He Who Laughs, Or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Intimacy

(ISAAC is processing house seat orders when an older woman and her adult daughter approach the window.)

ISAAC: Hello.
DAUGHTER: Hi! We’d like –
MOTHER: “Measure for Measure,” for either –
DAUGHTER: For either the sixth of February or the thirteenth.
MOTHER: Three seats.
ISAAC: All right, let me see what I have.
DAUGHTER: I’m sure not much.
MOTHER: Just wait and see.
DAUGHTER: We waited too long!
MOTHER: See what he says.
DAUGHTER: I don’t have a good feeling.
ISAAC: On the sixth I have three seats in Row E, seats 1-5.
DAUGHTER: Oh god.
ISAAC: Those are great seats.
MOTHER: All the way on the side.
ISAAC: No, they’re on the aisle. Very good seats.
MOTHER: No, no.
ISAAC: On the thirteenth I have in Row A, seats 1-5.
MOTHER: Closer, yes.
DAUGHTER: But that’s on the extreme side.
ISAAC: It’s the center.
MOTHER: The other seats were on the extreme side as well, just higher up. Even worse.
ISAAC: Both great options.
DAUGHTER: This is terrible.
ISAAC: I can check another date for you.
DAUGHTER: Can we check another date, Mother? Please?
MOTHER: I’m trying to find something for the three of us.
DAUGHTER: She’ll hate it. She’ll hate it! Her eyes will twirl and she won’t appreciate it. She hears that it’s Elizabethan language and she complains to the heavens. Why are we catering to someone who will hate this?
MOTHER: All right. You’re right. Let me get out my calendar and get down to business. And my second pair of eyes — I’m useless without my second pair of eyes!
DAUGHTER: (to ISAAC) Is it modern dress?
ISAAC: I don’t think so, but don’t quote me on that, I haven’t seen it yet.
MOTHER: I loathe modern dress!
DAUGHTER: No, but Mother –
MOTHER: I walked out of “Romeo & Juliet” at Stratford-upon-Avon because it was modern dress!
DAUGHTER: Mother, you saw Richard Burton do “Hamlet” in modern dress.
MOTHER: Yes, but the only thing that kept me in that theater was that it was Dickie Burton.
DAUGHTER: And we saw F. Murray Abraham do “Merchant of Venice” here, in this very theater, in modern dress, and that worked. That really worked.
MOTHER: Yes, yes it did. All right, now that I have my second pair of eyes. How about the twentieth?
DAUGHTER: A little flexibility, Mother, please? Could we do a matinee, too?
MOTHER: I hate matinees.
ISAAC: On the twentieth I can do two in Row A, seats 111-112, and one in Row B, directly behind the pair.
MOTHER: We only need the pair; we are abandoning her sister.
DAUGHTER: She’d hate it, Mother.
MOTHER: Her sister who lives in England but cannot stand verse.
ISAAC: Well, I suppose it’s not for everyone. So the pair in Row A, then, on the twentieth?
DAUGHTER: I say we take them and be forever grateful.
MOTHER: Yes, we will take them. We do not go to the theater often, but when do, we do it right.
DAUGHTER: Oh, and “Measure for Measure”! It’s such a messy, sticky play. One of his stickiest plays. There’s so much in it.
MOTHER: (to ISAAC) My daughter is an English major.
ISAAC: Wonderful!
MOTHER: And a damn good one!
DAUGHTER: Mother, stop it, or I’ll have to punish you.
MOTHER: Go right ahead. Hit me in my stomach. It’s too big anyway.

FIN.