Synopsis

 

SYNOPSIS

 “A Meets B”

– A one act play

 

It is midnight in an isolated part of the city, any city.  A certain Mr. A comes upon a certain Mr. B making a lengthy telephone call in a public phone booth.  As Mr. A is in a hurry to make his own phone call, he raps upon the glass to hurry Mr. B along.  Annoyed by this intrusion, Mr. B terminates his chat to let Mr. A call.   A is about to enter the booth when he notices an imaginary obese man, then a fantastical overweight woman sitting atop Mr. B‘s head.  Mr. B becomes irritated with this absurdity which only makes Mr. A goad Mr. B further.  Soon, a number of things happen: A begins to hear voices emanating from these imaginary people; he accuses B of talking to a personal shrink and makes fun of said shrink; he accuses B of hiding a large wife.  When B threatens to call the police, A says that this “big fat woman”, or B‘s wife, is now jumping on the telephone booth.  When A refers to one of his own hallucinations as “baby”, B demands to be drawn into A‘s game:  who is “baby”?  A doesn’t answer, explaining that these hallucinatory characters are really sitting in some living room and are about to have a conversation.  Suddenly, the telephone rings.  A and B both run to answer it; A gets there first but B shuts off the connection before A can hear a reply.  A wants to know who it was but B lies, saying it was a ‘wrong number’.

Abruptly, A changes the game and walks away from B.  This tactic seems to intrigue B who now becomes the questioner.  He has A depict an imaginary scene atop the phone booth in which the little fat man is upset and crying in front of the big fat woman who is handing him tissue paper to absorb his tears.  This triggers an emotional reaction from B who accuses A of being a spy for the ‘big fat woman’.  Now, A takes over the questioning again: he wants to know all about the big fat woman-whether she is B‘s wife and whether she tells B what to do.  B tries to go on the counter-offensive but A is relentless.  When A sweet talks B by offering him some chocolate and suggesting they sit down on the floor and talk it out, B begins to get some things off his chest: yes, he admits he has a wife, “of sorts”; yes, she is boring, a ‘functionary’; yes, she is controlling.  B begins to tell more:  his wife is lazy, needy, and horrible and B wants more from life than he can get from her.  B wants good food, red wine, porno flicks, etc., exactly what his “so-called wife” doesn’t give him.  B continues to expose his feelings, all the while going off against his own wife-how she orders him around; how she humiliates him in front of others; how she always has the last word; how he feels this terrible constriction in his abdomen and how — At this point, B can no longer contain himself and lets fly a loud, stinking raspberry.  A seizes upon B‘s lack of control to put him down even more: A says B is full of baloney and all his thinking is done by the little man and woman on his head.  B can’t bear to hear this truth and attacks A physically when the telephone rings.  A pulls away from B to answer the phone.  To our surprise it is ….. and this is the last line of the play.   

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