Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
Next on the script shelf:
More John Patrick Shanley!
The next play is a one-act called The Red Coat. It was first done, along with 6 of his other one-acts, at the Ensemble Studio Theatre (or EST) here in New York. The Red Coat
EXCERPT FROM The Red Coat
MARY. I got all dressed … I tasted the wine on your … mouth. You were waiting for me out here? I wasn’t even going to come. I don’t like Susan so much. I was going to stay home and watch a movie. What would you have done?
JOHN. I don’t know.
[He kisses her again. She kisses him back]
MARY. You go to St. Nicholas of Tolentine, don’t you?
JOHN. Yeah.
MARY. I see you on the platform on a hundred and forty-ninth street sometimes.
JOHN. I see you, too! Sometimes I just let the trains go by until the last minute, hoping to see you.
MARY. Really?
JOHN. Yeah.
MARY. I take a look around for you but I always get on my train. What would you have done if I hadn’t come?
JOHN. I don’t know. Walked around. I walk around a lot.
MARY. Walk around where?
JOHN. I walk around your block a lot. Sometimes I run into you.
MARY. YOu mean that was planned? Wow! I always thought you were coming from somewhere.
JOHN. I love you, Mary. I can’t believe I’m saying it … to you … out loud. I love you.
MARY. Kiss me again.
[They kiss]
JOHN. I’ve loved you for a long time.
MARY. How long.
JOHN. Months. Remember that big snowball fight?
MARY. In the park?
JOHN. Yeah. That’s when it was. That’s when I fell in love with you. You were wearing a red coat.
MARY. Oh, that coat! I’ve had that for ages and ages. I’ve had it since the sixth grade.
JOHN. Really?
MARY. I have really special feelings for that coat. I feel like it’s part of me … like it stands for something … my childhood … something like that.
JOHN. You look nice in that coat. I think I sensed something about it … the coat … it’s special to me, too. It’s so good to be able to talk to you like this.
MARY. Yeah, this is nice. That’s funny how you felt that about my coat. The red one. No one knows how I feel about that coat.
JOHN. I think I do, Mary.
MARY. Do you? If you understood about my red coat … that red coat is like all the good things about when I was a kid … it’s like I still have all the good kid things when I’m in that red coat … it’s like being grown up and having your childhood, too. You know what it’s like? It’s like being in one of those movies where you’re safe, even when you’re in an adventure. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes, in a movie the hero’s doin’ all this stuff that’s dangerous, but you know, becausa the kind of movie it is, that he’s not gonna get hurt. Bein’ in that red coat is like that … like bein’ safe in an adventure.
JOHN. And that’s the way you were in that snowball fight! It was like you knew that nothing could go wrong!
MARY. That’s right! That’s right! That’s the way it feels! Oh, you do understand! It seems silly but I’ve always wanted someone to understand some things and that was one of them … the red coat.
JOHN. I do understand! I do!
MARY. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know about tomorrow, but … right this minute I … love you!
JOHN. Oh, Mary!
MARY. Oh, kiss me, John. Please!
JOHN. You’re crying!
MARY. I didn’t know. I didn’t know two people could understand some things … share some things.
[They kiss]
JOHN. It must be terrible not to.
MARY. What?
JOHN. Be able to share things.
MARY. It is! It is! But don’t you remember? Only a few minutes ago we were alone. I feel like I could tell you anything. Isn’t that crazy?
JOHN. Do you want to go for a walk?
MARY. No, no. Let’s stay right here. Between the streetlight and the moon. Under the tree. Tell me that you love me.
JOHN. I love you.
MARY. I love you, too. You’re good-looking, did you know that? Does your mother tell you that?
JOHN. Yeah, she does.
MARY. Your eyes are shining.
JOHN. I know. I can feel them shining.
[The lights go down slowly]
i love the red coat! my highschool is doing a dinner theatre and we are doing the red coat, and i’m playing the role of Mary. I love this play!
Jessica – it’s such a sweet play – I love it. Best of luck with the production!
thanks so much! i appreciate it! thanks!
