Context: Mrs McNab is a cleaner, set to the task of relentlessly cleaning the deserted home of the Ramseys, who have since passed away. This character is sentimental and thoughtful, but at the same time she is suppressing a great deal of dissatisfaction with her boring, lonely life. This often expresses itself in the form of jealousy and anger.
Mrs McNab: (Entering the house) Stepping into this house, I feel as if I have stumbled into some conversation in which I am unwelcome, and everyone has hushed suddenly to accommodate me. And why? There is no-one here but me, tearing this veil of tranquility with my too loud steps and unfamiliar voice, relentlessly cleaning this empty shell of a home knowing that I will never again hear Mrs Ramsey’s grateful voice.
“What would this home be without you?” she would say, when no-one else would so much as acknowledge my flitting, unceasing presence. “Ay, but with me alone it would be lifeless,” I would tell her, “It’s spirit lies in you, Mrs Ramsey.” And then I would hear her laughter fade away down the corridor, until the day it faded for good.
Even now it pains me to imagine old Mr Ramsey lurching along this dark passage, arms outstretched, calling her name. A ghost of a man he was in the end, his long, square fingers clutching at the air but always, always remaining empty.
Still I find reminders of families that once were, small fossils they have shed that now lie tarnished, cracked. A blue raincoat, collecting dust, when I remember how once small hands were busy with hooks and buttons. This looking glass once held a fresh young face, this door once opened to make way for rushing, tumbling children.
And will you fade, memories? Will you perish, one day, with the mortality of a person? Will new experiences weave their way into your history and twist you and change you, like a flower reflected in water? I can almost hear these very walls whispering their reply: “Never, never. We remain.”
[For a shorter piece, end here]
(picking up a flamboyant ballgown) Though some memories deserve to be left behind. How can I forget Prue Ramsey and her precious, sequinned ballgown? No-one deserved happiness more, people said. The spitting image of her mother, they would coo. And leaning on her father’s arm, taking a good man of service in marriage, that just completed the picture didn’t it? What, people asked, could have been more fitting? And, they added, since it could not be ignored, how beautiful she looked! Perfect Prue, her looks just made personality unnecessary didn’t they? No-one cared to get to know her, because how could such a radiant face mask a flawed character?
But I knew her. I saw her in ways even her own mother was blind to. I saw her lying, cheating and all the while smiling that innocent smile. (gradually building up emotion) Oh that smile would melt a man’s heart like butter, oh yes, she would melt it into a mass of bloody, sticky, pungent, fleshy mush that she could shape however she pleased. Fortune favours the beautiful, they say, but blaming it on fortune won’t do. It’s people who favour the beautiful, it’s us!
(pulling on the dress and examining herself in the mirror, miming holding a bouquet of flowers and walking down an altar, humming “Here Comes The Bride”) No-one is as beautiful as the bride on her special day. (smiling) No-one. (coming out of her daydream) Does anyone know how much I would have liked to have been married? Does anyone care? (falling to her knees in tears) Is anybody listening?
The mystics, the visionaries, I used to see them walking the beach, maybe stirring a puddle, looking at a stone and asking themselves “What am I?” “What is this?”. And I, looking on, would never know that they had found an answer, so that they were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. And I, looking on, would laugh at the expense of that same hippy and continue to drink and gossip as before.
Only now have I learned. Only now do I realise that those who question, those curious few, are the ones who squeeze every drop out of life until there is nothing left.
I will lie awake in my coffin wishing and wishing that things were different. That I had been beautiful, that I had been thoughtful, that I had found answers to all my questions. And still the memories in this house will remain, startlingly delicate and unforgiving. They remain to tell a story of a family who left this world with no regrets. But what remains to tell of me?
-Virginia Woolf, adapted by me, The Hopeless Romantic
Hope you find a way to use this script! Even just trying it out by yourself and really getting into role as Mrs McNab feels so freeing. I love Virginia Woolf and I have tried to imitate and preserve her “stream of consciousness” style, but I didn’t want it to get too cluttered so I’m really sorry, I know I haven’t properly reflected her style of writing.
The Hopeless Romantic xxx
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