January 19 Play: BANGERS AND MASH

19: BANGERS AND MASH - by Ed Valentine
© January 19, 2010 * ed@edvalentine.com

LIGHTS UP: False proscenium with red curtain.  A hot spotlight.)

VOICE (O.S.): Tonight, we present… Mr. Bangers and Mr. Mash!

The curtains open. Reveal: BANGERS, a man, with MASH, a ventriloquist dummy.

BANGERS: (SINGS:)
Good evening, and welcome! to the Bangers and Mash show.
We’re very pleased to meet you, and hope that you don’t…

MASH: (BLINKS:) -

BANGERS: Ahem?

MASH: (Looks at BANGERS:) -

BANGERS: (To MASH:) Here’s the part where you sing “Go.”

MASH: -

BANGERS: Sing it.

(MASH blinks.)

BANGERS: Sing it. It won’t hurt you.

(MASH shakes his head. Trying to make a joke of it:)

Ladies and Gentlemen! Ladies and Gentlemen! My comic partner is the most recalcitrant, double-dealing, low-down smug little money-grubbing, finger-wagging song of a stepchild, and moon-mad manatee, he! He is, without a doubt, the WORST I have ever seen. He’ll be fired, I tell you, fired!

(Still, MASH says nothing. It should appear as if something has gone terribly wrong onstage. To MASH:)

SAY something, can’t you? For Christ’s sake, SAY something.

(MASH just blinks.)

BANGERS: You little bastard. Get back in your case.

(The curtains close. BANGERS AND MASH disappear from view.)

VOICE: Ladies and Gentlemen… ladies and gentlemen.
Goodnight.

(Spotlight out.)


END OF PLAY.