DOUG: Little Richard wrote an opera? Can you beat that. ‘Tutti Frutti’, the opera. [To HENRY] What in the hell did he turn ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ into—a symphony?

ROY: Will you be quiet. Così fan Tutte is an opera by Mozart. It’s the greatest opera in the whole world. You’d be intimate with it, wouldn’t you, Jerry? You’re university educated.

LEWIS: [plainly not intimate with it] Mozart is not one of my big—

ROY: Favourites? But he will be, he will be.

CHERRY: What’s it about?

ROY: About testing how true your true love is.

DOUG: Well, I’m shattered and wrung out already. And this goes on for three hours?

ROY: Shut up, or I’ll knock your block off.

DOUG: [shaping up] Come on then.

CHERRY: [yelling] Doug! Roy! Stop, or I’ll knock your block off!

They calm down.

[Smiling, to LEWIS] You have to be firm with them.

LEWIS: Let’s hear the story.

ROY: [to LEWIS, about DOUG] A psychopath is too kind a word to describe him. [A beat.] It starts off in a coffee shop in Naples. Italy. These two fellows are boasting how faithful their girlfriends are. So this old fellow, Don Alfonso, says to Guglielmo and Ferrando, okay, let’s make a wager and test the girls’ fidelity. So the young men pretend to go off to war, but they really don’t. Instead they disguise themselves as Albanians and woo the girls. [Half to himself] Kills me every time.

ROY chuckles to himself at the humour of this plot twist, not noticing that LEWIS, like CHERRY and DOUG are becoming depressed at the triteness of the story. HENRY takes out a toy soldier and plays with it.

The girls won’t fall for the Albanians and so they pretend to suicide and guess what?

CHERRY: The girls fall for the Albanians.

ROY: [surprised she knew] Yes. Yes. But there’s another twist. Guglielmo’s girlfriend falls for Ferrando and vice versa. Anyway, the boys reveal their disguises and things right themselves and Don Alfonso is proved right. Women are never true. Hence the title Così fan Tutte: Women are like that.

There is a long silence. ROY has not sold the story very well.

There’s music, of course.

HENRY gets up to leave. Without taking his eyes off LEWIS, ROY trips HENRY, who sprawls on the floor. LEWIS is horrified, but no one else takes any notice.

Some great music.

HENRY sits down again.

Any questions?

LEWIS: Do you think we should be doing something like this?

ROY: You don’t want to do a masterpiece?

LEWIS: In these days, you know, the Vietnam war—

ROY: They can pretend to be going off to the Vietnam war! Now you’re cooking.

LEWIS: I meant about the theme. Love is not so important nowadays.

ROY: [looking at LEWIS as if he’s mad] What planet are you from?

RUTH: Will we have cappuccinos?

LEWIS: Sorry?

RUTH: On stage. How will we make the froth?

LEWIS: I don’t quite follow.

RUTH: For the opening scene in the coffee shop we’ll have to have a real cappuccino machine.