We see ALVITA being ushered towards the little stage, but she refuses it, and instead takes her rightful place, centre stage in the Colin Campbell. The pub turns black: there is a theatrical spotlight upon her. But before she speaks, the scene freezes while the AUTHOR gives her Chaucerian apologia …

AUTHOR

But before she starts, a word to the wise:

Not a trigger warning, exactly, but

A proviso: it’s not my tale. I just

Copied it down from the original.

I could make stuff up and rewrite it all

But that would surely defeat the purpose,

And if Alvita does make you nervous

It’s worth remembering – though I’m sure you know –

When wives spoke thus six hundred years ago

You were all shocked then. The shock never ends

When women say things usually said by men …

And one last thing: if you spot yourself and

Think I’ve made you posher or more common

Than you’d like: sorry. I’ve got a good ear,

But I can only write down what I hear …

The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue

ALVITA reanimates and the AUTHOR withdraws to her table. Throughout the Prologue, ALVITA regularly breaks the fourth wall, speaking to the real audience as much as the pub one. Her accent is North Weezy with moments of deliberate poshness as well as frequent lapses into Jamaican patois and cockney for comic effect. She is a world-class raconteur. She begins:

ALVITA

Let me tell you something: I do not need

Any permission or college degrees

To speak on how marriage is stress. I been

Married five damn times since I was nineteen!

From mi eye deh a mi knee. But I survived,

Thank God, and I got to say, of the five,

None of them were total wastemen. But last

Week …

At this point the lights come up again, but there is something surreal about the new lighting in the pub, as if we are in a magical, liminal space between storytelling, memory and reality. The pub people react and laugh and groan like an audience, but they are often roped into the performance, too. Some of these moments are explicitly noted below, but a director should feel free to use the PUB CHORUS to animate and dramatize as many of Alvita’s stories as they see fit.

I’m with my Auntie P, yeah, and she starts

In on her Bible talk:

AUNTIE P

Yuh nuh know Christ

Him a wedding guest one time in him life?

In Cana, Galilee? Please, niece, beg yuh

Tell me what you do the opposite for?

How come you believe you can get wedded

Five times? Lawd knows how many times bedded!

Tink when Jesus met the Samaritan,

By dat well: ’member how he cuss her, man,

Him seh, ‘Woman, you been married five times

Already. You can’t say this man ah fi mi

Because nutten nuh go so. Not at all.

ALVITA