A GREEN UMBRELLA Book & Lyrics by Loren Lester Music by Jeffrey Silverman Loren Lester
[email protected] c 2019 OVERTURE. (A ghost light illuminates a blank stage and a chair. Simple set pieces will be used to suggest various hotel rooms, apartments, and the Wisconsin home of The Lunts. Everything should feel like we're in the middle of rehearsals for a new show.) (During the Overture, NOEL COWARD - yes, that Noel Coward - enters and sits on the chair next to the ghost light. He looks troubled and there’s a cloud of melancholy. He takes out a cigarette, puts it into a cigarette holder and lights it. After he takes a couple of puffs, the OVERTURE ends and the STAGE LIGHTS come up revealing a piano. NOEL announces:) NOEL All right, everyone - we’re back. Let’s run the Act I rewrites. Can we please have someone remove this? (He points at the chair and ghost light. No response from anywhere so he sighs and clears the stage himself. He crosses to the piano where he has a script, pencils, pens and loose sheets of music paper.) NOEL Places, please! (ALFRED LUNT, fifty-something but still matinee-idol handsome, pokes his head in from one of the wings. He looks ridiculous in a WWI ‘doughboy” soldier’s uniform, and helmet.) 2. ALFRED Where are we starting? NOEL (announcing for everyone) We'll begin with her entrance! ALFRED Ah-hah. (ALFRED crosses to center stage as NOEL sits at his piano and starts making notes in his script. LYNN FONTANNE - older than Alfred but you’d never know it because she is constantly so poised and elegant - suddenly runs in from one of the wings, dressed as “Kate” from The Taming of the Shrew.) LYNN (as "Kate"- sweeping dramatically toward Alfred) Fie, fie, unknit that threat'ning unkind brow And dart not scornful glances from those eyes..