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24 No-one's Ark |
From Mary Celeste |
[Herald bangs her staff, but before she can get down to her familiar recitative the Foreman and Dockers 3 and 4 burst into a vigorous build-up like the start of Rock around the Clock during which they bring forward nine café tables on which the final evidence is to be displayed]
Dockers
What's coming up is the summing up!
What's coming up is the summing up!
What's coming up ... is the summing up!
[Attorney sweeps in grandly to an instrumental reprise of No 3, Court Now Sitting, during which each table is equipped with one of the nine Emblems of the hazards debated in the show: Addiction, beer-bottles; Climate, weathervane; Mutiny, bloody cutlass; Disease, rubber gloves; Explosion, barrel; Freak of Nature, Kraken's head; Gluttony, tureen-cover; Money-lust, swag-bag; Mumbo-jumbo, crystal ball. Perhaps each emblem could have been left downstage immediately after the episode to which it related]
Attorney
My earnest friends! I leave my court
to try and keep my promise
It was my task to choose
what to accuse
of stealing our mariners from us.
[He indicates each hazard-symbol in turn]
Some vile addictive potion
or the weather changing tack?
A mutinous commotion
or diseases black?
Industrial explosion
or Nature fighting back?
Famine, or money-lust, or fate?
I have no verdict to report
by process of deduction
but we can still save face
and solve the case
by staging a reconstruction:
[Crowd excitedly repeat, 'A reconstruction!']
Nine copies of this vessel,
nine crews to volunteer;
each voyage bound to wrestle
with one hazard here;
if eight come home successful
and one lot disappear
we prove what we need to demonstrate!
[Loud roars and gestures of approval from Crowd which Attorney acknowledges grandly as his trumpet tune plays]
Crowd {ad lib shouts}
Huzzah! Bravo!
[Barkers start the bidding for volunteers, to their habitual tune: the whole company appears to assume that it's the Audience that will be supplying the volunteers]
Barkers
Roll up, roll up! Away with your fears!
We want an answer, we want volunteers!
You know what to do! Get into a queue!
Let's 'ave you and you and you and you and you!
[Crowd call out, 'Come up on stage!' and so on: Foreman and Dockers 3 and 4 work the aisles importuning the public; they will come back to the stage with ten individuals in late Twentieth Century dress: soon it will be clear to the Audience that these 'volunteers' were plants, and are in fact the ten actors who played the Crew of Mary Celeste]
Barkers
Come on, come on! The trip of your lives!
A mystery tour that never arrives!
'ell of a lark! Like 'Untin' the Snark!
Buy your one-way tickets 'ere for No-one's Ark!
Buy your one-way tickets 'ere for No-one's Ark!
[Foreman and Dockers 3 and 4 back on stage: each 'volunteer', apparently nervous and exposed, gravitates towards the emblem of the hazard they were loosely associated with in the foregoing numbers: Disease, Sarah; Addiction, Deckhand; Gluttony, Cook; Climate, Helmsman; Money-lust, Cabin-boy; Nature, First Mate; Mumbo-jumbo, Lookout; Anarchy, Second Mate; Explosion, Sophia, her ears still covered by Briggs]
[This palaver ends as the hidden Mary Celeste's bell suddenly rings: the Crew pick up and clutch the emblems as if recalling their nautical fate long ago: instant change to spooky lighting and music (the reggae theme from No 4, No Survivors) but the insistent bell tolls on throughout the next three stanzas]
[Crowd address Crew]
Crowd
We have all been ghosts for a long, long time
it's no longer 1872
and we can hear alarm bells begin to chime
for a twentieth century crew
from our celestial point of view
[Crew are trying to block their ears partly from the sound of the bell and partly because they guess what's coming: a large globe of the world flies in above them, lit so that it looks green and pleasant]
We see the world sailing by on the seas of space
she carries six billion volunteers
who are re-enacting our mystery case
'til their final hour nears
please unblock your ears
Using Mary Celeste to invade your minds
like a latter-day Trojan Horse
we came back to show how your ship will go
if you don't adjust your course
[Sudden relief from the tolling of Mary Celeste's bell. Crowd sing to the planet above them: it is now lit so as to suggest lifelessness; Crew stricken as they apparently hear their own requiem sung to the refrain from No 2, Market The Myth; each cowers with his or her emblem]
Where in the world are the people?
the millions of families and friends
They wanted a life of plain sailing
is this how their fantasy ends?
A few had been calling for changes
but nobody much was impressed
they seemed to delight in the dangers
of Mary Celeste
[The Mary Celeste bell starts to toll furiously again: the spooky reggae theme resumes and the Crowd point accusingly at the Crew; the table-cloths are whisked off and the tops of the nine tables hinge towards the audience to reveal a new set of painted, contemporary emblems as detailed in No 25, Time To Turn The Tables]
Any one of these hazards was deadly
ah but modern man is a dunce
see him dancing along to a medley
all nine threats at once
fatal on all fronts
And though we found the struggle unequal
way back in the days of sail
he's determined to star in the sequel
to our tragic little tale
this time on a global scale
[Music goes into half-time]
so please don't ask if it tolls for you
when you hear that death-knell ring
your phantom choir has an anthem dire
which we're hoping we'll never have to sing
[Cut bell; Crowd kneel and sing, this time, to the Crew as the empty planet flies above them; Crew moved to tears by their importuning requiem]
Where in the world are the people?
is no-one alive on the ark?
could nobody see what was coming
and steer her away from the dark?
An image of sheer desolation
too bleak to be fully expressed
It once was the crown of creation
this Mary Celeste?