The Books: “The Art of Dining” (Tina Howe)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

ArtOfDining.jpgNext on my script shelf:

The Art of Dining: A Comedy, another play by Tina Howe.

A sweeping multi-character play that takes place on the night a certain chi-chi restaurant opens. Again, we have many characters at different tables, and we dip in and out of their stories. The play is all about food – people’s issues with food, the celebration of a meal, the primal act of eating, consumption in general …

I’m going to excerpt from the scene between David Osslow (head of his own publishing company – confident, no issues with food whatsoever) and Elizabeth Barrow Colt (a pathologically shy writer – played by Dianne Wiest in the original production.) Colt is shy, nervous, barely able to speak … She is also nearsighted and very VERY afraid of food. Osslow and Colt are having a business dinner to discuss her work. This is their first meeting. I would have LOVED to see Dianne Wiest do this part. It’s funny because the character literally can barely speak she’s so shy … she grunts, murmurs, sighs … and then suddenly – she has a one-page monologue that is kind of so horrifying that you wish she would shut up again. It’s a very funny device.


EXCERPT FROM The Art of Dining: A Comedy, by Tina Howe:

Lights rise on Elizabeth Barrow Colt and David Osslow. Elizabeth is staring at her soup, motionless. David Osslow, the successful head of his own publishing company, a man with a glowing appetite and glowing literary taste, is happily eating his. He’s in his fifties, is dapper, at ease, and ready for anything.

DAVID OSSLOW. I like your work very much.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (drops her head and murmurs)

DAVID OSSLOW. We all likeit.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (shuts her eyes, murmurs again)

DAVID OSSLOW. I beg your pardon?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (Flinches)

DAVID OSSLOW. Are you all right?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (nodding, eyes closed) Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine …

(A silence)

DAVID OSSLOW. For some reason I imagined you very differently. (A silence) I thought you’d have a very large head.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (starts laughing, wishing she could stop.)

DAVID OSSLOW. No, really I did. I thought you’d have this … (indicating the size with his hands) huge head!

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (finds this hysterical, and trying not to laugh, makes peculiar squeaking sounds)

DAVID OSSLOW. You know how you form an image of someone you haven’t met?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (Keeps laughing)

DAVID OSSLOW. I also pictured you as having very bushy eyebrows. You know, the kind that almost meet over the bridge of the nose …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (Helpless with laughter and embarrassment, tries to hide her face in her napkin and accidentally knocks over her bowl of soup, spilling the entire contents into her lap. She leaps to her feet, flapping like a wet puppy) Oh dear!

DAVID OSSLOW. (bolts out of his seat to help her) Are you all right?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (frantically wiping at her dress with her napkin) I spilled …

DAVID OSSLOW. (lifting his napkin to help) Did you burn yourself?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (shrinking from him) I spilled all my soup.

DAVID OSSLOW. (starts wiping at her dress with his napkin) Here, let me help …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (turning her back to him) No, no, I can …

DAVID OSSLOW. Are you sure you’re …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. I’m sorry.

DAVID OSSLOW. Let me get the waiter. Waiter!

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (her back turned, hunches over her spilled dress as if the most secret part of her body had suddenly sprung a leak) I can …

CAL. (striding over) Yes?

[The following 2 short speeches appear side to side in my script. They are to be said simultaneously – a very Tina Howe touch.]

DAVID OSSLOW. I’m afraid we’ve had a slight spill. Could you bring us some water and extra napkins?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. It’s fine … It’s coming right out … It’s nothing … really nothing … (showing her dress) See, I got it all out.

CAL. Yes, right away, I’ll get you some fresh napkins and we’ll clean it up in no time. (He produces several napkins from his pockete and joins David Osslow in wiping Elizabeth off)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (dying of embarrassment since the spill hit her squarely in her crotch) No really I can … let me …

CAL. It shouldn’t stain. A good dry cleaner should be able to get this right out. (feeling the material) What is this material anyway? Cotton?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. It isn’t my dress … (she keeps fussing over it)

CAL. (to David Osslow, feeling the fabric) Wouldn’t you say this was cotton?

DAVID OSSLOW. (feels it) No, that isn’t cotton, it feels more like … rayon to me …

CAL. (feeling another section of it) Rayon? It’s too lightweight to be rayon…

DAVID OSSLOW. It could be a wool challis …

CAL. I say it’s either cotton or a cotton blend.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. I don’t have a proper dress …

DAVID OSSLOW. As long as it’s not a synthetic, she should have no problems …

CAL. (feeling it again) You know, it might just be … slik!

DAVID OSSLOW. (feels) Silk?

CAL. That’s right: silk!

DAVID OSSLOW. (still feeling) It certainly has the weight of silk …

CAL. It’s silk! That’s what it is!

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. She’ll kill me.

