Scene of the Week

‘Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune’ by Terrence McNally

JOHNNY: That’s your trouble. You don’t want to hear anything you don’t think you already know. Well I’ll tell you something, Cinderella: your Prince Charming has come. Wake up before another thousand years go by! Don’t throw me away like a gum wrapper because you think there’s something about me you may not like. I have what it takes to give you anything and everything you want. Maybe not up here . . . (He taps his head.) . . . or here . . . (He slaps his hip where he wearshis wallet.) . . . but here. (He touches his heart).

And that would please me enormously. All I ask back is that you use your capacity to be everyone and everything for me. It’s within you. If we could do that for each other we’d give our kids the universe. They’d be Shakespeare and the most beautiful music ever written and a saint maybe or a champion athlete or a president all rolled into one. Terrific kids! How could they not be?

We have a chance to make everything turn out all right again. Turn our back on everything that went wrong. We can begin right now, this minute, this room and us. I know this thing, Frankie.

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