Liza!

By Thomas M. Kelly

The play's action covers a period of roughly four months, from August to November, 1887. Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of 13 children, now living alone with her aging and incompetent mother. Very popular with all the residents—both young and old—of Vere Street, Lambeth, she cannot really make up her mind as far as her love life is concerned. She very much likes Tom, a boy her age, but when he proposes to her she rejects him ("I don't love yer so as ter marry yer"). Nevertheless she is persuaded to join a party of 32 who make a coach trip (in a horse-drawn coach, of course) to a nearby village on the August Bank Holiday (A bank holiday is a public holiday in the United Kingdom or in Ireland. There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although the majority of the population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contract. The first official bank holidays were the four days named in the Bank Holidays Act of 1870) Monday. Some of the other members of the party are Tom; Liza's friend Sally and her boyfriend Harry; and Jim Blakeston, a 40-year-old father of nine who has recently moved to Vere Street with his large family, and his wife (while their eldest daughter, Polly, is taking care of her siblings). The outing is a lot of fun, and they all get, more or less, drunk on beer. On their way back, in the dark, Liza realizes that Jim Blakeston is making a pass at her by holding her hand. After their arrival back home, Jim manages to speak to her alone and to steal a kiss from her.
Seemingly without considering either the moral implications or the consequences of her actions, Liza feels attracted to Jim. They never appear together in public because they do not want the other residents of Vere Street or their workmates to start talking about them. One of Jim Blakeston's first steps to win Liza's heart is to go to a melodramatic play with her on Saturday night. Afterwards, he succeeds in seducing her, although we never learn where they do it... obviously in the open.
But in the end they do "slide down into the darkness of the passage".
When autumn arrives and the nights get chillier, Liza's secret meetings with Jim become less comfortable and more trying. Lacking an indoor meeting place, they even spend their evenings together in the third class waiting room of a railway station. Also, to Liza's dismay, it turns out that people do start talking about them, in spite of the precautions they have taken. Only Liza's mother, who is a drunkard and a very simple sort of person, has no idea what is going on.
Liza's friend Sally gets married, has to stop working at the factory because her husband would not let his wife earn her own money, and soon becomes pregnant. Liza feels increasingly isolated, with Sally being married now and even Tom seemingly shunning her, but her love for Jim keeps her going. They do talk about their love affair though: about the possibility of Jim leaving his wife and children ("I dunno if I could get on without the kids"), about Liza not being able to leave her mother because the latter needs her help, about living somewhere else "as if we was married", about bigamy -- but, strangely, not about adultry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas M. Kelly
• Release date: Aug 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452436791

Thomas M. Kelly

Résumé: Thomas M. Kelly EDUCATION: Mr. Kelly was born and raised in Muscatine, Iowa. He is a graduate of Hayes Catholic High School, a graduate of Orange County Community College, Middletown, NY. and went on to attend two years at the University of California, Davis and is a graduate of Lincoln Law School, Sacramento, California. "Once a Marine, always a Marine" ('57 - '60). PUBLISHED: A monologue, “Sara”, from his play “...smile, and smile, and be a villain.”, is included in Young Women's Monologs From Contemporary Plays: Professional Auditions For Aspiring Actresses, edited byGerald Lee Ratliff, State University New York, Potsdam and published in 2004 by Meriwether Publishing, Ltd. A monologue, “Zhev”, from his play “Fana!” will be published by Smith & Kraus Inc. in an anthology: 221 One-Minute Monologues From Literature. JAC Publishing, Burlington, MA, has published interJACtions: Monologues at the Heart of Human Nature contains three of Mr. Kelly's monologues. HONORS: “The Butterfly Within” is included in the Eileen Heckart's Senior Drama Archives in the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University. LOCAL THEATRE AWARDS: Several Elly Nominations and Elly Awards including Best Overall Production, for “A Shayna Madel” by Barbara Lebow, and Best Set, for “Nighthawks and Night Café” by Edward Evan Blake, based on the painting “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper. “Wake up, Jay! It’s Christmas!”, winner of four Elly Awards for Young Peoples Theatre, including Best Overall Production. OTHER WORKS: "Mixville" (Jubal 'Tom Mix' McCabe is a happy-go-lucky, wanna-be cowboy movie star. As a youngster he was a "little Tom Mix", cleaning out a nest of imaginary outlaws in the family backyard in typical Tom Mix fashion. Those were the days of the popular dream: to grow up to be like Tom Mix.), “Extreme Unction”; “The Timekeeper”; “Zen and the Art of Making Par”; “The Butterfly Within” (A heartwarming story of culture clash as an old Jewish gentleman and a young Korean girl discover the meaning of the rest of their lives atop a Lower East Side tenement); “Fana!”, (The ordeal of three trapped survivors of suicide bomb blasts spend their last hours justifying their lives and religions: two very honestly, the third very deceitfully. In a mental duel the three argue the rationale of murder/suicide bombings using the Qur’an, Hindu philosophy and the Torah as authority.); and “smile, and smile, and be a villain.”; (A frightening glimpse at the life of a victim of Borderline Personality Disorder); “Ba-Bang!” (An analytic political cartoon caricature of “Dubya”); "The (Mis)Adventures of Charlie & Jay": a montage of four short children's plays, including "Stop Snoring, Jay! I’m Dreaming of Christmas!"; "Wake Up, Jay! It’s Christmas!"; "This is Not our Backyard, Charlie!"; and "You’re in Trouble Now, Charlie!". “Ba-Bang!, The Musical”; “Waiting for Mahmoud”; “How To Improve Your Life in Four Easy Moves”; "Yuyustu" (part of the 'Mixville' series); "It's'a comin' inta' bein' ", co-authored with Paul Hauck; and “Pádraig’s Aibhistear”. “Ole’ Gimlet Eye” is a biographical play about Major Smedley Darlington Butler, U.S.M.C. General Butler was a man who defied the powers that were, to wage a war against war in the days before World War II: “War is a racket! I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”; “Frankie and Johnny Were Schweethawts”; "Liza!"; "Pawns are but Poor Men"; "Save yer pennies, kids." (part of the 'Mixville' series); "Sacred Ground" (part of the 'Mixville' series); "Hey Mom, tell Rod..."; and "On the Line", are more recent full-length plays, with more in premature flight. He has written and produced many children’s plays. They feature Charlie, a French Briard puppy, and Jay, a Persian Red Point feline. In 1994 Mr. Kelly founded the award winning Thistle Dew Theatre in Sacramento and is founder of the highly successful Thistle Dew Playwright’s Workshop in 2005. In 2012 Mr. Kelly founded the Super Political Action Comedy (Super PAC) Theatre and it's blog: http://superpoliticalactioncomedy.blogspot.com/ , and other blogs; http:/thistledewtheatre.blogspot.com/ ; http://thistledewcenterforliteraryart.blogspot.com/ ; http://wordstreetsmarts.blogspot.com/ ; & http://californiaplaywrightstheirplays.blogspot.com/ .

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