4. Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati)

Book: Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati)

Author: Larry Larson and Levi Lee

Number of pages: 45

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two posts in one day?

Double prizes!

I wanted to catch up with my tri-monthly blog. These past couple weeks have been ridiculous. We actually open Little Women tonight, so I’ve had no extra time to do anything outside of school, work, and theater. I actually finished reading this play before writing on As You Like It. So it ended up happening that between writing that and this post, I’ve had zero time to watch or play anything. I am going through videogame withdrawal and hoping for a large dose this weekend.

Keeping record, I’m going 0-3 for books that I want to keep. Looking at my remaining plays, I wanted to pick one out that looked promising. Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati) caught my eye. The title rivals A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying –okay, after typing these out, I can see it far surpasses – as a play title bordering on the ridiculously lengthy side. Throw in hints at apocalypse and cult conspiracy theories and this sounds like an interesting read. I was curious to see what this play is about.

I always like looking at the page in a script when it talks about the original production. Turns out the entire cast is two people: Larry Larson and Levi Lee. I’m inferring that either these two guys were actors who needed a show to perform, so they just wrote their own or they were writers who couldn’t find any actors, so they just performed on their own. The entire production company was pretty compact. The director, stage manager, and the two actor-writers also shared all the costume work. There’s also a typo on the page: “The play was subsequently presented…in February of 1986 with the original cat” (3).

Act I opens to a crudely furnished and decaying church. Reverend Eddie takes some pills and has a vision of “a black-hooded figure of Death stand[ing] at the foot of the cross, holding a basketball in both hands” (5). The play doesn’t waste any time being weird. The lights go out and he gets paranoid really fast. He starts shouting about JFK’s assassination and nerve gas, and then he recites some prayers. At one point he cries out, “I stepped on a foot! A bare foot! Someone else is here! I stepped on a foot. (Pause.) And someone stepped on my foot! (Pause.) Someone stepped on my foot and I stepped on someone else’s foot at the same time! (Pause.) They’re both my feet. (Pause.) I’m stepping on myself. I thought it was a big coincidence” (6). I admit, it made me laugh. This first speech actually makes a decent audition monologue. There is a lot to play within it. I was curious to see where the play would go.

Brother Lawrence comes in and explains that the power went out because of a small animal getting caught in the generator. He assumes the animal did so purposefully and starts contemplating the animal’s state of mind to drive it to suicide. Again, it started off pretty funny. However, Larson and Lee stretch the joke out for over two pages of dialogue. After one page, the joke was old. After two, it was dead.

Anyway, Eddie is pretty much the short-tempered straight man and Lawrence is the good-humored halfwit.¹ Lawrence tells Eddie of a vision he had, and Eddie treats Lawrence like crap. The scene switches to Eddie’s vision of country western singers (played by Larson and Lee) singing a song about how “Jesus was a Lutheran” (15). It’s kinda funny and kinda offensive – which, so far, is what the whole play has been.

At one point, there was some surprise racism when Eddie shouts at Lawrence, “I’m talking about the devil, Lawrence! The one the black people call ‘de debil.’ Satan” (18). Was that really necessary? Why is he using an outdated dialect stereotype? Is he mocking it? Why does he say “the black people”? I don’t get why that line is in the play.

Eddie and Lawrence talk about the same stuff for awhile until the next scene. In it, someone is applying for sainthood. He needs to have performed three miracles. The punchline of the scene is that his third miracle is him being able to fold a roadmap. I admit, it didn’t make me laugh. The scene was slow and stretched over five pages. Then there is a boring scene about Eddie explaining to Lawrence the need for self-flagellation in order to “score points” for salvation (26). The play remains kinda offensive, but it lost its funniness.

Next is a scene between St. Paul and Timothy as if they were New York construction workers.² St. Paul is written to be performed as Paul Lynde, which is an old reference that I actually get. The show is full of bad puns. Here’s one of them:

PAUL. Do you have the Oregano?

TIMOTHY. (Looks in box.) Sure. Here.

PAUL. Thanks. Have you got the Rosemary?

TIMOTHY. Yea. There ya go!

PAUL. Have you got the Thyme?
            TIMOTHY. (Checking watch.) It’s 12:15. (29)

Paul and Timothy go on to make some sexist jokes centering around where women should belong. I’m growing bored by the script; all the potential I saw at the beginning of the play is nonexistent. Eddie mentions St. Genesius, which is an even older reference that I still get. Larson and Lee incorporate breaking for intermission into the script as if the audience is the congregation taking intermission in a church service. I did enjoy that. It was kind of clever, but on the whole, did little to re-spark my interest.

            In Act II, Eddie grows more paranoid of the Illuminati and has worse outbursts. There’s a weird dumb-show scene of Eddie giving all his possessions to a carnival barker who turns out to be Death. The show goes back to more of Eddie flipping his shit over the Illuminati’s assumed presence in the church. He pulls out a gun, loses it, and pulls out another hidden gun. He almost shoots Lawrence by accident.

            Next, Eddie is playing basketball with Death and loses. Eddie calls Death the “Grim Faggot Reaper” (44). Ugh…Was that necessary either? He just these sudden uncalled for outbursts of racism and homophobia. The play ends with Lawrence finding Eddie dead and discovering Eddie’s prepared sermon, comparing life to basketball. It was lame. It was uninspiring and lacked closure for the play.

            There’s not much more to say about Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati). I had my hopes up that I would like this one, and it started interestingly enough. Soon I was disappointed, and after that, I was long bored by it. The whole play was one bad joke.

 

Verdict (Is the book staying or going?): Going. This one had me at the beginning, but its hold did not last long. Oh yeah, where was anything about the world ending? Total mislead.

 

Notes

1. Like Abbot and Costello, George and Lennie, Laurel and Hardy (well, Hardy and Laurel), Ricky and Lucy, Martin and Lewis, etc. There are countless double acts.

2. I don’t get the point of modernizing this scene. Having them as New York construction workers doesn’t add any humor. I can’t see any social commentary that Larson and Lee may have intended. The modernization just doesn’t work here.

 

Work Cited

Larson, Larry and Levi Lee. Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends

(A Final Evening with the Illuminati). New York: Dramatists Play Service,

1986. Print.