“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
prologue
Prologue Fugue E Nocturnus (Fugue of Night)
AT RISE:
LUCY WESTENRA sleeps peacefully as moonlight spills through a window. RENFIELD enters, dressed in a ratty CARFAX ASYLUM uniform, bloodied and disheveled, his broken glasses barely hanging on. He advances toward LUCY with a feverish intensity as he begins a strange malediction.
RENFIELD
Harmonies fill the cathedral of the night…
With songs of shadows—
(A woman screams offstage—"Murder!")
And psalms of the preternatural.
(A police whistle slices the silence. )
Midnight comes-- when all evil things hold court and sway.
(Addressing LUCY as a storm intensifies outside.)
“Awake, dear heart, awake.
Thou hast slept well”
Awake. AWAKE.
Wake up!
He sits gently on the bed and takes LUCY’s hand.
Prodded by RENFIELD’s presence, LUCY “awakens,” though sleepwalking. With a sweeping motion from RENFIELD, the bedroom dissolves into a churchyard. He weaves among the tombs and grave markers, yelling above the storm.
​
MINA (Off)
Lucy!
MINA MURRAY appears in the distance, moving downstage, lit by the glow of a gas lamp.
RENFIELD
The devil’s come ashore in Whitby – and another's comes to greet him.
RENFIELD ducks behind a gravestone to hide.
MINA
Lucy?
MINA grabs LUCY. LUCY turns, growling, snapping like an animal. The SHADOW tears away with a gust of wind.
LUCY
Oh, Mina, you silly goose — what are you doing out here? On a night like this?
MINA
Lucy! You’re bleeding — everywhere! Come on, now. Let's get you safe and dry.
(Growling is heard and glowing eyes emerge from the mist. MINA wraps a shawl around LUCY.)
Come with me. Please. Or you’ll catch your death.
​​
LUCY
I think I’ve already caught it.
(Sharply, pulling her shawl tight.)
Get your hands off me! I can walk by myself!
Watch out for that wolf.
​
MINA
There are no wolves in Whitby.
LUCY
He was on that ship. See it out there? Broken on the rocks like that was her intent all along. There's something in this storm that looks like, smells like, tastes like and feels like death.
The growl becomes louder as something massive moves through the fog.
MINA (Grabbing her)
Sod it! Stuff all this nonsense. I’ll carry you home if need be.
​
As RENFIELD moves from behind the stone, LUCY reaches out to him.)
LUCY (as she is pulled into the darkness)
(singing)
FROM THE HIGH ROOFTOPS DOWN TO THE SEA,
DON'T LET THE WATERS TAKE BABY FROM ME--
RENFIELD dances a jig — until another massive shadow in a long dark coat and wide-brimmed hat rises from the storm, seizing RENFIELD and lifting him off the ground.)
RENFIELD
Master!
We see that it is BALCOMBE, an orderly from the Asylum, dressed for the storm.)
BALCOMBE
No use trying to flatter me. You’re going back as far from the others as possible. By yourself, cracker!
BALCOMBE hurls RENFIELD into his cell. LIGHT SHIFT: A WOMAN stands alone on a dark London street — MARTHA TABRAM. An eerie whistling is heard as footsteps echo on cobblestones. A looming FIGURE engulfs her, slitting her throat and stabbing her with quick, brutal precision, establishing a pattern to continue throughout the act as Jack the Ripper's killings are enacted.)
NEWSBOY'S VOICE
Bird dead in Whitechapel. Police question pimp!
LUCY's white nightgown glows as she enters the darkness, her hands covered in blood and clutching a knife. She screams. Other screams echo, overlapping in a rising cacophony. A police WHISTLE pierces the chaos as LUCY speaks to the audience for the first, and only, time.
LUCY
August 7, 1888, the date I entered the phantasmagoria.
