Mr Flannery's Ocean & Objective Case

On the terrace of an old weather-beaten resort hotel on the southern coast of England he sits in his deck chair, ever watchful, ever ready to defend his right to ownership; an ownership which grew simply out of a need to belong to and protect something

Flannery is absolutely convinced he owns this body of water, and surprisingly enough, is successful in intimidating everyone else around him into treating him correspondingly, everyone that is, except Maug, the cockney maid who can never seem to bring Flannery's tea hot enough

These two spend their days in perpetual combat. To the hotel comes an American, Mrs Pringle; widowed and childless, to spend her wheelchair days in the hope of getting some health from the sea breezes

Mrs Pringle is a woman with a wistful sadness in her eyes; a look of surrender and reconciliation to long hours of sickness and the despair of being completely alone

How and why Jim Flannery gives this woman his ocean, his only and most prized possession, is the story of the play. It is the magical tale of the giving and the receiving of a gift which no one believed could be possessed

Cast requires 1 boy and 1 girl also

Objective Case ~ This is a play which vacillates on a thin line between expressionism and realism. Essentially, it is a story of a man and woman desperately and pathetically in love

Each of these two people has a defect. He likes to pull his ear and scratch his teeth. She likes to blink her eyes and droop her lip. These defects become the symbol of each other's human imperfection and, tragically, also the focal point for each other's ambivalent feelings of hate

The entire play builds to a love scene in which, still cursed by their inability to bare themselves, he and she take refuge behind mannequins. The love scene begins and goes along well enough for a while, both of them expressing their affections from behind the refuge of their inanimate counterparts

Then, each sees the other's defect and the scene explodes in chaos. He and she scream hate at each other as they run off the stage. A moment of silence passes. Then, the mannequins continue the love scene. They introduce themselves as Him and Her, the objective case of He and She. The mannequins fall in love

Strangely enough, the focus of this love are the imperfections that generated hate in their human counterparts

Produced at the White Barn Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut, this play is one of the author's most original and arresting works. A perfect companion piece to one of his other short plays