittlesey for help in the development of thisplay.


Tales Fronl The Daily Tabloid

A Play in Two ActsFor 7m~, 8w (or 3m., 4w. with doubling)

CHARACTERS

LEONARD :rvnLGRAM .. former advertising writer, turnedreporter for The Daily Tabloid

LENNIE . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Leonard as an advertising writer

?vl0TIIER Leonard's mother

FATHER Leonard's father

LIZ RECKLING. . . . . .. fanner actress, turned waitress atEdna's Cafe

LETTIE ENGSTRUM .. reporter for The Independent, theRemnrs paper

HANK. ENGSTRUM Lettie's jealous husband

MELANIE SCHMIDT the mayor's daughter

LEROY CRONIN. . . . . . . . . .. .. . .. young man with whomMelanie Schmidt elopes

ANITA MORGAN wife of the town lawyer

ROSALEE TRUAX woman who is possessed by angels

ANGEL Rosalee Truax's angel

ELDER LARSEN. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . farmer

IRVING SCIDFFMAN baker

HELEN . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. the skinless woman


DOUBLING

Seven actors-three men and four women---can play the 15characters in this play. There are several ways of doubling.The following is a suggestion:

Leonard MilgramLiz RecklingHank Engstrum/LeRoy CroninfFatherLennie/Irving Schiffman/Elder LarsenMelanie Schmidt/AngelHelen/Mother/Rosalee TruaxLettie Engstrom/Anita Morgan

NOTE: None of the characters should be played condescendingly, or as odd, peculiar or ""otherworldly. n On thecontrary, throughout the play all the characters should beutterly direct, unselfconscious and unsentimental-fimllylocated in social action. This means, among other things,that the long monologues in the play should not be isolatedby special lighting or voice effects.

SETfING

The action takes place in and around the town of Remurs,Minnesota. Although the action occurs in a number of settings which are described fully in the script, these placescan be suggested by a few pieces of furniture and simplelighting.


ACT ONE

SCENE 1

AT RISE: LEONARD MILGRAM com,es on wearing a suit.He is an urbane, good-looking Inan of about forty-five,SOlneone you like immediately. He speaks to the audience.

LEONARD. I am lying on my narrow bed in our secondfloor hallway. !'m ten, maybe twelve. I can hear mymother and father murmuring downstairs. Patterns ofmoonlight through trees filter and shift on my quilt. Inmy mind I trace Main Street to where it curves out oftown. Tomorrow it will start up again, another regularday in Remurs, Minnesota.

Tomorrow always came. Until llly to\\'n was taken awayfrom me. Until I took myself away from it.

My name is Leonard Milgram. I can find my wayaround any city in the world. I know how to size peopleup. And sometimes I nearly believe the AmericanDream, that nothing goes wrong, that whatever goeswrong can be fixed) that if it can ~t be fixed, it wasn"timportant anyway.

I am talking about how, in this country, our main job isto move all. How, because I moved on, I am as truly an

7


8 Tales From The Daily Tabloid Act I

exile as any immigrant. How, at some point Remurs became foreign to me and strange, almost a joke.

And that is why, when great American corporations began shifting and downsizing, when I lost my job in thecity, when the only job I could find was writing for TheDaily Tabloid and the editor gave me an assignment togo back home, I returned to my own town a stranger.

I flew to Minneapolis, rented a car, and drove to RemuTS. I parked on the outskirts so I could walk in, theway I used to, catching sight of the water tower over thehilL

(LEONARD is walking down a two-lane highway in Remurs. He is out of place in his expensive business suit.He picks a couple ofwildflowers and sniffs them.)

Fooling around with wildflowers in the middle of a weekday. I don~t know how I'll ever get used to it. The naive.The gullible. The maudlin.

(LEROY and MELANIE enter, walking in the oppositedirection on the shoulder of the highway. They are wearing outlandish clothes with punk hairdos, body piercing,maybe tattoos. He is carrying an aluminum rowboQt. Shehas a pair of roller skates slung over her shoulder.)

LEONARD. Excuse me, is there any place to eat in Reroms?

LEROY. Edna~s Cafe, center of town.


Act I Tales From The Daily Tabloid 9

LEONARD. That's a new restaurant, isn"t it? (Pause.) Iused to live in Remurs.

LEROY (suspicious). I don't recognize you.LEONARD. It was a long time ago.LEROY. Yeah?

LEONARD. Yeah. I left when I was your age. Can I helpyou with that boat?

