Hell on wheels

Just a short extract from a pub theatre play i'm working on.

SET IN A PUB, TWO BLOKES HAVING A CHAT OVER A PINT.

BRUCE: You had the right idea son: i should have taken a leaf out of your book.

ROGER: How'd you mean?

BRUCE: Divorce! Best thing you ever did, nothing but bloody trouble.

ROGER: It'll be five years next week...you know even after all this time, i still think i'll wake up to freshly ironed shirts.

BRUCE: Oh yours could iron? well that was a bonus...how's your father keeping? i've not seen him for a while.

ROGER: Not too good, i took him to the hospital this afternoon, he's just been diagnosed with parkinson's.

BRUCE: That's a shame, the bloke over the road has that, poor old bugger can't pick his nose without poking himself in the eye.

ROGER: Your mate Charlie Sanderson was there...at the hospital.

BRUCE: He's no mate of mine the thieving git! He'll take anything if it's not nailed down...what's wrong with him?

ROGER: I think he has housemaids knee.

BRUCE: Told you, he'll have her bloody handbag as well if she's not careful.

ROGER: Has your Peter found a job yet?

BRUCE: Don't talk daft! Lazy little swine, he tried tapping me for fifty quid to go clubbing, i said "go and see your mother," anyway he came back saying "she hasn't any money either," i said " i know," "i just wanted you to see what i ended up with when i went clubbing," if that doesn't put him off nothing will.

Sorry to say that I don't know how to crit a part of a pub theatre play - and you may well ask why I'm writing at all. I just wanted to say that I laughed at it. That was it!

Quote: marion @ October 27, 2007, 11:48 AM

Sorry to say that I don't know how to crit a part of a pub theatre play - and you may well ask why I'm writing at all. I just wanted to say that I laughed at it. That was it!

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It's taken from a sitcom i've written. We are trying to get pub theatre up and running in Bradford, this was one of three pieces i had that seemed to fit the pub arena. The fact that it made you laugh is crit enough for me. Many ta's.

Last paragraph is strong. Housemaid's knee was a bit weak IMO, a bit obvious. It reads a little bit like introduce character - gag. I would prefer to see more about the lazy son earlier on. It comes a bit too out of the blue for me. Parkinsons line was good, but again, it feels a little bit stuck in there.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way. i liked it and this is only my humble, and ultimately meaningless, opinion.

Not at all, there's over thirty pages of this, the gags are not the strongest ones, you can't see the others yet, i'm saving those for the performance in Feb.
The son doesn't figure much in the first episode, they can't get him out of bed.(lazy git)

I misread the last line and had to read it twice to get it but when I did it was funny. (could be me)

It's funny but standard 2 blokes in a pub. Could you give it an angle?

The fun begins when Bruce finds out he's going to become a granddad.
"i'm only 40" "granddads are 60 and 70""i'll have to start playing bowls and breeding pigeons" " does anyone know where i can get an allotment?"

Ray

I think this is quite good but at the moment it seems more like separate gags put together rather than one scene in a play.

For me it seems more natural to keep the divorce thing going - still a source of humour - rather than jumping into the Parkinson's gag. Before we get more info on how Parkinson's affects the characters, we jump into the stealing friend gag and then jump to the son gag.

You do attempt to disguise those jumps but it feels a bit forced and unnatural at the moment.

I would think about who Roger and Bruce are for a moment, write down characteristics and bits of biog if you want and then just write them talking about a subject. Don't think about it in terms of the play or whether it's funny or not just have them talking in their own voice for a while.