Act
I, Scene I
The
shop floor of a cupcake shop. Dee, the proprietor of D:licious Cupcakes, is
holding a meeting with her three ‘cupcake artisans’, Lulu, Moni and Jonesy.
Dee: Okay, girlies, we’re going to be
doing a burlesque-themed cupcake line for the annual amateur burlesque
competition! Anyone got any really naughty
ideas?
Lulu: How about we use piping to make
the ruffles of a skirt, and then get a pair of pink marzipan legs to stick out?
Dee: That’s wonderful! Excellent!
Lulu: Thanks, I saw it on the cover of Triple X Cupcakes Volume 3 in the crafts
section of my local bookshop.
Moni: I didn’t know your local bookshop had a crafts section.
Lulu: Well, it’s almost all erotic
crochet and cupcake design books, but yeah. I think there might be some origami
on the sale shelves.
Moni: I’ve seen one of them origami
books. It was all about how to make origami jewellery. I wanted to make a
flappy crane –
Dee: Moni, do you have any ideas for
the burlesque-themed cupcakes?
Moni: - still, I had a look at the
origami jewellery book and in the ‘Difficult’ section, there was a project
called ‘Make an Origami Boyfriend Who Gives You Origami Jewellery, Like Nigel
Never Does’ – sorry, what?
(Dee raises her eyebrows and
passive-aggressively taps one index finger against an exquisitely rouged
cheek.)
Moni: Oh, yeah, right, sorry. How about
we do a tit? It’d be pretty easy to make with icing and we can use those edible
silver balls to make a tit piercing, if we wanted. We could also do pasties,
not the delicious pastry kind, the sparkly kind burlesque dancers wear as a tit
hat.
Dee: Moni, that’s fabulous! Very naughty! What about you, Jonesy?
Any ideas for cupcakes?
Jonesy: Well, I thought we could bake a
kind of prim old-fashioned fruit cake type dough but have a rich syrup filling,
that would pretty, you know, sinful and sticky. Like sex. And, erm, I’ve been
working on this chocolate bread, it sort of melts in the toaster but, well,
apparently eating chocolate is quite ‘naughty’, although I don’t fully understand
why it would be, I mean, the Mayans and the Aztecs used to use it in religious
ceremonies, they even had the same word, xocolätl –
Dee: (both coldly, and wearily, as if she has to do this a lot) No.
Jonesy: (weakly, but still hopeful) No?
Dee: How many times do I have to tell
you, Jonesy? Cupcakes aren’t about baking. They’re about the idea of baking.
Jonesy: I’m sorry, I still don’t fully
understand –
Dee: (sing-song, dangerous) Then I’ll just have to tell you all over again, won’t I? Now. We need some ideas for
burlesque-themed cupcakes. A lot of
people go to the amateur burlesque competition. A lot of women. Women who keep up with the zeitgeist. And what is zeitgeisty right now is 1950s does
twenty-first century. And that’s us,
girls. (Jonesy, Moni and Lulu all
register faces of confusion, to varying degrees of gloom, but Dee plunges on.)
So, Jonesy… perhaps you’d like to think again?
Jonesy: Er… (looks desperately at Moni, who shrugs and starts wiggling her eyebrows
wildly, as if trying to convey something. Nothing is conveyed.) Er… well,
if we’re doing tit cupcakes, how about a vag?
Dee: WHAT.
Jonesy: Like, we could do the labia and
the clit in icing? And chocolate sprinkles for the hair? And maybe we could
squirt a bit of whipped cream on the inside? That’s pretty naughty, right?
Dee: THAT is not NAUGHTY. THAT is
PORNOGRAPHIC.
Jonesy: But –
Dee: Breasts are zeitgeisty, Jonesy.
Ladygardens are not. Ladygardens are dirty.
I want you to go home right now, and if you come in tomorrow without a decent
idea for D:licious Cupcakes, you’re going to have to find another way to pay
your bills.
Act
I, Scene II
Jonesy’s
flat. Jonesy shares a cramped flat in Stoke Newington with someone who looks as
much like Lena Dunham as the producer can find. ‘Lena’ is warming a bottle of
red wine under her armpit in lieu of letting it breathe for an hour, because
who even does that.
‘Lena’: I had someone gently hint that
I was a fatass today.
Jonesy: What? Why?
‘Lena’: You know that amateur burlesque
competition –
Jonesy: Oh, no, you’ll not believe what
Dee wants –
‘Lena’: Your cupcake problems are
heartbreaking but probably a slightly less horrible anecdote than my burlesque
ones. For the sake of ratings, I’m going to interrupt you and plough on.
