The Benefit is a show intended for solo performance this Autumn. It is a mix of narrative, verse and dialogue. The protagonist is a bespoke, black men's overcoat travelling from back to back - or hand to hand - across time and space.
I'm introducing here one of the characters who 'owns' the overcoat for a short period of time. Marlon describes herself as a 'flaneur -or 'flaneuse - take your pick'. She cruises the streets of her war-torn city in the spirit of the great French poet Baudelaire seeking out subjects for the poetry she writes. She dresses impeccably in a man's lounge suit channelling the style of the German actress Marlene Dietrich.
She is arrested by an army officer and interrogated. She charms him and wins our Overcoat from him in an arm wrestling contest. She is freed, but on condition that she does a bit of spying for him 'out the back' of a cafe where anarchists supposedly meet. Marlon, of course, has no intention of doing this and sets off to do a bit of flaneuring around the city.
Now Marlon has absolutely no intention of going out the back or in the front or even round the side of any premises and having missed her daily flaneur round the city, she sets out to see what or whom catches her eye. But feeling in need of a stiff drink after her interrogation she finds a seat on the terrace of a café. Sure the tables are a little charred and half the bar is missing but it’s business as usual. As she sips a large brandy, she notices a girl picking her way like an angry pigeon through snow sludge and chunks of masonry. She is wearing a top dollar fox fur coat but it doesn’t sit well with her, this girl being in no fit state to benefit from either its warmth or elegance. Yes, a very angry pigeon, Marlon thinks when she notices that the fur on one sleeve is horribly burnt, burnt black. A poem takes shape in her mind. Damaged Stock
she’ll call it.
A red fox fur I saw
the other week
Draped on a mannequin
with a
Sharp jaw and sharper
carmine lips
Dead animals the both
of them
On display in the
window of a department store
Screaming ‘Look at me’
For the respectable
amongst us to
Conspicuously consume,
To feed our greed for
privilege,
To nourish an illusion
of some certainty
In our oh so fractured
lives.
Fur and skin,
The skin of the fur
stretched
Stretched tight,
nailed,
Stretched and nailed
down,
Alive, wasn’t it? Once.
Yet the red fox fur
moves,
And lives in the mind of
Our angry little
pigeon,
Sharp, hungry eyes and
sharper carmine lips
Short-changed, short
sighted
Aware she’s drawn the
short straw
When she should
have won the prize.
Look at her, trying
for all she’s worth,
To hide her
disfigurement
That charred black
sleeve,
That dead red fox fur
Who’s more damaged now?
The fur coat or the
wearer?
A soldier at a café
table laughs
And throws a bottle at
the angry little pigeon.
Now Marlon, sensing she might get a bottle thrown in her direction, and conscious of looking like a slag heap in our overcoat, decides to move on. Plus she’s dying for a pee and she’s not running the gauntlet of what this café has to offer. She knows just the place.
