Canadian Rajah - Tapa blanda

Acerca del autor

Dave Carley is a Toronto-based playwright whose plays have had close to 500 productions across Canada, the United States and in many countries around the world. They include Midnight Madness, Writing with our Feet (nominated for the Governor General's Award), After You, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel The Edible Woman, Taking Liberties, and Orchidelirium. Dave is the former editor at the Playwrights Union of Canada (now Playwrights Guild) and, for many years, was both script editor at CBC Radio Drama and play editor for Scirocco Drama. Dave's most recent full-length works have been Twelve Hours; an adaptation of Al Purdy's novel A Splinter in the Heart, and Canadian Rajah. He is currently completing two new full-length works for stage: The Shakespeare Club and Extinction. For more on Dave, go to www.davecarley.com

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Scene 1

Toronto, 1925. ESCA is in his garden in Lawrence Park. A magnolia tree may be shedding petals, and he sits amid them in wonder. He is neatly dressed; even when gardening he looks dapper. He also holds a drink, and an opened letter.

ESCA: Everything in my garden is from somewhere else. My magnolia tree is a hybrid from China. I purchased it at a nursery in Ottawa because I couldn't find the right variety here in Toronto. Those irises -- I bought the bulbs at a botanical garden in New Jersey. That white pine? Transplanted from my cottage just east of Kingston. (Holds up letter.) And me? According to this, I just stumbled out of the backwoods of Ontario.

(Music effect to take us back slightly in time, and across an ocean.)

Scene 2

London, England, a few months earlier. The interior of the Brooke home, upstairs, in Ranee GHITA's dressing area. GHITA sweeps in and eventually begins shedding her Edwardian-era clothes for her battle dress: a version of a baja kurung, a knee-length blouse worn over a full length dress. Like ESCA's magnolia, it too is a hybrid; one of GHITA's making, and designed for maximum impact.

GHITA: I will give him this: he's punctual.Crawford said he was yanking on the doorbell at the dot of three. But I'm a very un-punctual Ranee. When you hold all the cards, it's more fun to lay them down slowly. I'm going a little native for our little native. (Holds up the baja kurung). A baja kurung. Very Sarawak. Every time I put this on I can hear my mother's warning: "Do think this through, Ghita. Do you really want to live England, go all the way around the world -- to someplace no one has ever heard of -- (Different pronunciations.) Sarawak Sarawak Sarawak -- a place that sounds like a parrot? And live in a jungle with head-hunters? And marry that Charlie Brooke? He's so much older than you. And Charlie's reputation is so -- dubious."

"Dubious reputation." Those words were catnip to this kitty.