Jonesy: What are you talking about –
‘Lena’: (talking over Jonesy) So, as you know, I’ve been planning a Dante’s
Inferno themed burlesque piece for
well over two days. I’d bought all this bunting and… stuff… and, like, merkins
made of fake fire and stuff… off Etsy, and I was learning to wiggle all the
bits of my body whilst looking convincingly like a member of the damned and so
on. And they told me I wasn’t ‘quite suitable’ for the competition!
Jonesy: That’s not the same as calling
you a fatass, but it’s still kind of unjustified. Did they say why?
‘Lena’: I wasn’t part of Miss Vixen La
Voyeuse’s School of Burlesque and Pole Dancing, and I wasn’t wearing a pre-approved
outfit. Pre-approved outfits, incidentally, are underbust corsets in cheap
satin and lace with matching thong, plus those curtains tassels you wear on
your nips to spin, except no one spins them. They just walk up and down doing
lacklustre high kicks and grinning.
Jonesy: Not so much with the hilarious
commentary about wanton sexual mores landing you in the first circle of Hell?
‘Lena’: I was working some seriously interpretative dance, but
because I wasn’t in plastic platform Mary Janes, they did not care. Also,
apparently, the ‘tableaux’ dances are done in descending height order, and
there’s already someone my height in the spot. She’s Sexy Snow White, for no
reason. Anyway, what’s your baking beef? Wine?
(Lena extracts the wine from her armpit and
starts to wrestle with a corkscrew. Over her sotto voce ‘come on come on you
twisty bastard’ Jonesy imparts her tale)
Jonesy: Dee got on my case about being
able to bake again today. She’s doing a line of burlesque-themed cupcakes to
sell at the show –
‘Lena’: Oh no oh no. Cupcakes and
sanitised burlesque? Will there also be ready-mixed cocktails and Ann Summers
reps and women wearing fascinators for no god damn reason?
Jonesy: Maybe?
‘Lena’: You have to stop her. If a
reasonable woman sees this show and eats a cupcake, the sugary-sweet bland
assault on all her senses will make her grow tacky fascinators out of her
scalp. This horrible post-Christina Aguilera floor show is the cupcake to the
homemade carrot-and-walnut cake of risqué theatre. Jonesy.
(‘Lena’ gets up and goes to stand in front
of Jonesy, who produces two glasses. Their eyes have locked in total
seriousness. ‘Lena’ pours two glasses of wine without breaking eye contact.)
‘Lena’: Jonesy, listen to me. For the
sake of aesthetics, for the sake of your soul… You have to destroy those
cupcakes.
Act
I, Scene III
The
kitchen of D:Licious Cupcakes. Late at night. Very dark. ‘Lena’ and Jonesy are
stumblimg around. It is evident from their behaviour that they are both very
drunk and on a mission.
‘Lena’: Stop bumping into me and
concentrate. You might push me onto a knife and then you won’t have a comedy
sidekick.
Jonesy: This is a bakery, not a, a, a,
sushi restaurant. There aren’t any knives here. Cupcake mixture is pretty much
ready-made.
‘Lena’: In hell.
(This is so unfunny that both girls giggle,
starting and subdued and working their way up to proper throaty guffaws. Then
suddenly – clicky clicky. Someone is trying to open the shop door.)
Jonesy: Oh my sainted aunt.
‘Lena’: Jonesy… how many other people
have the key to the shop?
Jonesy: I- I’m not sure. (She
sniffles a bit) No one ever bloody tells me anything…
(A tinkle of bells as the door swings open.
Heavy footsteps, coming towards the kitchen. Very loud in the silence. They
stop abruptly.)
Gruff Voice: Who’s there?
Jonesy: Oh my sainted parts, it’s the
po-po.
‘Lena’: Don’t you mean the pie-pie?
(Pause)
‘Lena’: I’m so sorry, I pun when I’m
nervous and they’re never any good –
Gruff Voice: Jonesy?
(Pause, then a light switch is hit. The
tragic scene is revealed. There are a lot of novelty items of kitchenware that are
probably from Cath Kidson, a fatalistic looking Jonesy, a frozen Lena, and,
finally, Moni)
Moni: (in her normal voice) What the buggering bum are you doing here?
Jonesy: (faint with relief) I was going to destroy the cupcakes for the
burlesque show.
Moni: We haven’t made ‘em yet though.
Jonesy: Oh… yeah… right. (She glares at ‘Lena’, who is admiring a
floral-patterned mixing bowl. ‘Lena’ drags her finger inside the bowl and
brings it up smeared with dust. She stares incredulously at it as Jonesy and
Moni talk.) Well, what are you
doing here?
Moni: I was sort of planning sabotage
too, except I was going more along the lines of blowing up the shop.
Jonesy: What.
Moni: Well, I know I’m thick and all,
but if I can bake a cake, I can build a bomb.
Jonesy: Moni, you’re an insane genius.
TO BE CONTINUED (well, not really, you get
the idea, the writer hates cupcakes)