Synopsis
It is 1984 in Vancouver, and Howie Blumer’s old friends still sometimes wonder where he went, back in 1967. In those days, Blumer was a hippie and a busker: a professional kite flyer, who built his own kites, flew them in the parks and beaches of Vancouver, and performed song and dance and patter routines. But then, during the legendary Summer of Love, he mysteriously vanished without a trace. And now, his friends’ questions are answered, as Blumer emerges from a steamer trunk where he had lain down for one very long nap. It seems he took some street LSD which he’d bought from an old lady on Fourth Avenue, and it had the side effect of causing him to hibernate for 17 years.
So now, Blumer must come to terms with 1980s Vancouver, with its materialism, its real estate prices (yes, even then!) and its betrayal of the counterculture dream. He has old friends to help him – but also old enemies, who were out to get him back then, and are out to get him once again, now that they know he’s back. Will Blumer survive his reunion with Vancouver? Will Vancouver?
Critical Responses
“HAPPY TRIP WITH A TIME-WARP HIPPIE… Full of zingers, some provocative, some satiric, and a few moments are touching…. A trifle, but a thoughtful one.”
– Lloyd Dykk, the Vancouver Sun, July, 1984
“This is a welcome new work … a zany, almost farcical comedy, set locally and spiced with a few tart sociological reflections… Lazarus’ skill as a writer shines forth. He is an intelligent, perceptive author.”
– Roger Mitton, the East Ender, July, 1984
“One of the niftiest little conceits in comedy in quite some time… wry perceptions… cleverly fabricated…quite beguiling and often very funny… The absurdist element is delightful… It’s fun…deft comic vision.”
– Max Wyman, CBC Radio, July, 1984
Production History
The Late Blumer was first produced in 1984, at the Seymour Street Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, directed by John Juliani and starring singer/songwriter Rick Scott. It was held over for six months, becoming one of the biggest hits in Arts Club history. It has also been produced by Presentation House of North Vancouver, the Alumnae Association of Toronto, and other theatres, and a one-act version has been produced by Nexus Theatre of Edmonton, Lunchbox Theatre of Calgary and numerous high schools. In 1987 it was published by Playwrights Union of Canada in the anthology Four New Comedies.
Requirements
3 M, 2 F, some offstage voices. One setting. A full-length play in two acts.
Excerpt
At the beginning of the play, BLUMER’S old friend ELAINE, and his young friend SHELLEY, who had known BLUMER when she was a child, were taking ‘60s mementoes out of the steamer trunk from which he was later to emerge. They found one of his old kites, fashioned to resemble a pterodactyl, and they hung it on the wall. Now, at the beginning of this speech, in Act Two, BLUMER is alone in the room and feeling depressed, when he observes the Pterodactyl kite.
BLUMER: I wish I was yon pterodactyl –
So big and so bold and so tactyl –
I’d fly past the sun –
And two thousand and one –
Is the year that I would not come back ‘til.
(Crosses to kite, picks up spool, backs across the room, playing out the string. “Flies” the kite through the following:)
Ladles and jellyspoons! Boys and berries! Brothels and cisterns! Behold the magnificent pterodactyl! That’s Taro, as in the cards of the very same name, Dactyl, cousin of the Spondee, Trochee and Iambic Pentameter. Spell it P-T-E-R – Oh yes, the P is silent as in swimming in the ocean. Well, you may say, what a glorious bird. Glorious, yes, but this is no bird. Mind you, it soars like an eagle, dives like a hawk, and crawls on its belly like a reptile. But that’s because it is a reptile, from its lizard gizzard down to its famous anus, which is a line for those of you who like to get a little behind in your rhetoric – and as a reptile it’s a magnificent example of its kind.
(Brief pause for breath. SHELLEY enters behind him, carrying a box. She listens raptly, silently mouthing parts she remembers.)
Oh, I know its kind. And I know your kind. And I know their kind. And I know he’s kind and she’s kind and I’m kind and we’re all kind – but what good does that do the distinguished, extinguished pterodactyl? And what good does that do us? Yes, give it a thought, my friends, a thought to peace and freedom, flowers and jelly beans. And soy beans, and coffee beans, and above all, human beans! ‘Cause I’m no good at bein’ noble but I do know that the string-bean problems of you and me don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. And if all of us human beans don’t start to cultivate each other, then someday soon we’ll be as distinguished-extinguished as yon pterodactyl. And some day later, yon pterodactyl will fly again, my friends, yes he will, and he’ll look down on the ruins of our civilization and cry:
I’m glad I’m not old Homo Sap
Who covered his planet with crap,
And then building a bomb
Said goodbye to his Mom
And blew himself right off the map –
And he’ll go home to his nest in the bonga-bonga tree. And Mrs. Dactyl and all their little anapests will cry, “What’s it like out there, Terry?” And old Terry Dactyl, he’ll tap dance on the branches of the bonga-bonga tree, and he’ll sing:
(Goes into a dance, and sings, to “Turkey in the Straw” or a variant:)
It’s a jungle out there
But I really don’t care
‘Cause the sun is a-shining
And I’m glad I’m in the air,
Oh, I managed to survive,
And I’m plenty more alive
Than old Homo Sappy
With his nine – to –
(Suddenly is gasping for breath. Sits, holding his chest. SHELLEY holds him, startling him.)
SHELLEY: You okay?
BLUMER: Yeah – I’m fine – Jesus, though – All I did was – Pterodactyl routine and half the tap dance –
SHELLEY: I know. It was wonderful. It was incredible.
BLUMER: Oh – groovy. So how come I feel like I – just ran a mile? I could do that routine before, without working up a sweat.
SHELLEY (cheerfully): That was before.
BLUMER: Oh, my God. I’m old.
SHELLEY: Oh, Blumer.
BLUMER: It isn’t fair. Other people get old, they say it isn’t fair. But at least they had it. I didn’t even have it. I got stoned and I missed it.
SHELLEY: Oh – Oh, Blumer.
BLUMER: I never had my thirties, Shelley, I missed my whole thirties!
SHELLEY: I know, Sweetie.
BLUMER: I’m stiff, and I got all these weird twinges – and it’s all happened so fast. It’s like I been disabled.
SHELLEY: Blumer, you’re not disabled. I just watched you do the Pterodactyl routine.
BLUMER: Blast from the ancient past, eh.
SHELLEY: Oh, it’s more than that. You don’t know how it makes me feel to see that routine. I feel like I’m five years old again, and you’re twenty-five.
BLUMER: Well, I don’t.
SHELLEY: Listen! You don’t know what you used to mean to me back then. And you just meant it again, just now. Do you know, it’s the Pterodactyl routine that got me started on my antinuke work! You weren’t one of the normal run of grownups, Blumer. You were magical. You were up there with Santa and Mickey Mouse.
BLUMER (cheering up a bit): Oh, pshaw.
SHELLEY: You were! And more, you lived on my street! And more than that, you were like a kid. You were a kid, you were a five-year-old who had somehow zoomed up and was fooling all the grownups.
BLUMER: Well, I didn’t fool them enough.
SHELLEY: And then you went away. First they told me Santa wasn’t real, and then Walt Disney died, and then you went away. All in the same year. But now you’re back. Out of nowhere, poof, Blumer is back from the dead, alive as can be, and doing the Pterodactyl routine.
*****