Synopsis
Dr. Lorne Pender, a college professor and failed novelist, has had an affair with one of his students, who broke up with him and then went on to achieve the kind of success he has never enjoyed – and with a novel that the literary world claims is a thinly-disguised account of their actual relationship. Now, half-crazed by jealousy and armed with a blackboard and a loaded gun, he gives a deranged public lecture about the novel, trying desperately to prove that it is not about the two of them. In the end, he discovers a whole new meaning to the book, and to what they had together.
Critical Responses
“The one that I’m crazy about, my big favourite from this year’s Fringe… John Lazarus is in full flight with this one… Successful on all of the levels that it attempts… Witty and dense, brilliantly constructed, and, overall, one of the most satisfying shows of this or any other Fringe… Dizzyingly complex … Really satisfying… There’s also a lot of humour… Lazarus sucks us into his character’s hatred, goes too far with it, then turns it around and makes us stare evil in the face.”
-Colin Thomas, The Georgia Straight
and CBC Radio, “The Arts Tonight,” September, 1991
“Sweet deconstruction… Lazarus’ script thrums with bitter wit and…sings like a manic kettle on a lava flow to hell.”
– Brian Peterson, The Fringe Review # 3, September, 1991
“LAZARUS RISES TO CHALLENGE OF MEDEA… It’s a formally perfect, very funny play, consistently witty right down to that cathartic gun. It’s even a wise play, and one of the best things Lazarus has done.”
– Lloyd Dykk, the Vancouver Sun, September, 1991
“He manages to send up Canadian literature, publishing, politically correct behavior, education, teaching, college professors and relationships. All this in one hilarious hour… Funny, intelligent and full of surprises.”
– Renee Doruyter, the Vancouver Province, September, 1991
Production History
A one-man show which the author performed at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, 1991, at “Best of the Fringe” at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and at Studio 58, UBC, SFU, and the Sechelt Storytelling Festival. Directed by Robert Metcalfe. It was also adapted into a CBC Radio drama, starring the author and featuring CBC Radio host Lister Sinclair as “Lester Squire.”
Requirements
1 M. One setting. A one-act play of 45 minutes.
Excerpt
Ondine St.-Foi is the name of Dr. Pender’s lost love. The “Rat,” as PENDER calls it, is a pet ferret or weasel or something – PENDER never did find out its species – which she took everywhere.
PENDER: I didn’t see her for several weeks, although I certainly kept an eye out for her. The next time I saw her, it was in the last place I would have expected to find a teenage college kid: at a University faculty party. I was at this event because I was seeking a position in the Department of Literature. Mein host was the Dean of Creative Writing, Professor Sidney Feinstein.
Sidney and I go ‘way back. We had been students together: the rival shining lights, the brave young hope of our class. A friendly rivalry, mind you. Except where it came to women. His ploy with women was to play the Socialistic, Sympathetic, Understanding, Good Listener – the type who used his sensitivity like a blunt instrument.
Anyway, the night of the party, there was Ondine, looking rather adolescent and affected with the Rat on her shoulder. And then Sidney came over, squatted beside her, protective arm around her, “Lorne, have you met my date, Ma’amselle St.-Foi?” I got quite depressed.
But then, later that evening, we played a party game called “Erudition or Contrition.” The Eruditions are obscure academic trivia questions. If you can’t answer the question, you perform the Act of Contrition: you expose your buttocks to the rest of the company for ten seconds of applause. Ladies had the option of baring their breasts. Professorial sort of game.
That evening I saw us all through Ondine’s eyes: a bunch of noisy drunken self-important middle-aged bores, mooning and flashing our sagging body parts hysterically. And then came her turn to pick an Erudition out of the hat.
It was to sing a song in a dead language, from memory, no hymns or Christmas carols permitted. She asked for a moment to think. For the first time, the room fell silent. Poor kid, we were going to have to see her breasts. Sidney began to demonstrate his anti-sexist sensitivity with a little speech suggesting that those who didn’t want to play had the option of — But then Ondine began to sing. (Sings, to the tune from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana: )
Omnia sol temperat, purus et subtilis,
Novo mundo reserat faciem Aprilis.
Ad amorem properat animus herilis,
Et iocundis imperat deus puerilis.
And two more verses, sung with a radiance to which I cannot do justice. Even the Rat was quiet. And when she finished, one of the professors said, “I heard the word ‘deus’ in there, that makes it a hymn, show us your tits, darling.” I told him it was from Carmina Burana, and this clown said, “Oh I know that, Lorne darling, and the Carmina were pagan hymns.”
And then the whole crowd began to argue about whether there was such a thing as a pagan hymn – and Ondine looked me straight in the eye and said, almost inaudibly in the hubbub, “It’s a love song.” And I shouted, “May I have the honour of performing the Act of Contrition on the lady’s behalf?” Again, the room fell silent. And I began to undo my trousers.
She almost let me get my pants down. But then she sighed a little sigh, and this teen-age college student, in a room full of University profs, said – I quote – “No, Dr. Pender, that’s all right, everyone here is familiar with the art of compromise.”
And with her right hand she held her sweater down while with her left hand she yanked it up, exposing one perfect caramel left breast. And she looked around the room with her head held high and the Rat perched on her shoulder. And everyone looked at the floor in shame. Except me. She and I looked at each other, and she smiled, and said, “But thank you for your gallant offer to lower your trousers. Perhaps another time.”
*****