LEROY. No. I got it under control. (He lays it down awk-wardly, almost dropping it.)

MELANIE (friendly). We live in Remurs.LEONARD. That's a good reason to travel!MELANIE. We'tre not traveling. We're eloping.LEONARD. Can I give you a lift somewhere? My car is

just down the road.LEROY. We can manage.MELANIE. We're sick and tired of this stupid town. When

no one was looking we escaped from the tunnel of lovein the theme park.

(LEONARD gets out his notebook and starts writing.)

LEROY. What are you doing, mister?

LEONARD. Just taking notes.LEROY. Why?

LEONARD. I"m a reporter.LEROY. Dh, great. A reporter.LEONARD. Wouldn't you like to see your names in print?MELANIE. MR. AND MRS. LEROY CRONIN! I've been writ-

ing that all over my notebooks at school. (In a rush.) Itwas the first time Mother let me go in LeRoy"s car. Wegot on that ride, you know, the boat going into that tunnel? We were kissing and it felt like we just started ris-



ing up and up, and then we were nowhere together, justthe two of us, high up in this boat.

LEROY. Melanie, shut up. He's writing this down.MELANIE. My mother never lets me go to LeRoy's house.

Will she be surprised when she finds out we eloped!LEONARD. Her family doesn't think !'m good enough. I'd

like to see her old man carry this boat.

MELANIE. LeRoy is so strong. And his hands! Look at hisincredible hands. (LEROY hides his hands.) He's shy.

LEONARD. Listen, where are you going?MELANIE. We're going to camp out in nature.LEROY. We're never coming back!LEONARD. I thought I'd never come back to this place

either, but here I am.MELANIE. Well, we're not coming back.LEONARD. That's what everybody thinks.LEROY. We're different, mister.LEONARD. I thought I was different when I was your age,

too.MELANIE. I'll never want anybody but LeRoy, and LeRoy

doesn"t want anybody but me. Right, LeRoy?LEROY. Right.

MELANIE. I can touch LeRoy whenever I want to. Nowit's just the two of us! LeRoy's going to be my motherand father and my brothers and sisters. Everybody elsein this stupid town seems far away. I'hey're all as tiny asthe numbers on nlY watch.

LEONARD. Oh, I know what it feels like. You thinkyou've outstripped the physical laws of the universe.

LEROY. Don't you fucking talk like that to my girl!LEONARD. Listen, I left here thinking the same thing. I

got married. I went through all of this.



MELANIE. Where did you put your wife?LEONARD. She left me. We"re divorced.MELANIE. How sad. Where did she go?LEONARD. To Los Angeles.MELANIE. Los Angeles, I'd like to go to Los Angeles,

LeRoy. It's always seventy degrees and you can have atan all year. There's a golden bridge in Los Angeles.

LEONARD (amused). Well, nearby.MELANIE. Why did your wife leave you, mister?LEONARD. Leonard. My name is Leonard Milgram.MELANIE. Why did she leave you, Mr. Milgram?LEONARD. She just ... went off the deep end. Suddenly

started wanting to help everybody. Middle-age crisis.Now she's working in an AIDS shelter out there.

MELANIE. You just let her go?LEONARD. We had a nice lifestyle-a house in the sub

urbs and a condo in Philadelphia. We had a Jacuzzi andshe had her own Mercedes. She had a maid twice aweek. I don't know what she wanted.

MELANIE. LeRoy wouldn't let me go off like that, wouldyou, honey? LeRoy would tie me up.

LEONARD. Nancy's not the sort of woman you could tieup.

MELANIE. She doesn't want to be with you?LEONARD. You wouldn't understand. OUf children are all

grown up. What are you doing? Interviewing me? I'mthe reporter here.

LEROY. Melanie, they're going to find us if this guywrites a story about us.

MELANIE. LeRoy!LEROY. If this guy puts us into his goddamned newspa

per ...



MELANIE. You shouldn"t take the name of the Lord invain, honey, even when we"re eloping.

LEROY. If your old man finds out we~re around here, he"sgoing to send Hank Engstrom's hunting dogs after us.Bow-wow. Bow-wow.

MELANIE (to LEROY). I have to talk to sOInebody~ I missmy mother a little, LeRoy, just a little. I"nl sorry, LeRoy.And I miss my friends and these roller skates are gettingheavy.

LEROY. Leave them here. Look, dump them in this ditch~

MELANIE. I can"t just leave them. I got them for my tenthbirthday from my piano teacher.

LEONARD (out to get a story). I have to go into townanyway. I could take your roller skates back to yourmother for you.

