Actor 1: You going to the Fridge this year?
Actor 2: Oh yes! But there are so many shows I don't know which to watch.
1: A bumper crop.
2: Couldn't consume them all.
1: Choose mine!
2: You've got a play in the Fridge Festival?
1: Yup: here it is!
The curtain opens on a refrigerator.
ACTOR 1 opens the 'fridge door upon shelves of food. Other actors sit behind a table where, holding up changing food-masks, they speak:
Peach: Stop bumping into me, Beef, you're bruising me.
Beef: You're thin-skinned, Peach. I'm just trying to get away from Blue Cheese. He smells.
Garlic: It's too crowded in here. Is there a banquet coming up or something?
Beef: Yes -- a wedding anniversary.
Peach: Whose?
Beef: The couple who live in this house and own this Fridge.
Garlic: Oh them. They're so high and mighty, they think they own us food too. But we have our own lives to live. I'm having a family -- see these green shoots coming out of me?
Beef: Yuck, that's indecent. This isn't a farmyard, Garlic. It's the Fridge.
Potato: Yeah -- a stage beyond the farm.
Garlic: Well it seems like a farmyard given the amount of dirt in this fridge.
Peach: That's because it was the househusband's turn to clean it. The housewife reminded him last night, and then she removed all his beer for emphasis.
Garlic: Good, it was too crowded in here. I hate it when crafty bottles hop onto the top shelf.
Beef: I just hope no one else starts reproducing. Stay on your own shelf, Garlic. You too Potato, you're sticking those white protuberances out all over the place. You should be down in the vegetable drawer.
Potato: With a bunch of limp lettuce? Forget it. And I don't see why you think you're so top drawer, Beef. You're just a hunk of dead flesh.
Cheddar: (gasping) I'm drying out. Parched. I need a drink, I wish someone would spill that wine again. Why don't you roll up against the grapes, Potato, maybe we could get a few drops that way.
Corn: It was Mr. Householder who spilled the wine, that's one reason Mrs. Householder finally kicked him out, along with his beer. He wouldn't take his turn at the cleaning.
Beef: Nothing new in that.
Corn: She finally got fed up.
Beef: How do you know all that?
Corn: Heard it with my own ears. Didn't you hear that big crash last night? It was Mr. Householder slamming our fridge door shut.
Onion: But look! It's not shut. That's why it's getting so warm in here.
Beef: He broke it! If Mr. Householder moved out that would explain why my friends have disappeared. He took all the meat with him. She lives on fruit and veg.
Olive: Much healthier.
Peach: Yes. I'm glad there's less meat in here, meat is just dead animals - who didn't die happy.
Garlic: How true! Whereas we're still alive --
Potato: -- and still reproducing!
Olive: Well please stop. I dislike your odours and fecundity, Potato and Garlic. I like a nice tidy rounded little body that knows its boundaries -- like mine, for instance.
Potato: Yeah -- round body with a heart of stone.
Beef: You're just the poor man's meat, Potato.
Potato: I am not, I'm the underground apple.
Grapefruit: I wish you`d stay underground, if you`re going to keep extending those protuberances into my face.
Cheddar: Ignore Grapefruit, Potato – he’s got a sour personality.
Potato: Positively acidic. By the way, does anyone know why there`s going to be a wedding anniversary if one of the householders has moved out?
Corn: Maybe there won`t be one now. Especially since he broke the fridge door by slamming it and she doesn`t know how to fix it.
Milk: That`s bad news. It`s too warm in here for the likes of me. I can't keep my cool under these circumstances.
Tomato: Well, improvise! I like it warm, myself. I`m not even supposed to be in here, getting chilled. At first I was green with envy of those on the top shelf, but now I blush red at my stupidity. I miss the airy freedom of the counter-top, and hanging with the bananas.
Beef: So anyway ... there was to be a banquet? That would account for the new immigrants in here. Exotic looking, and stuck in their own boxes, not mixing. (Beef calls out) Hey! Foreign stuff in that box! How do you pronounce your name? Parmigiano? What country are you from, Chiabatta? And who are you, Bribiou?
Tomato: Shh! Don't be rude to immigrants. They're cheeses.
Cheddar: No they're not, they're "fromage". Me, I'm just “cheese”. But at least I'm organic cheddar.
Corn: Well bully for you. Me, I grew up in a junk-soil area and it never did me any harm.
Cheddar: How do you know?
Corn: Of course I did get hooked on drugs -- weedex and killex and such -- but then I went into rehab. Otherwise known as the grocery store.
Cheddar: I'm from a deli-patisserie-gelatto-parlour myself.
Potato: Well la-di-da. Hey Milk: remember when plain "corner store" was good enough?
Milk: Yeah, and no one gave a fudging fromage about lactose and gluten, either. All I ask is to be decently cooled.
Lettuce: Me too. I`m sweltering, I`m going limp.
Garlic: You were always limp, Lettuce, limp and clingy. No fibre.
Fish: No backbone.
Potato: (pause) Oh, you're there Fish. So househusband left you behind. Is that awful smell coming from you?