Tomorrow for Drama Class we are doing this play. I am going to play the role of Mary. I can’t wait. This will be so exciting.
Break a leg!! I love this play!
I analyzed this play in my directing class. I love how every word in the play means something. The reason why John feels such a connection to the coat is because of how it makes Mary feels. Here’s the thing, Mary describes wearing the red coat:
“It’s like being in one of those movies where you’re safe, even when you’re in an adventure. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes, in a movie the hero’s doin’ all this stuff that’s dangerous, but you know, becausa the kind of movie it is, that he’s not gonna get hurt. Bein’ in that red coat is like that … like bein’ safe in an adventure.”
In this case, John is the hero of the story, so in a sense, John is the red coat. This just proves Shanley’s brilliance as a writer.
I had an entirely different interpretation of this play when I read it, and my acting teacher essentially told me I was wrong, and it made me feel stupid.
The first time I read it, I read it out loud to my girlfriend, just the way it was written. No inflections, no “character”. And we both had the feeling the John was drunk. Maybe not stumbling around the room and yelling at fire hydrants drunk, but enough that his speech is influenced (without so much as to be slurred).
There are so many instances that reinforced my belief in this as well.
1) He is at this party, hoping to see Mary. She’s not showing up, and he starts drinking wine (“…and I drank some wine”). It doesn’t say how much wine he’s been drinking.
2) Mary says “I can taste the wine on your…mouth”, which means it couldn’t’ve been just a drink since they don’t kiss until after he’s already left and has been sitting outside. And if he’s at a party, he’s most likely eating some kind of snack as well as drinking. So to taste wine on someone after you kiss them, it had to be a significant amount of wine.
3) The fact he is sitting outside on the steps and responds with “for a while” when Mary asks him if he is going to just sit on the steps made me think he couldn’t handle being inside anymore because it got too hot (which also happens when you are drunk, from what I am told), and he needs time to sober up some…
4) …which is further evidenced by the fact that after he says he felt everything he wanted was outside the party, the first thing he mentions is “there’s a breeze out here”, which he desperately needs due to his wanting to sober up.
5) The second thing he says with the breeze is the moon, which may seem romantic, but then he just says “look at how the moon is”, which is someone that can’t think straight enough to describe the beauty of the moon in any sort of poetry.
6) His tendency to repeat things. “I left the party because you weren’t there. That’s why I left the party.” “I dunno/I don’t know” and then immediately talking. The night, the moonlight, the moon, the night, the steps, the moonlight, the night, the steps, the moon, etc.
7) His way of saying “I love you” with it being disconnected to any rational segue.
He describes a street light, gets weirdly descriptive of it (“I’ve always thought of them as being cold and blue, ya know? But this one’s yellow…”) isn’t a romantic line of thought, and says the leaves are “so green” and bam, “Mary, I love you!”
He’s crying on the sidewalk (itself being a sign he’s not all there), and then he says he loves her.
He admits a bit to stalking her because he shows up in her neighborhood specifically to run into her, then says he loves her, which an open-narrative saying he can’t believe he’s saying it, to her, out loud, then repeats that he loves her.
8) When she says he’s usually so quiet after he says he wishes he could stop talking (again, showing he has a lack of control) his immediately response is “That’s ’cause this is outside the party and it’s night and there’s a moon up there”. What does that have to do with anything? And “there’s a moon up there”? There’s no romance in that. Again with him pointing out the moon as just a thing. And his weird fascination with this specific streetlight being more beautiful than the sun.
9) And the sidewalk? Really? The sidewalk is beautiful because of all those bits of shiny stuff in the concrete, and then he cries over it.
I’ve shown this script to a few people and they all say the same thing, this kid is drunk and rambling. He might be in love with Mary, and he might be trying to be romantic, but the way the words are written shows someone that’s had one too many. But again, my teacher told me I am wrong, and all the analysis’ I’ve read so far on the play agree with her and completely ignore the wine being mentioned multiple times or his lack of self control.