Play Name
Apologia
By Alexi Kaye Campbell
Director and Contact Details
Joshua George Lawson
joshuageorgelawson@gmail.com
Playing Dates
10th-19th September (including the charity night); There will be a matinee and evening performances on Saturday 12th September. No show on Sunday 13th September
Get-in and Strike
Get-in from Monday 20th July; Strike Sunday 20th September.
Venue
Bromley Little Theatre Main House.
Audition
Sunday 8th February at 2:20pm
About the play
A disastrous family reunion is the occasion for a sharp and perceptive look at what has happened to 60’s idealists and their children.
Kristin Miller is an eminent and successful art historian. As a young mother she followed her politics and vocation, storming Parisian barricades and moving to Florence. Her birthday should be a time for celebration but, when her two sons deliver their versions of the past, everyone must confront the cost of Kristin‘s commitment to her passions.
A witty, topical and passionate play about generations, secrets and warring perspectives. The drama of the disastrous dinner party has a long and distinguished pedigree in British theatre. A birthday gathering should be a cause for celebration but the cracks in family relationships abound. From the outset it is entirely clear that this is going to be an evening from hell. Hold onto your hats!!!
Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play Apologia premiered at The Bush Theatre, London, in 2009. It was revived at the Trafalgar Studios, London, in 2017, directed by Jamie Lloyd.
Time
Present day.
Location
The kitchen of Kristin Miller’s home.
Style and Genre
Award-winning drama.
Characters
Kristen –              Female.  Early 70’s. British.  An eminent art historian.  Mother to Peter and Simon.
Peter –                Male.  Late 30’s/Early 40’s.  British.  Kristen’s eldest son.
Simon –               Male.  Mid to Late 30’s.  British.  Kristen’s youngest son.
Trudi –                 Female.  Mid 20’s.  American.  Peter’s fiancée.
Claire –                Female.  Mid to Late 30’s.  British.  Simon’s girlfriend and a soap actress.
Hugh –                 Male.  Early 70’s.  British.  Kristen’s long-time friend.  Â
Audition pieces
Monologue for Kristen:
Kristin: Imagine you are living in the early years of the fourteenth century in some small village a few miles outside Padua. You’re in your early thirties but look sixty-five because you work in the fields all day and at night you have to care for a family of nine… Your fingers constantly blistered, and you smell of your own sweat… You are constantly reminded by the wonderful Catholic Church that just in case you ever entertained the thought of patting yourself on the back for surviving this horrible adversity, you are in fact a bad, carnal creature, intemperate and steeped in original sin.
As a matter of fact, you’re also constantly reminded that in all likelihood you will end up in some crowded furnace being prodded by all sorts of objects… As a consolation, you are also offered an alternative, but this alternative is strange and foreign to you. These two-dimensional, alien faces stare down at you with absurd expressions, set against a gold backdrop. They don’t look remotely human… They reflect nothing familiar… Then suddenly one day this funny thing happens… You are in a chapel, and you kneel down to pray… Your eyes drift upwards to just one part of the giant fresco that adorns the vaulted ceilings above you; an image of the Madonna cradling the body of her son in your arms. Your eyes move further up slowly, curiously, taking in the soft skin, the nape of the neck, the gentle contours of the face and then… then you actually stare at the face for the first time and a chill runs up your spine and your whole view of life changes for ever.
The Madonna’s expression is one of anguish and loss, her mouth tilted slightly upwards as if she is asking the same questions that you are, her left hand touching her son’s neck as if trying to stroke him back to life. You realise now that this face is not only recognisable – the face is yours. Your weeping eyes, your pale cheeks, your mouth that slightly curls with doubt. It’s a mirror.
Monologue for Peter:
Peter: The way you write about art is thrilling… The supporting characters, however, seem a little sketchy… I might ask myself how, in a book that calls itself a memoir, that purports to be your fucking life story, I don’t get a single fucking mention… I am your son, I would say to myself, and though we didn’t see much of each other as we were growing up, it’s true, I would have liked to have played a slightly more pivotal part in what I’m sure it describes on the back flap as ‘The Life and Times of’. Would that be churlish of me?… That awful Italian you shacked up with for a couple of years got a whole fucking chapter… I have to now ask you the question that I have been leading up to, the question I have been secretly asking myself for many, many years, the question that has been gnawing in my fucking chest since I was a small boy, the same question I’ve just been informed your other son is also keen to hear the answer to… And the question is why did this woman have children if she wasn’t prepared to do the job properly?
Monologue for Simon:
Simon: It must have been one in the morning and I was lying on this bench when a man approached me… There was a café on the side of the platform and I think he’d been sitting there for quite a long time and had noticed this boy in a suit looking rather lost. So he came to talk to me… He must have been – I don’t know, about forty, or something… Anyway has asked me if I was all right… And I said that I was and that I was waiting for my mother but that she would be there soon and that I would wait for her until she got there… He then said that he was worried about a boy of my age spending the whole night on my own… And then he said, ‘Why don’t you come back to my house and have something to eat and you can rest and then I’ll bring you back in the morning.’.. And even though I felt, no, I knew that it was dangerous, that it was wrong for me to follow this man back to his house, I stood up and picked up my bag and followed him… And part of me was thinking – ‘This will show her, this will show her, this will fucking show her.’
