The requirement to lead this kind of subsistence life is probably why leprechauns have the association with mischief, trickery and deviousness. Like many of them, Philomena would have needed to steal and con, usually from local farmers, simply in order to survive.

Settings

Act One, Scene One: 1930s hotel room in Culver City, California.

Act One, Scene Two: a restaurant dining room in Culver City.

Act Two: 1930s hotel room in Culver City, California.

Staging Notes

In order to maximise audience empathy with the ‘trapped’ dwarfs, the four actors who play the Munchkins will be of ‘regular’ size. Instead, the stage equipment – beds, doors, table, etc. – will be outsized. The production is best suited to a small space, probably a ‘black box’ stage, which should feel tight and claustrophobic, where the audience will be very close to the production.

The only reference to the outside world is the booming offstage voice of the ‘normal people’, which should be intrusive and threatening.

Act One

Act One

Scene One

We hear the strains of the song ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ and the lights go up on a mid-1930s hotel room. There are four beds, four chairs, a dressing table, mirror on the wall, a sink, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers with a telephone on top, a door rear centre-stage and one to the left leading to a bathroom. A set of Hotel Regulations is posted on the wall.

Everything is outsized; the beds are twelve-foot long and eight-foot wide, and the door is at least twelve-foot high.

Bert – New Jersey accent, forties, shabbily suited, with a permanent scowl etched on to his face, carrying a battered outsized suitcase – pushes the door open and stands at the threshold looking in.

As the music fades we hear a voice offstage.

Booming male voice (off)     There you go, shorty. Make the most of it. (Laughter.)

Bert looks up in the direction of the voice, glares, steps in and shuts the door behind him. Bert is forever wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

Bert    Cocksucker!

He sighs, puts down his case and explores the room. He views it with disdain.

. . . cheap lousy cocksucken . . .

He coughs loudly and climbs up on to the bed and begins to jump up and down on it as he starts to undress. As he is trying to take off one of his shoes he falters, staggers and falls off the bed, crashing to the floor.

(Clambering to his feet.) Fuck!