PERSONAGGI

Enrico, an insomniac

Valerian, Melatonin, Ambien, Klonopin, ZzzQuil, Pot Gummy, suitors

The Ghost of Unfulfilled Ambitions

Villagers

The Parade of High-Intensity Spectres

ATTO PRIMO

(10 P.M. A bedchamber, with a balcony overlooking a village sq.. Enrico is placing on pajamas. He sings at half voice.)

Enrico: My raccoon eyes and zombie stare

Boldly sing the woes of bodily miscare.

O, hundred-dollar white-noise machine! O, yoga dude named Tevin!

Help me reverse twelve months of 24/7.

Collective woe has ravaged my breast,

America, you set the “un” in unrest.

(He elements his blackout curtains, opens the window, and addresses the villagers.)

Hark, twentysomething coder! Hark, seasoned whore!

Tonight’s the night time I lastly snore;

When would possibly turns to wil, and is rises from appears.

I’ve lowered my caffeine and I’m able to dream.

Villagers: He’s lowered his caffeine and he’s able to dream!

ATTO SECONDO

(1 A.M. Enrico, stressed, has positioned his 5 sleep aids/suitors on his bureau.)

Enrico: O, sleep aids, I beseech thee,

Which of you has the puissance to short-term deep-six me?

Klonopin: When cartoon characters are clobbered with a rolling pin,

The sound it makes is “KLONOPIN!”

Pot Gummy: No, no: at present’s insomniacs need their treatments bespoke,

And I could make all the pieces appear to be a personal joke.

Valerian: Sure, Okay-pin and Gummy are horny, however this herb is just not havin’ it.

I gained’t make you Carrie Fisher scrabbling at her drugs cupboard.

Melatonin: I’m a hormone that’s already in your physique, proper?

Prithee—do you are feeling hormy tonight?

ZzzQuil: I gained’t unmoor you, and I’ll reinstate your bounce.

I’m protected and efficient, although tough to pronounce.

Enrico: Ambien, this speak of aftereffects has rendered you silent.

Is reticence a masks for thine oft-told violence?

Ambien: You reference sleepwalking prefer it’s the “Saw” films, or “Seven,”

But sleepwalkers drop a few pounds whereas they slumber: in a phrase, Heaven!

(Enrico pops a gummy and will get in mattress.)

ATTO TERZO

(4 A.M. Enrico is woke up by a parade of spectres, every of which erupts in a quick paroxysm of screeching recitative.) Sirens, Car Alarms, Helicopters, Barking Dogs, Thunder, Fear of Contagion, Vaccine Envy, Mitch McConnell’s Dewlap, Festive Neighbors, A Ticking Sound from the Basement, Unreturned E-mails, Concern That This Is All Leading to a Hannibal Lecter-ish Sleep-Apnea Mask, Irritation from Having Other People Yell “Unmute Yourself!” Like They Are Uta Fucking Hagen, Concern That Putin Is Downloading Information from His Memory Foam, Concern That Prestige Television Has Overplayed Its Bourgeois-White-People-Get-Caught-Up-in-a-World-of-Crime Card, Anxiety That the Term “Space Heater” Is a Huge Mandate for Such a Tiny Machine, Discomfort with the Word “Terry,” Anxiety That if He Doesn’t Vacuum His Apartment Daily He’ll Drown in a Drift of Dead Skin.

(Sobbing, Enrico opens his window and prepares to leap. Right then, he hears probably the most terrifying spectre of all, the Ghost of Unfulfilled Ambitions.)

Ghost: Your squandering dead-heats with the very best deadbeats’,

You jam each grinder along with your over-fatted forcemeat.

Through your numbness inviolate and your passivity tectonic,

Your current enterprise deal disappeared since you slept on it!

Also, Tubby—you need to have listened to Ambien

And paid a go to or two to the Somnambulist Gym.

(Renewing his try to leap, Enrico seems down on the avenue, singing furiously. Just as he takes a deep breath and summons the desire to leap, the window crashes down on his head; Enrico, like all characters in opera when stabbed or shot, reacts by singing much more loudly, showing to don’t have any company over his diaphragm. It is just when he makes an attempt to leap a 3rd time, and the window crashes on his head once more, that Enrico, reeling, lastly collapses into mattress, unconscious finally.)  ♦



Source link