Sirens

For radio.

F/X melodic female singing

BOSUN
Argh!

CAPTAIN
Calm down Bosun, calm down.

BOSUN
I can't Captain; it's been months.

CAPTAIN
Exactly. Not too much longer then.

BOSUN
I've never been this long without a woman before, I'm going to explode.

CAPTAIN
Now Bosun, that's exactly what she wants. She's trying to lure you.

BOSUN
That's fine.

CAPTAIN
Lure you onto the rocks and to our certain death.

BOSUN
Yeah, but if I could just grab onto a bit of her or something on the way down, well, that'd do me.

CAPTAIN
She's half bloody fish, man! You wouldn't get frisky with a haddock, would you?

BOSUN
Hmm. How tall is she?

CAPTAIN
No, not a particular haddock. Control yourself.

BOSUN
No. I'm fed up of that. That's it. I'm swimming.

CAPTAIN
What?

BOSUN
That way you keep your precious boat off the nasty, mean rocks and I get my end away.

CAPTAIN
I can't Captain this boat on my own. What with all the crew dead, you're all I have left.

BOSUN
Alright. (Quietly) Put on a dress.

CAPTAIN
Excuse me?

BOSUN
You want me to stay? You wear a dress.

CAPTAIN
That's preposterous. I haven't even got a dress.

BOSUN
I've made you one.

CAPTAIN
What?

BOSUN
Old sail and that; it's nothing, really.

CAPTAIN
No.

BOSUN
Alright. Man overboard!!

CAPTAIN
Wait, wait. Fine. Pass me the dress.

BOSUN
Here you go.

(BEAT)

There, that looks lovely.

CAPTAIN
Right. Well, let's just get this humiliation over, shall we?

FX A ruffling of clothing.

BOSUN
Argh! What the hell are you doing?

CAPTAIN
I thought that you were going to...I was just...well, never mind.

BOSUN
Give me that dress back!

CAPTAIN
But what on Earth did you want?

BOSUN
A bit of ritual humiliation. That's all. A Captain in a dress? Brilliant. I didn't know you were going to do that. I mean, where did you tuck it?

CAPTAIN
I just thought...

BOSUN
I think it's better for both of us if I go now, Captain.

CAPTAIN
Very well.

BOSUN
You can keep the dress.

FX Splash

I found this very easy to read, so it had a nice pace to it, nice, short dialogue. A pleasant sketch not a lol one but I thought it to be a good sketch nonetheless. A few bits of dialogue could possibly be snipped here and there but I liked the central premise, although the ending seemed to tail off slightly. But, unfortunately, I can't really think of an alternate ending atm.

For me the problem with this one is that the dress is introduced at the wrong point, causing the sketch to witch direction halfway through. I think this is a case where you need to decide what the sketch is about - either concentrate on the bosun being horny, and introduce the dress to wrap it up; or introduce the dress early and make that the focus.

Ta for the comments - I've had a nagging feeling that this could be a good sketch, so I tried to force it. Giggle-o is right in that it's not particularly funny - I'm laying it to rest. Ta again for the comments T & G.

I wouldn't ditch it. I think it is nicely paced and has a good to-ing and fro-ing feel to the dialogue but a) it probably needs a better out and b) like with everything on critique where could you send it? I suppose everything is done speculatively, just in the hope that something will crop up.

This is a good premise, which needs a better sketch attached to it. Unfortunately, I can't think of a suggestion as to what that sketch should be at the moment. But I'd keep working on it because, as I say, the core idea is a good one.

Cheers for that.

I basically write these sketches as I'm part of a group that performs them. We do radio & stage, but haven't performed yet - we put on full-length original plays too and that tends to dominate. So I'm not really looking to send them anywhere but to go on stage with some decent material.

Cheers for this - I'll revisit it and throw the whole sketch out and start again around the kernel of siren tempting randy sailor.

Quote: Rick Allden @ April 2 2010, 11:25 AM BST

Cheers for that.

I basically write these sketches as I'm part of a group that performs them. We do radio & stage, but haven't performed yet - we put on full-length original plays too and that tends to dominate. So I'm not really looking to send them anywhere but to go on stage with some decent material.

View original

Nice. Are you going to try/act this one out then? Let us know if it survives the edit.

I actually think the introduction of the dress bit is brilliant and very funny Rick.

Why don't you rewrite it using Odysseus and the Sirens to give it some sense of time and place.

Odysseus had himself tied to the ship's mast to avoid jumping in after the Sirens and stuffed cheese in his ears. Fertile ground for comedy, surely.

Thanks again all - I'll let you know what I end up doing with it.

Cheers Godot - my knowledge of the classics is naff, so I had no idea about that - that's great to work with - cheers.

Strictly speaking the Sirens were half bird rather than half fish:

But the confusion with mermaids is so common you could probably get away with it.