MELANIE. I hate my mother. She wouldn"t let me wearLeRoy"s letter jacket.

LEONARD. I could give them back to your piano teacher.MELANIE. Oh, would you do that?LEONARD. Sure. (He takes the skates.) WhaCs her name?:rvmLANIE. Edith Lovely. It means a lot to me that she can

have them back.LEONARD. Just tell me a little about what it felt like as

you were rising.MELANIE. Love is ... it~s like ... Irs this contraption, like,

you know, the human heart. It has chambers you canclimb around in-like the left ventricle, right ventricle.If you set the ladder right, you can clinlb up beyondyourself. Before we meant to, we found ourselves looking down where strings of streetlights defined these littleshops and houses ...

LEROY. Melanie!



MELANIE. We could see the bakery where Irving pulledthe green awning down with a stick and, like, tugged hissweater around him and walked home~ The light blinkedout in Mr. Silver"s jewelry shop. Inside, the safe doorswung shut on the ring I wanted. Now I don't need it!

LEROY. Melanie!

MELANIE. And I could see my mother, standing by thepolice sergeant, and he says over and over '4Just gone,just gone, 't' like theme music to a commercial ...

LEROY (interrupting. Glo~vering). Melanie!!:MELANIE. Oh, I miss my mother so much. She's a monster.

I'd like her to know exactly what happened, just for spite.She was making applesauce when I left last night and thekitchen smelled the way it used to when I was a little girL

LEROY. If you write that, I'll punch you out.LEONARD. Her mother doesn't read my paper.LEROY. Her old man reads the paper.LEONARD. Not this paper.LEROY. What paper is it?LEONARD. The Daily Tabloid.LEROY. What~s that?LEONARD. It prints stories about do\vn-and-outers. Fat

people, people who come back from the dead. Babieswith two heads.

LEROY. Are you saying we're weird?LEONARD. No, no. This is an objective point of view.LEROY. Because I don'tt like being known as weird. (He

pushes LEONARD.)

LEONARD. I~m not calling you weird.LEROY. You hear me? I'm leaving this tOl,-vn because I

don't like to be known as weird! (He pushes LEONARDagain.)



LEONARD. Melanie, tell him to stop!

(MELANIE takes LEROY's hands. LEROY allows her tohold them so he can't strike LEONARDJ but he continues to stare resentfully at LEONARD.)

LEONARD. I sympathize. Look, let me write your story.LEROY. No!LEONARD. I~ll give you kids this ring.LEROY. Don't take it. He's so high and mighty.MELANIE (ogling the ring). It~s beautiful.LEONARD. It used to be my wedding ring.MELANIE. I'll remember you every time I look at it.LEROY. She says she wants it. (He takes the ring from

LEONARD, puts it on her finger.)LEONARD. Your thumb is bleeding.LEROY. Mind your own business.LEONARD (starting to write again). My business is writing.MELANIE. I never noticed that, LeRoy.LEONARD. That's quite a cut.MELANIE. You need a doctor. What are we going to do?LEROY. It's nothing. (To LEONARD.) Now see what

you've done? (To MELANIE.) Come on, Mel. Lees getout of here.

MELANIE. I don~t know. LeRoy, you need a doctor.LEONARD. What happened?LEROY. I'm getting out of here. You have to make a

choice, Melanie.MELANIE (pausing, torn). Goodbye, Leonard. Good luck,

Leonard.LEONARD. Good luck. (He stands watching them as they

go down the road toward their future.) Poor kids, what



they don~t know yet! (He sits down, thinking.) What~s

The Daily Tabloid formula? Let's see. The headlinemakes it absurd. Teenagers Disappear in Tunnel ofLove.. Boat sails into tunnel with two adolescents, andthen rises into the ... the what? Rises? Boats don't rise!!'n fill that in later. Children's father sends out huntingdogs. That will work. But wait, how'd the kids get onthis road? (Pause.) Damn job isn't as easy as it looks.

SCENE 2

(Edna's Cafe. LIZ RECKLING, the blond, beautiful waitress, is cleaning tables. LETTIE ENGSTRUM is sittingat a table. She is a sharp-faced, high-strung, thin womanwearing a stylish red dress and a hat with a veil.LEONARD, who has his notebook out, pauses outsidethe door and speaks to us.)

LEONARD. Edna's Cafe was looking tacky. There was asign in the window that said GOING OUT OF BUSINESS.

