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The Reservation

Comedy, the impossible name

  • Comedy
  • Two-hander
  • 3 min
  • Female role
  • Adult
  • Beginner
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Casting

13 lines
  • HÔTE Male role, Adult
  • CLIENTE Female role, Adult your role

Full text

(A restaurant. The host studies a screen with the gravity of a surgeon.)

HÔTE

Do you have a reservation?

CLIENTE

Yes. Under Marchand. Two people, eight o’clock.

HÔTE

I have no Marchand. I have a Marchal. A Marchais. A… Marwhatsit.

CLIENTE

Maybe it’s Marwhatsit, then. I have a name with options.

HÔTE

Marwhatsit was yesterday.

CLIENTE

Yesterday I wasn’t hungry. That’s Marwhatsit’s whole problem: bad timing.

(Types.)

HÔTE

I can put you down for three weeks from now.

CLIENTE

Three weeks? My guest over there has already started aging on the bench.

HÔTE

The gentleman in blue? He’s ours. He’s been waiting for a certain Marchand for twenty minutes.

CLIENTE

…I’m the Marchand.

HÔTE

Ah. You see. It all works out in the end.

CLIENTE

You nearly sent me back in three weeks for someone waiting six metres away.

HÔTE

Patience, madam, is part of the menu.

What you can do with it

Original text written for Acto. Read it, print it, work on it in class, perform it at an audition or on a self-tape: that is what it is for, and you need no permission. For a public performance or any commercial use, write to us at contact@acto.re.

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