The Last Midsummer Banquet - The Chairman

Int, artificial light

A  Government office. 

Six officials – five male, one female – sit round a table, debating tactics.  Two of them never speak, just nod, smile and take notes.  The Chairman is clearly in control, and is clearly insane.

Chairman:

(calming hand motions):  Please, please ... please.  We are more than prepared to listen to everything anyone might conceivably have to contribute.  (smiles round the table)  What we are not prepared to do is admit that I’m wrong.  Is that clear?

Official #2:

Um –

Chairman:

What have we achieved?  We outlawed, let’s see, illegitimacy, unemployment, most diseases – in short, anything that costs us money – but our greatest achievement has been uncertainty.  Uncertainty.  Our greatest achievement has been that now, nobody can be sure what is or is not permitted!  We must find ways of sustaining this.

Official #2:

Sustaining uncertainty?  That’s a bit of a difficult concept to sustain, I mean I’m not quite certain about that but, um  –

Chairman:

We must sustain uncertainty.  It sustains stability!  If they have an absolute, like these Banquets, if they have this, this Walpurgis night on which anything seems to be permitted, then they focus on the opposite, the other three hundred and whatever days on which nothing seems to be – they focus on the notion of prohibition – and that’s the last thing we want, is it not? (he looks enquiringly round the table)

Official #1:

Your point is well made Chairman.  Just on a niggle of detail, Walpurgis night is actually the thirtieth of April, not Midsummer’s –

Chairman:

So we’re agreed I think.  (Silence)  That is to say, nobody disagrees with ... us?  (More silence) 

Official #1:

Agreed.  Nobody quite disagrees?  But – more like … not quite entirely agree?  Entirely? 

Official #2:

Entirely!  I mean exactly.  I mean precisely!  (glances at Official #4) I mean, Norman, you’re the expert in all this sort of stuff –

Chairman:

Gentlemen, gentlemen – and madam of course – we do need a consensus here.  I’ve stated very precisely what that is, and I expect you to agree with me.  That’s my final word I’m afraid.

Official #1:

Did you say ‘afraid’?

Official #3:

Just run it up once more, for a little lady please?

Official #2:

Oh come now Sykya, no need to patronise –

Official #1:

All the same I think I’m behind Sykya here.  My issue is one of presentation.  We need a short sharp bang bang bang one two three bullet approach here –

Official #3:

Has it come to actual bullets then?

Chairman:

(He bangs the desk - it sounds like a gunshot):  Very well.  Bullet one (bang).  Music as a panacea has failed.  Diluted to a cheap substitute for the real economy.  Bullet two (bang).  We are out of money.  We cannot afford any more of these Banquets.  Bullet three (bang).  Research shows that the Banquets, in their support of the idea of ‘free’ music as a calming influence, have actually had the opposite effect, have actually induced what I might call terrorist activities –

Official #2:

Hardly terrorism though, is it?  A few bricks, scrawls on walls … even playing guitars isn’t quite –

Official #1:

So we need to kill free music.

Official #3:

Which means killing the Banquets.

Chairman:

(bang)  Bullet four. 

Official #2:

Wasn’t it ‘bang bang bang’, that’s three, not –

Chairman:

The solution. (smirks)  Loyalty oaths.

Perplexed glances whizz in both directions round the meeting.

Official #3:

Hang on.  This is new.  You have never mentioned loyalty oaths –

Chairman:

No, of course, I do apologise, this is freshly minted new-laid slashing edge thinking.  Let me explain.  Before being allowed to leave the Banquet Hall, each participant will be required to sign a document renouncing their rights to any future events of this nature, or, or they get – (makes circular shrugging hand gestures)

Official #3:

They get?

Chairman:

Well …  Arrested?  Amputated?  I don’t know, I’m policy, it’s up to you people to put the flesh on it –

Official#1:

Flesh?  Hmm ...

Official #3:

Killed?

Chairman:

(a final gunshot table fist bang):  I want them.  They’re an irritant.  Grit under the foreskin.  I want them.  (stares at Official #4)  Norman.  Implement.  Kill music. 

Norman’s face springs into a rigid, fixed grin, transfixed with terror.