Читать книгу The Big Fellah - Richard Bean - Страница 9

(1972. DAVID COSTELLO is isolated in a spot. A surround soundscape of chatter, eating, cutlery/crockery clanging. The audience is the St. Patrick’s day parade dinner crowd. COSTELLO is dressed in a full Brian Baru and Irish kilt. He lights a cigar. He’s cool. He’s done this before. He picks up a wine glass and taps it with a fork. This has no effect on the chatter which continues with only a few shushes thrown in. He tries again with the wine glass. No change. He looks stage left and mimes a blow on the pipes. There is an almighty and comic blast on the pipes, rather longer than COSTELLO wanted. It is followed by laughter and applause. He speaks in a New York accent.)

COSTELLO: I won’t keep you long. I understand that one of you’s godda go to work in the morning.

(Laughter.)

I’d like to thank the chef, Jimmy Schultz, and all his staff for a real terrific meal – as ever!

(Applause.)

Hell! At five hundred dollars a plate – it’s godda be good!

(Laughter.)

It woulda been a lot cheaper if we’d all been born Protestant!

(Laughter.)

THE FIRST EVER NEW YORK ST.PATRICK’S DAY PARADE WAS IN 1766!

(Small cheer.)

In nineteen seventy two, two hundred and six years later, WE’RE STILL MARCHING!

(Many cheers.)

America has given each of us the opportunity to fulfil our true potential! God Bless America!

ALL: God Bless America!

COSTELLO: Some of us have prospered.

(Laughter. COSTELLO acknowledges that the laughter is directed at him.)

And America asks only one thing of us – that we become Americans.

I am an American... AND, I am Irish!

(Cheers. COSTELLO is in tears.)

This year, the parade, this dinner, it feels different. Just over a month ago, in Derry, thirteen unarmed Irishmen were murdered in cold blood by foreign soldiers!

(Grumbles of disgust.)

I fought one war for America. Korea. Many of you have sons in Vietnam. I killed men, men I did not know, men who would have killed me had I not killed them. And I’d do it again if my nation asked me to.

(He gets out a handkerchief and wipes his tear filled eyes.)

I really do not know if these wars in Asia are just wars – this guy...whatshisname... Chomsky thinks they’re not, but I didn’t see him over there –

(Laughter.)

War is hell! But more disgusting than war is tyranny. Our black American brothers in the Civil Rights movement have finally removed the stain of racial discrimination from this nation and yet today our Irish Catholic men and women exist only as targets in the cross hairs of the British rifles.

(Supportive grumbles.)

Kissinger and Nixon, I make no apologies for putting them in that order –

(Laughter.)

– they got one eye on the Soviet Union, one eye on Vietnam, and one eye on the moon!

(Laughter.)

If my math is correct – they got one good eye left!

(Laughter.)

Look to Ireland Mr. Kissinger! Look to your “ancestral home” Mr. President!

(Laughter.)

There’s forty million Irish Americans ready to back you for a second term if you do the right thing!

(Cheers.)

What is the right thing? I know what it ain’t! It ain’t détente. Was it détente when my father, and four hundred thousand of his American buddies died kicking the Nazis outa France!? No! Do the right thing!

(Applause.)

OK, OK, I’m not calling for a beach landing in Galway.

(Laughter.)

But take the reins off of our money!

(Yeah!)

Quit supplying arms to the Brits!

(Yeah!)

And Kissinger, stick your détente up your derrière, and get your German ass over to London with this message – “No direct rule, Brits out!”.

(Cheering.)

Our struggle for freedom needs money. Earlier today, the police, the firemen, the longshoremen, the Irish workers who keep this great city alive filled the buckets on the parade with hard earned dollars and quarters. But from you guys – the blessed sons of Ireland in America – I don’t want five dollar bills, I don’t want ten dollar bills. I want cheques!

(Laughter.)

“For freedom comes from God’s right

hand And needs a Godly train

And WEALTHY men must make our land

(Knowing laughter.)

A nation once again!”

(Huge cheering.)

To black.