The Slab Boys (1978)
Scene
The Slab Room is a small paint-spattered room adjacent to the Design Studio at A. F. Stobo & Co., Carpet Manufacturers. It is here that the powder colour used by the designers in the preparation of the paper patter is ground and dished. The colour is kept in large cardboard drums. It is heaped onto marble slabs by the Slab Boys (apprentice designers), water and gum arabic is added, and it is ground with large palette knives till deemed fit to be dished. A window overlooks the factory sheds from where the distant hum of looms drifts up. Beneath the window is a sink. Beside the sink are stacks of small pottery dishes (some of them very dirty). There is a broom cupboard in one comer of the room. Rolls of drafting paper, rug samples, paint rags etc. litter the shelves and floor. A large poster of James Dean (unidentified) hangs on the wall. The action takes place during the morning and afternoon of a Friday in the winter of 1957.
Act One
The Slab Room. Enter George ‘Spanky’ Farrell in dust-coat, drainpipe trousers, Tony Curtis hair-do, crepe-soled shoes. He crosses to his slab and starts working. Enter Hector McKenzie, similarly attired in dustcoat. He is shorter and weedier than Spanky. He wears spectacles and carries a portable radio.
Spanky Hey, where’d you get the wireless, Heck? Never seen you with that this morning ...
Hector Had it planked down the bog . .. didn’t want ‘you-know-who ’ to see it.
Spanky Does it work? Give’s a shot... (Grabs radio.) Where’s Luxembourg?
Hector Watch it, Spanky ... you'll break it! You can’t get Luxembourg... it’s not dark enough.
Spanky Aw ... d’you need a dark wireless? I never knew that. Mebbe if we pull the aerial out a bit... (He does so. It comes away in his hand.)
Hector You swine, look what you’ve done!
Spanky Ach, that’s easy fixed ...
Hector Give us it. (Twiddles knobs. Gets Terry Dene singing ‘A White Sport Coat’.)
Spanky Good God, could you not’ve brung in a more modern wireless? That’s donkey’s out of date.
Hector I like it.
Spanky That’s ’cos you’re a tube, Hector:
Enter Phil McCann in street clothes and carrying portfolio under his arm. He sets folio down behind the door.
Morning, Phil. You’re early the day... (Consults wristwatch painted on wrist.) 'S only half-eleven.
Phil Anybody been looking for us?
Spanky Willie Curry was in ten minutes ago looking that lemon-yellow you promised, but I told him you diarrhoea and you’d take a big dish of it down to him later on.
Phil (changing into dustcoat) Who belongs to the jukebox?
Hector ’S mines...
Enter Willie Curry.
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