CAL. Don’t worry, this will come right out. Silk sheds stains like water. (Pushes into the kitchen with the soiled napkins)

DAVID OSSLOW. It’s a nice dress.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (trying to hide the immense stain with her napkin, heads back towards her chair I’m sorry …

DAVID OSSLOW. (pulls out her chair for her) These kinds of things happen all the …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (collapses in the chair before he’s pulled it out all the way, making a loud plop.) Oh dear, I …

DAVID OSSLOW. (strains to push the chair, with her in it, closer to the table) There we go … (He returns to his seat, looks at her, reaches across the table and picks up her hand, squeezes it and then lets go) Are you all right?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (head down) Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine …

(A silence)

CAL. (returns with a brand new bowl of steaming soup which he sets down before Elizabeth) There we go! (And he turns on his heel)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (her shoulders giving way, looks at it.) Oh dear.

(A slight pause)

DAVID OSSLOW. Elizabeth, I’d like to publish your short stories.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (looking into the soup, stunned) Oh my.

DAVID OSSLOW. They’re wonderful.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Mercy!

DAVID OSSLOW. What did you say?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (softly) I don’t know what to say …

DAVID OSSLOW … truly wonderful!

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. I never imagined … (starts fishing around in her pocketbook)

DAVID OSSLOW. You’re incredibly gifted …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Oh no, I’m … (pulls out her lipstick, lowers her head and sneaks on a smear, hands shaking. Suddenly she drops the lipstick. It falls into her soup with a splash) Oh no!

DAVID OSSLOW. What was that?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (dives for it) Oh nothing, I just dropped my lipstick … (She repeatedly tries to retrieve it with her spoon, but it keeps splashing back down into her soup. She finally gives up, fishes it out with her hands, and drops it into her purse)

DAVID OSSLOW. Don’t you like the soup?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (hunched over her pocketbook) Oh yes, it’s …

DAVID OSSLOW. It looks delicious.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (staring at it) Yes, it’s very nice.

[The following two lines should be said simultaneously]

DAVID OSSLOW. I’ve always loved French Provincial … I’m sorry … I …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Would you like it?

(A pause)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. OH, YOU HAVE IT.

DAVID OSSLOW. No, really, I …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (picks up the bowl with trembling hands and starts lifting it across the table to him, her spoon still in it) I want you to have it.

DAVID OSSLOW. Careful!

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (giddy, the soupl sloshing wildly) I never have soup!

DAVID OSSLOW. Look out!

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. In fact, I hardly ever have dinner either!

DAVID OSSLOW. Really, I …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (sets it down in front of him, spilling some) THERE.

DAVID OSSLOW. (looks at it. Weakly.) Well, thank you.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (incredibly relieved, looks at him and sighs)

DAVID OSSLOW. (picks up her spoon and dips it into the soup)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. This is nice.

DAVID OSSLOW. (starts eating it)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. How is it?

DAVID OSSLOW. Very good. Would you like a taste?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Oh, no, thank you!

(A silence)

DAVID OSSLOW. Do you cook at all?

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Oh no.

DAVID OSSLOW. (reaches a spoonful of soup across the table to her) Come on, try some.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. (she tastes it) My mother didn’t cook either.

DAVID OSSLOW. Now isn’t that good? (gives her another taste)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. Mmmmmm … (quickly wipes her mouth with her napkin)

DAVID OSSLOW. (takes a taste himself) My mother was a great cook.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. She didn’t know how. She grew up with servants.

DAVID OSSLOW. Her Thanksgiving dinners! …

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. We had a cook. Lacey. She was awful and she smelled.

DAVID OSSLOW. I cook every once in a while.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. We all hated her. Especially my mother.

DAVID OSSLOW. My wife is a great cook! Some night you’ll have to come over for dinner!

(He settles into his soup, eating with less and less relish as her story progresses)

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. In fact, when I was young I never even saw my mother in the kitchen. The food just appeared at mealtimes as if by magic, all steaming and ready to eat. Lacey would carry it in on these big white serving platters that had a rim of raised china acorns. Our plates had the same rim. Twenty-two acorns per plate, each one about the size of a lump of chewed gum. When I was very young I used to try and pry them off with my knife … We ate every night at eight o’clock sharp because my parents didn’t start their cocktail hour until seven, but since dinner time was meant for exchanging news of the day, the emphasis was always on talking … and not on eating. My father bolted his food, and my mother played with hers: sculpting it up into hills and then mashing it back down through her fork. To make things worse, before we sat down at the table she’d always put on a fresh smear of lipstick. I still remember the shade. It was called “Fire and Ice …” a dark throbbing red that rubbed off on her fork in waxy clumps that stained her food pink, so that by the end of the first course she’d have rended everything into a kind of … rosy puree. As my father wolfed down his meat and vegetables, I’d watch my mother thread the puree through the raised acorns on her plate, fanning it out into long runny pink ribbons … I could never eat a thing … “WAKE UP, AMERICA!” she’d trumpet to me. “You’re not being excused from this table until you clean up that plate!” So, I’d take several mouthfuls and then when no one was looking, would spit them out into my napkin. Each night I systematically transferred everything on my plate into that lifesaving napkin …

DAVID OSSLOW. Jesus Christ.

ELIZABETH BARROW COLT. It’s amazing they never caught on.

DAVID OSSLOW. (lights a cigarette and takes a deep drag)

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