Fish: No, that`s the clams, they were shoved to the back of the shelf when he grabbed the beer and left the door open.
Potato: I didn`t know you were in there, Clam. So shy. You should come out of your shell a bit. Be more friendly.
Apple: Oh no, Potato, now look what you`ve done. You made Clam cry.
Onion: That's a change, usually I'm the one accused of making everyone cry.
Apple: Clam wants to go back to the vast cold ocean and the safety of mudflats. She's crying salty tears all over me and ruining my beautiful shiny skin.
Potato: All you care about is looks, Apple. What a prima donna.
Corn: Or prima pomm-a! Ha, ha ...
Apple: Oh shush. You're too corny. Of course I care about looks. And to think you call yourself the apple of the earth, Potato! You'd be an insult to the Pyrus family if you were a real apple.
Corn: Speaking of looks, another thing I overheard through the open door last night, is that Mr. Householder has found someone new. Maybe someone better looking, eh?
Olive: And sluttier -- doesn`t mind a dirty Fridge.
Peach: He`s a creep, then. As unfaithful as that Runner Bean who ran off with the hot peppers.
Onion: I happen to know it wasn't that simple about Runner Bean. I take a layered view, myself. It takes time to get to the centre of an issue and ...
Beef: Quiet! What's that smell? Who died?
Onion: What do you mean, who died?
Beef: I smell the rot of death. And what's that keening funereal drone? Oh no: it’s a fly! Down in the vegetable drawer. I smell the grave down there. And look: it`s not one fly, there's a cloud of them.
Milk: Ring the alarm-Bell-Pepper! Maybe someone will come and re-house us.
Peach: No. There’s nothing we can do about it. We all know we're on death row. No one lives forever.
Lettuce: Leading to death salad bowl, you mean.
Beef: Death chopping block.
Corn: Or death’s lethal pot -- bubble bubble toil and trouble.
Olive: Now look what you`ve done, with all this gloomy talk: Clam`s crying again, Blue Cheese is sweating with fear, and the carrots have gone rubbery at the knees. Stop with the lurid tales of crime and woe, everyone.
Lettuce: Why? I like a good pot-boiler, since I`ll never actually be in a pot, myself. Nor in a cauldron with "a charm of powerful trouble".
Beef: Shhh! What`s that noise? (pause)
Peach: It's human voices! Stop talking everybody, don't let them hear us. They don't like dietary dialogue, it reminds them of TV commercials.
Pause. The actor-foods stand up and turn in a circle, shedding masks and facing the audience as humans.
Mrs. Householder (Actor 1): My husband (now ex-, you understand) slammed the Fridge door so hard he broke it. Now it won't close properly, and the food's going off. I said to myself, what I need is a really good trusty handyman. Someone faithful, someone I can rely on.
Handyman (Actor 2): Right you are. Glad you called. I'm your man! Direct me to your Fridge and I'll start workshopping right away (pause as he looks inside) ... but I don't know what to do about all this large cast of food that's going off.
Mrs. Householder: I do -- let's eat it! You can stay for dinner, can`t you?
Handyman: Sure! You open the wine, I`ll fix the door and we'll throw out stale roles and stage only the food that's kept its character!
Mrs. Householder: I've got some wines that were sold cheap after the flood in the hotel. This will be one terrific Feast Scene and with no Banquo at it.
Handyman: Just a chorus of vintages from the wine sale!
Mrs. Householder: Just put that wilted fruit and veg onto the compost pile, okay? Its run is over.
Actors sit at the “fridge” table again, resuming
their food masks.
Potato: Did you hear that? There will be a feast after all – it's our night to shine!
Beef: Yes, and I'm the star of this feast, this celebration, this new beginning! It's my big role, my destiny, it's what I was born for.
Peach: What you were "born for"? You were never born, Beef, you were hacked off a dead carcass. You're a butt of jokes and I'd like to attend your roast, but I`ll be too busy seeing my stone into a good compost-home so the tree of my grandpeaches gets started.
Beef: A tree? But where will you be, Peach? You're no tree. Sounds like you don't know whether To Be Or Not To Be.
Yam: Unlike me. I always know what I yam.
Corn: Ignore Peach. She`s a fuzzy thinker. Never gets to the kernel of the matter. I'll be with you at the feast, Beef.
Potato: Me too, but first my tuberous offspring will be cut off and planted. My dynasty too will live on, like Peach's!
Lettuce: I, like other fruit and veg, will return to the soil that created us. We go home. It will be a relief to get out of this overcrowded Fridge performance. Don't you agree, Garlic?
Garlic: Yes. But as soon as my roots are established, all in good vegetative time, I will stage a revival.
Actors stand up from behind “the fridge”, take off masks and become humans again
Handyman: There you go -- the Fridge is fixed! It should perform brilliantly for another ten years. Now, to the stove. Let's start the feast! We've got our roles, I'll cook, you pour the wine ...
Mrs. Householder enters with 2 glasses of wine, and they toast the audience:
Here's to the Fridge Festival. Food jokes are always fodder for a revival!
CURTAIN
