I NEVER GET DRESSED TILL AFTER DARK ON SUNDAYS

The first production of I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays opened at The Cock Tavern Theatre in London, England on March 4, 2011. It was directed by Hamish MacDougall; the set and costume designs were by Mike Lee; the lighting and sound designs were by Phil Hewitt; the production stage manager was Lee Andrew Davies; and it was produced by Adam Spreadbury-Maher and Dominic Haddock. The cast was as follows:

Scene: A one-room slave-quarters apartment in the Vieux Carré of New Orleans, floor to ceiling with a skylight in the tilted roof to show blue weather fading: shuttered doors ajar on a gallery. Offstage the voices of fatuous southern ladies are heard visiting a courtyard below that is a “tourist attraction.” These are used contrapuntally. A very attractive and nervous young woman, Jane, is trying to rouse a young man from an unnaturally deep sleep.]

JANE: Tye, Tye, Oh—Christ . . .

[Tye drops a bare arm off the dis ordered bed and groans slightly. She abruptly rushes to a sink to wet a towel, returns to the bed and slaps his face with it. He begins to wake—slowly.]

TYE: —Some men would beat a chick un for less’n that, y’ know— [His voice is a deep southern drawl.]

JANE: All right, get out of bed and beat me up.

TYE: Y’know that, babe? [Pause: the actor comes out of character. Then, in a cultivated voice.] May I speak?

DIRECTOR: Is that a line in the play?

TYE: It’s a request to make a comment on a line in the play that always sticks in my craw, it’s pointlessly cheap and off hand it’s not what I’d ever say to a girl of her class that I cared for.

PLAYWRIGHT [aside to himself]: Should never have southern gentlemen in my plays.

DIRECTOR [calling out]: Sound, lights off! —Mr. Tysdale, I’m in total agreement. Your next line is one I’ve marked for a cut since I first read it. It’s—gratuitously—prurient.

PLAYWRIGHT: “Gratuitously prurient” is—egregiously—redundant. Either it’s prurient or not.

DIRECTOR [as if conducting a seminar]: What Mr. Tysdale means, if I may interpret him for you, is that there can be legitimate vulgarisms of speech in a play: They are vulgarisms which characterize; offensive to some people but still defensible. However in this script there are vulgarities which are prurient—gratuitously, whether that phrase suits you or not, it happens to state clearly our objection to it.

TYE: It’s the sort of line that loses you two or three critics: [Snaps his fingers.] like that.

DIRECTOR: Yes, precisely, and I think a five-word line is more expendable than a single notice.