Content area
Full text
JEAN Aragny and Francis Neilson's Le baiser de sang opens with the following stage direction and dialogue:
[Professor Leduc and Dr. Volguine are wearing surgical masks as the curtain rises. Stage right, dressed head to foot in white, the Male Nurse stands next to the trolley. . . . The Patient is a bald man. He is in pain, in spite of the chloroform, stirring and crying out from time to time.
A cross-shaped incision has been made on the forehead above the right eye. The flaps of skin are clipped back so that the frontal bone of the skull is exposed. Holes have been drilled in the trepanning drill. Everybody is leaning over, with outstretched necks, and attentively following the Professor's every move.]
PROF. LEDUC. It's no good. It's not going to work. The lesion means that I'm going to have to drill here . . . and not here after all . . . there's no alternative.
DR. VOLGUINE. That's the most resistant spot.
LEDUC. Yes. A compress . . . and another . . . and another one ... a swab . . . how's his pulse?
VOLGUINE. Very weak.
LEDUC. What about his legs? Are they cold?
VOLGUINE. Very cold.
LEDUC. (raising his eyelids, then raising his eyes upwards): I only hope he's not going to give us any trouble with his circulation like the Dutchman the other day. Get the caffeine ready, a small amount. (The Male Nurse bustles about.) Swab! (He begins to drill. The Patient stirs.) lust a moment! (The Professor stops drilling. Volguine hands him a stethoscope. He listens.) This is bad . . . give him a jab immediately. (He listens) This is bad. (Volguine gives an injection.) Let's do this quickly. (He succeeds in drilling the hole. The Patient groans almost silently. The Professor hands back the stethoscope.) All done.
VOLGUINE. I can't feel a pulse.
Within seconds they pronounce the patient dead, lamenting that "he was brought in . . . ten minutes too late."1
A man has just died, a scenario that seems poorly designed to prompt laughter. Truth be told, however, I laughed really hard when I saw the play performed this fall by a New York company, Blood Brothers, and...