Inside there was a stunningly beautiful waitress withwavy blond hair who worked the tables. Feeling selfconscious and over-dressed in my suit, I went in and satdown at a table and ordered.

(LEONARD sits down. Early in the following scene LIZbrings LEONARD food.)

LETTIE (entering, then sitting beside LEONARD). Excuseme. (LEONARD, who is writing on a notebook, looks up.)



My name is Lettie Engstrom. You must be the new reporter who~s come to town.

LEONARD. How do you know?LETTIE. Things get around.LEONARD. I suppose you know my social security num

bertoo?LETIlE (leaning over, looking at his notebook). 643-75-75

50.LEONARD (closing the notebook, pulling it back). Well,

so you have ESP.

LETTIE. I~m a reporter, too. Information management.That's what we have in common, you and me.

LEONARD. I just got here. How do you know about me?LETIlE. Wanette, on one end of town, burns herself, and

Irving, down at the other end of town, takes out a BandAid. (Pause.) And I'm in my kitchen, writing it all down..

LEONARD. Same town as it used to be.LETIlE. I heard you're looking for a room?LEONARD. I'm going to be staying for a while. Yes.LETIlE. I take in roomers.LEONARD. What kind of rumors?LETfIE. We're very discreet about the folks who room

with us.LEONARD. It sounds like you are.LETIlE. Why don't you stay with us?LEONARD. Thanks, but I need a hotel.LE1TIE. Hotel shut down six months ago. Everything in

this town is shutting down.LEONARD. I need a place to write. I've got a dozen sto

ries to file.LETIlE. My place is it! Except for Mabers cabins at the

lake. No heat. She offers a package deal. Mice included.



LEONARD (embarrassed). I really need something moreprivate. (Pause.) I ... saw two kids on the road this afternoon. The boy looked like Jo Niemeier.

LETTIE. la's married name's Cronin. She has nine kids.LEONARD. Must have been one of her kids. Spooky .... as

if he was wearing her face.LETTIE. You're Leonard Milgram. Your dad worked at the

creamery.LEONARD. A lot of water's gone over the dam since then.LETTIE. Tell me about it. Why don't you come by my

house? We could talk about old times. Have a drink.Hank is at work.

LEONARD. Hank?LETTIE. My husband.LEONARD. Hank Engstrum. Wasn't he in high school

with me?LElTIE. You and Hank were ahead of me. Class of "66.LEONARD. A hot-headed little guy?LETTIE. I don't know about little.LEONARD. Isn't Hank the one who buried that kid up to

his neck in the cow pasture? What was that kid's name?LETfIE. Maynard Jones. Because he asked me to a dance.

You never knew it, but I thought you were cute.LEONARD (trying to recall). Maynard Jones ...LElTIE (pulling LEONARD up, intimately). Come on, and

17 11 show you my little piece of heaven, right here inRemnrs.

LEONARD. I don 7 t really have time. I'm here on business.LElTIE. More than I can say for anybody else in this town.

I always thought you would turn out good. Come on.LEONARD (to LIZ). Excuse me, miss. What are the damages?LIZ. Three twenty-six.



LEONARD. Not the tip! I mean the bill. (He pays. Charmingly, to LIZ.) You people in this town don't know whatthe real world is like!

LIZ. Oh, I know. (Charlned.) When I moved back here, Inoticed how reasonable everything was, too.

LEONARD. You moved back from-?LIZ. The West Coast. A couple of years ago.LEONARD. That's fascinating! Oh! These skates! Would

you be kind enough to direct me to Edith Lovely?LIZ. Edith died a couple of months ago.LEONARD. A girl named Melanie asked me give her these

skates!LIZ. Dh, Edith couldn't use them. She never skates. She's

too heavy.LEONARD. I'm sorry, didn't you say she was ... ah, dead?LETTIE. Come on!LEONARD. What am I going to do with these? ... I mean,

I promised Melanie.LIZ (taking the skates). Irving'll give them to Edith.LEONARD. But how can he?LIZ. Irving's a rea] nice guy.

(LEONARD looks at LIZ, astonished.)

LETflE (taking his arm). Aren't you coming?LEONARD. Thank you.

LIZ. Edith would love it if you visited her. She doesn't getout as much as she used to.

(LEONARD exits reluctantly with LE1TIE, still lookingback at LIZ.)


Tales From - Dramatic Publishing8 Tales From The Daily Tabloid Act I exile as any immigrant. How, at...

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Transcript of Tales From - Dramatic Publishing8 Tales From The Daily Tabloid Act I exile as any immigrant. How, at...