The Butcher Papers
[produced, SRT, Portland]
[full length play, 2 acts]
Carson Larue loves Freud like the father he never knew. Now Freudian psychology is going to help Carson solve a series of grisly, ritualistic murders that are hitting increasingly close to home. This award-winning comedy begins as a whodunnit, mutates into a modernist whydunnit and proves conclusively that “being criminally insane is NOT fun.” Gives shtick a good name. [cast 4w, 5 m]
DOROTHY: I like your eyes. Small. Red. Set close together. Not everyone can see the excitement there that I can see.
CARSON: You see that fine white line just above my belt loops? Just above the top of my trousers. You know what that is? It’s the very top edge of my underwear. They fit around me inside my trousers. You know they’re there. You know what they look like from staring at dummies in department stores. But you can’t see anything of mine except this little white band. And that excites you. You’re looking right through my trousers at my underwear. A man’s underwear...and that excites you.
JOCK MORNINGSTAR: We’ve got time for one more “Remember When” entry. This one’s from a house-husband in the suburbs who intones: “Remember when God?” Boy-howdy, I sure do. Give me that old-time religion--like the Crusades and the witch hunts. And remember, the only religious missionaries of any use have already been eaten!
JOCK MORNINGSTAR: Yes, friends, times are hard and it sure would be nice to get back to basics. Back to good, wholesome entertainment: simple songs any moron could hum, simple stories any idiot could understand, simple beliefs any frightened dogmatist could call his own. Simple morals that would let any ignoramus overpopulate, spread what little he had to offer so thin it wouldn’t make a decent oil slick. Simple mores that would let any of us obliterate our neighbor if he looks or acts out of the ordinary. Ahhh. I could dream on all night about what’s made this such a great place to live...
ELLIOTT: With his maternal obsession and all-encompassing guilt and insecurity, Carson Larue had all the symptoms of a typical American male between the ages of 13 and 15. The fact that he was the perpetrator of four brutal murders and actually forty years old made him somewhat more unique...
