Golpe (a Three Act Verse Play)

Alex wrote this play in a classical verse form using iambic pentameters and rhyme. Here is an excerpt from the opening scene of his three act play, “Golpe”,  set during the Spanish Civil War and written in ottava rima.

ACT ONE

Scene One

A street in Ronda, Spain. The town has just fallen to Generalissimo Franco’s Nationalist forces. JUANITA, carrying a swaddled baby, and her mother, MARIA, stand at a low wall overlooking the Tajo Gorge. They crane to watch Republican prisoners being thrown to their death from the Puento Nuevo bridge. The fading screams of the falling men are heard as the watching pair follow each plummeting descent with their eyes and heads.

A large dog kennel is situated STAGE LEFT with its opening facing CENTRE STAGE.

Ronda oil on canvas by Alexander Blackie

The Bridge at Ronda: prisoners were thrown to their deaths on the rocks below. (Oil on canvas)

JUANITA (hugging her baby)
Look how they fall like angels to the earth
but no soft landing down amongst those rocks.
Those devils on the bridge with gleeful mirth
terrorised the townsfolk as wolves do flocks
of sheep at lambing time. For all their worth,
they searched shuttered houses and smashed the locks
of any door they could not open wide,
dragged out the frightened men hiding inside…

                      (MARIA continues the sentence)

MARIA     … battered them senseless to the dusty ground
in gutters awash with their comrades’ blood
each in their own vomit and bile half-drowned.
They lay gasping like fish stranded on mud.
the narrow streets echoing with the sound
of their screaming with each rifle-butt’s thud.

JUANITA Mother, who are these beasts in human form
whose hearts the desert sun could never warm?

MARIA     They are Francisco Franco’s native troops,
Moroccan Regulares, bought by gold.
Free to rape and kill, they are the first groups
into attack. Completely uncontrolled,
each Regulare picks his prey and swoops
raping, maiming, and killing young or old.
just the threat of unleashing these fierce hawks
compels Comrade Republicans to talks.

If you would like to read more of the play, please do not hesitate to contact me,

Very Best Regards

Alex