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    Gordon
    Gordon
    Gordon
    Ebook162 pages1 hour

    Gordon

    By Morris Panych

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    About this ebook

    Gordon was always an odd little child, given his penchant for setting the neighbours’ sheds on fire with their pets locked inside and his fascination with the funeral rituals at the church across the way. Home-schooled in the evenings within the bounds of a somewhat limited curriculum of drunken impromptu kitchen renovations and wife beatings in the resultant ruins by his father Gord, a man of troglodyte imagination and boundless determination for self-replication, his namesake son dedicates himself to these subjects with a kind of limitless and inarticulate awe. Something sinister and permanent involving the stairs to the basement seems to have happened to Gordon’s mother at a formative stage of his development, narrowing the scope of his education even further and leaving him at somewhat Oedipal loose ends.

    As the steel mill shuts down and everyone in town moves away, Gordon’s father urges him to attend an institution of higher learning. Educated by a legal system that provides him with free room and board in an institution dedicated solely to freshman tutorials in applied criminology conducted by its post-graduate students, Gordon’s vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds, as do his natural gifts for sociopathic rhetoric, fatuous rationalization and reductive logic.

    Upon graduation, Gordon sets out to build an innovative business with his former cellmate Carl. This ambition is not without its bloody-handed transactions and awkward issues about where to file the evidence. Then there’s the question of what to do about the pregnant and vulnerably sullen Deirdre, who spends an unusual amount of time worrying about her nails and calculating the pathetic hourly wages that Gordon and Carl’s sins bring in.

    By accident or design, this dysfunctional trio on the lam breaks into Gord’s home, wherein they confront “the end of the line” and some very disturbing metaphors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTalonbooks
    Release dateMar 15, 2011
    ISBN9780889228177
    Gordon
    Author

    Morris Panych

    Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Morris Panych is arguably Canada’s most celebrated playwright and director. His plays have garnered countless awards, including two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama (for The Ends of the Earth and Girl in the Goldfish Bowl), fourteen Jessie Richardson Awards (Vancouver), and five Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto). His plays have been produced in over two dozen languages and across the globe. Mr. Panych has directed over ninety productions across Canada and the US. He was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award in 2021 for his CBC Gem webseries Hey Lady! He has appeared in over fifty theatre productions and in numerous television and film roles. He has directed more than ninety theatre productions and written over a dozen plays that have been translated and produced throughout the world. The 2009 Off-Broadway production of his play Vigil opened to rave reviews. Under the title Auntie & Me, Vigil was also produced in London in 2003–04; and in French at Théâtre La Bruyère in Paris in 2005; and his classic 7 Stories ranks 9th among the ten best selling plays in Canada, outselling the Coles version of Romeo & Juliet. For more information on the work and career of Morris Panych, visit his website.

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      Book preview

      Gordon - Morris Panych

      Gordon-Cover.jpg19200.jpg

      Contents

      Cover

      First Production Notes

      Act One

      1

      2

      4

      5

      6

      7

      Act Two

      8

      9

      10

      11

      12

      13

      14

      Epilogue

      About the Playwright

      Copyright Information

      for my mother, in memory

      of her extraordinary

      story-telling

      Gordon was first produced at the Segal Centre Theatre for the Performing Arts in Montreal on October 2, 2010, presented by Sidemart Theatrical Grocery with the following cast and crew:

      GORDON: Graham Cuthbertson

      CARL: Patrick Costello

      DEIRDRE: Annie Murphy

      OLD GORD: Chip Chuipka

      Director: Andrew Shaver

      Set designer: Ken MacDonald

      Costume designer: James Lavoie

      Lighting designer: Sarah Yaffe

      Music composer: Joe Grass

      Sound designer: Jesse Ash

      Stage Manager: Seamus Ryan

      Act One

      1.

      The interior of a dilapidated two-storey house, in a rundown neighbourhood of a mid-sized industrial city; even in its golden age, the house, the street, the town, only served as a breeding ground for mass labour; there is little of physical beauty here. The set is mainly a kitchen, with part of the dining room. But there are other parts, mysterious parts that belong not to the structure but to the imagination—perhaps some factory parts, or any other elements that speak of the wastelands that here and there inhabit a once vibrant and industrious landscape.

      Lights up a moment; a window over the kitchen sink breaks. After some of the glass chards are cleared away, into this narrow opening crawls MELFORT CARL, so called because he’s from Melfort; a twenty-something criminal whose face is too young and sweet for the hardened convict he has become; there is something tender about him and he is a small man, lean. He scrambles over the sink, looking around for evidence of anyone, then proceeds over to the door. Unbolting it, he opens it, and through the doorway steps YOUNG GORDON, a lanky, handsome figure, also in his twenties; the thin line of a permanent scar on his forehead. His shirt and hands are covered in blood. He surveys the room; then after a moment CARL speaks; all this in darkness except for CARL’s flashlight.

      CARL

      Now what?

      GORDON

      Are you ever going to stop asking that question?

      CARL

      What question?

      GORDON

      Now what?

      CARL

      I just asked you that.

      GORDON

      Asked me what?

      CARL

      Now what? So?

      GORDON

      So?

      GORDON looks around.

      CARL

      Are we staying?

      GORDON

      Do you see us going?

      CARL

      So we’re staying?

      GORDON

      It’s what you call deductive logic, Carl.

      CARL

      Okay.

      GORDON

      Not going is staying; draw your own conclusions.

      CARL

      I know what deductive fucking logic is.

      GORDON

      Sometimes I wonder. I wonder about your deductive fucking logic, Carl. Where did you think we were tonight? In the bathroom?

      CARL

      When?

      GORDON

      When we knocked over the gas station; did you think you were in the bathroom?

      CARL

      I know where we were.

      GORDON

      Is that why you shit your pants, then?

      CARL

      I didn’t shit my pants.

      GORDON

      I think you did, sweetheart. I think you shit your pants. I think the police are out, right now, looking for a guy who shit his pants. I have an interesting idea. Instead of standing around asking dumb questions, why don’t you go out there, and tell her to get the fuck in here?

      CARL

      She never listens to me.

      GORDON

      You know why?

      CARL

      Because I’m a pussy.

      GORDON

      Don’t say what I’m going to say.

      CARL

      It’s what you’re going to say.

      GORDON

      Oh, thank you, Carl, because I didn’t know what I was going to say, because I have no fucking idea what I’m going to say next but you do; and thank the good Lord, because now, instead of thinking what the fuck am I going to say next? I’ve got you to tell me. So, tell me, what the fuck am I going to say next?

      CARL

      You’re going to say about that time at Jack’s.

      GORDON

      Am I? You’re right. It’s like that time, at Jack’s—

      CARL

      I know.

      GORDON

      No, you don’t know. Listen to me; this is important. It’s important. Come here.

      CARL swats at the air wildly.

      GORDON

      What are you doing?

      CARL

      I don’t like fucking flying things.

      GORDON

      It’s a moth.

      CARL

      What if it’s a wasp?

      An arm around CARL.

      GORDON

      Come here.

      CARL

      I’m here.

      GORDON

      I’ll tell you why it’s important, Carl. Because—relax—because it’s sociology. Know what that is? Don’t try to answer. Just listen. Jesus you smell like you shit your pants.

      CARL

      I have irritable bowel.

      GORDON

      Sociology is human behaviour.

      CARL

      I know.

      GORDON

      Do you?

      CARL

      You’re—hurting.

      GORDON

      You don’t know. You don’t. I

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