JANE: —The skylight?

PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, that’s the true curtain. [Starts back across the narrow steps.] I think this bridge was erected with homicidal intentions . . .

[He falls into the orchestra pit. Jane gasps and rushes down stage. The Playwright climbs out of the pit saying—]

Old cats know how to fall . . .

CURTAIN

Some Problems for The Moose Lodge

SOME PROBLEMS FOR THE MOOSE LODGE

Some Problems for the Moose Lodge was first performed on November 8, 1980, as part of an evening of three short Williams plays titled. Tennessee Laughs, at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It was directed by Gary Tucker; the set design was by Joseph Nieminski; the costume design was by Ellen Ryba; the lighting design was by Robert Christian; and the sound design was by Michael Schweppe. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:

The curtain rises upon an empty living room with a staircase that ascends to a landing where it proceeds in another direction to an unseen story above.

It is a living room that has been lived in by at least two generations. The standing floor lamp with its faded silk shade, dingily fringed, establishes the period in which the room was first furnished for living.

A mantle clock ticks rather loudly for half a minute before there is the sound of persons about to enter the house: the sounds are not vocal but mechanical. An old dog is roused from slumber by these sounds and approaches the door. It swings open to admit Cornelius and Bella McCorkle. They are a middle-class, late-middle-aged couple. He is thin with wispy hairs. She is clumsily gone to fat with an apologetic air; they are very used to each other, with the usual attritions of feelings.

Cornelius sets down the luggage with an exhausted grunt and an indignant glance at Bella whose cardiac asthma has incapacitated her for carrying anything much beside her excess weight. she appears to be dazed until approached by the old dog who licks at her hand.

CORNELIUS: Come on Bella before it starts raining again.

BELLA [to the dog]: Hello, Sweet Boy. Want out in the yard?

CORNELIUS [exhaustedly]: He oughta stay out in the yard. I been tellin’ you for years that dog is a yard dog, Bella, he’s full of ticks and fleas, infests the furniture with ’em.

BELLA [also exhausted]: Sweet Boy is been with us for years. He’s family to me.

CORNELIUS: All right, if you want to claim relations with a flea-bitten ole mongrel, you do that. But I’ll be damned if I’ll acknowledge him as an in-law if you do.

BELLA [sniffling]: This is no kind of conversation to have when we just git back from Memphis where we buried our first-born child.