Monologue for Trudi:
Trudi: I’m sorry. I’m just a little emotional, that’s all. It’s just that – It’s just that I wasn’t expecting this… And everything you said made me sad, so very, very sad and I started thinking about poor Simon and then earlier when your mother was talking to me about Giotto, about what he did as an artist, I mean about how he changed the world, how he transformed the way we looked at each other and that made me quite emotional too, I don’t know why but it did, it kind of all made sense and then I started thinking, later, when she was talking about art and about everything like that, and what she just said now about responsibility, I started thinking about Jesus, about what it is about him that I love so much, about why it is I’m a Christian, and I had a terrible thought that what if the only reason I like Jesus, I love Jesus is just because… because… because.. is just because…Is just because he makes life simpler.
Monologue for Claire:
Claire: It’s funny. When you said last night that you thought I was good in A Doll’s House, my heart missed a beat. I nearly leapt for joy. How do you do that?… Did I ever tell you about my father?… I watched him slowly drown in a mountain of unpaid bills. When I was thirteen he was declared bankrupt. I used to come home every day after school and the bathroom door was always closed and the sound was always the same – the sound of my mother’s stifled sobs. Then she’d come out with a smile on her face and cook dinner… Since then most of my life I’ve been running away from unpaid bills, stifled sobs … There’s a part of me that admires you… Your idealism has turned into hardness, Kristin. It has a thick, thick shell… ‘Why does she demonise me like that?’ I kept asking myself. ‘Why does she vilify me? Why does she scrutinise everything I do…?’ I decided it’s got nothing to do with me really. It’s not about me… It’s about you Kristin.
Monologue for Hugh:
Hugh: I’m the peacemaker, the joker, the entertaining diversion. I’m also rather English. I’d rather have a limb amputated than make a scene. But last night I wanted to go for you, boy… Oh, I know, she is to moderation and diplomacy what I am to heterosexuality – she just can’t do it… But I still wanted to grab you by the neck and say, ‘I was there. I’m a witness’… You may joke about the Gauloises cigarettes but you didn’t know her back then. Before it all went so terribly wrong. I don’t know about the others. Those men and women who were also there, doing what we were doing. Marching in our sandals, as Claire put it… The thing you really need to know is that I can put my hand on my heart and say to you that in those eyes I saw that she thought – naively, maybe, who knows – that she was doing it all for you… But then you’d need to believe that people like that actually exist. People who care in that particular way. And maybe you don’t anymore… Chew on that a little while, you ingrate.
Sequence:
Trudi: That is such a beautiful dress, Claire.
Claire: Thank you. I splashed out on it.
Trudi: It’s beautiful.
Kristin: You splash out on yourself a lot, don’t you?
Claire: It’s true, I confess.
Peter: Where shall we all sit?
Trudi: I’m sure you deserve it.
Kristin: Anywhere you like.
Trudi: Is it from a designer store?
Hugh: You sit at the end, birthday girl, like the queen that you are.
Claire: It’s Tomako Mihara.
Trudi: Tomako who?
Hugh: Imperatrix Kristina.
Peter: Sweetie, why don’t you sit opposite me.
Trudi: Okay, honey.
Hugh: Regina Terribilis, reigning over her dominions.
Claire: Tomako Mihara, she’s a new Japanese designer.
Trudi: I’ve never hear of her.
Hugh: Overseeing the lands of her subjects with a steely eye of disapproval and despair.
Trudi: I’m not really familiar with designers. I don’t really read Vogue or anything.
Claire: No?
Hugh: And wondering where it all went horribly wrong.
Trudi: I mean, I’ve heard of Gucci and stuff.
Peter: Are we using these spoons to serve with?
Kristin: We are.
Trudi: But I don’t generally know a lot about fashion.
Peter: That’s one of the things I love about you.
Trudi: Though I do know a beautiful dress when I see one.
Claire: That’s very kind, thank you, Trudi….
[Cut to]
Kristin: So how much does a dress like the one you’re wearing now set you back then, Claire?
Claire: I never divulge my secrets.
Kristin: One hundred pounds? Two hundred?
Trudi: That’s a lot of money.
Peter: Why do you want to know how much her dress costs?
Claire: I had an especially bad week at work so I decided to spoil myself.
Kristin: Good for you.
Claire: It was very stressful.
Hugh: Down the mines.
Claire: And I said to myself, ‘You know what, Claire? You deserve this’… So I splashed out…
Kristin: How much?
Claire: Seven hundred.
Trudi: Pounds?
Hugh: Fuck me sideways with a bargepole.