Grand Adventures of Pip and Mimsy!
Follow the adventures of two Victorian street urchins—annoyingly enthusiastic and melodramatic—who still await with joy the return of their missing father after many years. As they gratefully and cheerfully accept their circumstances of foraging and freezing, Pip and Mimsy, accompanied by friend Fimm Bimbles, have a chance encounter with an evil and hypnotic puppet named Begeloits, who draws the unwitting children into his nefarious plan to kill the Queen. Coincidence and fate lead Pip and Mimsy to Court where they are reunited with their miserly Uncle Scrooge and where, somehow, Pip, Mimsy, and Fimm foil the Royal Nephew’s assassination attempt on the Queen. The dark, melodramatic humor is off-putting, provocative, and yet at the same time “ever so” appealing. You’ll be strangely drawn to this play!
Free Scene
(Excerpts may be used royalty free for auditions.)
The Grand Adventures of Pip and Mimsy!
By Jack Sale
(AT RISE: In a very dirty lane. PIP and MIMSY warm their hands over a makeshift trashcan-barrel fire.)
PIP: Oh Mimsy …
MIMSY: Yes, Pip?
PIP: I do hope Father returns soon. My fingers are frozen into oh-so-very-perfect icicles …
MIMSY: Oh Pip, do keep heart. I am sure Father will return any minute and he shall whisk us away into the world of fairies and dew drops! Oh Pip ... the world we have always dreamed of!
PIP: Of course, Mimsy! Oh, I am oh-so-very excited!
MIMSY: Oh! I, too, am oh-so-very excited! (Beat.) What are we excited about again, Pip? My stomach is eating itself again …
PIP: Oh, Mimsy, It is such an oh-so-wonderful of Christmas Eves. Let us … let us warm our hands by the hearth. And. And. Let us be thankful. Let us be oh-so-very thankful for this oh-so-wonderful of winter nights. All the wonderful things with which we have been bestowed.
MIMSY: (Excited.) Oh yes! Oh such wonderful gifts we have been bestowed! Like the … umm umm … What have we been bestowed, my dearest brother?
PIP: Well … we have this lovely night and …
MIMSY: This lovely fire of burning filth!
PIP: Yes! Yes! And the lovely dead cat that keeps us company while we sleep. The freezing white snow! It makes my hands numb with delight! Oh! And the rotting fish carcass we ate just this very morning! It was quite a tasty morsel, if I do say so myself.
MIMSY: (Dramatic – sudden pan out to audience.) Oh Pip … that was four years ago … I am oh-so-very-hungry. I have not eaten in … three days …
PIP: Nor have I … (Pause.)
MIMSY: I am oh-so-very excited! Father shall return at any moment. He shall stride around the corner any second now with his gloriously warm arms stretched out wide to take us home to the land of milk and honey! He shall have sugar plums, and spiced wine, and a great big chicken! CHICKEN!
PIP: (Dramatic.) But Mimsy … Father has been gone for sixteen years… (Beat.)
MIMSY: And sugar plums!
PIP: Yes! Sugar plums!
MIMSY: (Screams.) SUGAR PLUMS!!!
(Enter FIMM BIMBLES from a nearby trashcan.)
MIMSY: Oh Fimm!
PIP: Fimm Bimbles!
MIMSY: How are you this oh-so-wonderful of Christmas Eves?
FIMM: Only freezing to death ... Just a little.
PIP: Why were you sleeping in that trashcan, Fimm?
FIMM: You are burning filth in my old one.
MIMSY: Oh.
PIP: Sorry about that, Fimm.
FIMM: Oh it’s of no matter, Pip. There are always trashcans to live in. That is the thing about life: no matter how hard it is, no matter how much you starve, your teeth decay, your loved ones taken by malicious diseases, no matter how cold, lonely, and depressed you are … there is always a trashcan that you can live in … somewhere. (Beat.) Now what adventures shall we have today?
MIMSY: We could find an old boot. Go swimming in the river!
FIMM: But it’s full of sewage and ... and it’s freezing cold this time of year.
MIMSY and PIP: I don’t mind!
PIP: Oh! We could gather filth and wallow in it!
MIMSY: Yes! Such whimsical adventure!
PIP: Oh Mimsy! We could go to the church graveyard and talk to the dead! I know you ever so much enjoy that.
MIMSY: Why yes, Pip! Ever so much.
FIMM: I want to press my face against the glass window pane of the toy store!
PIP: Fimm, you know that Mr. Gizzles hates when we press our faces to his window pane …
FIMM: But I do love the toys.
PIP: As do I. Perhaps he will be of good cheer and give us one!
MIMSY: A toy badger!?
PIP: Yes! Yes!
FIMM: If only your father were here to buy you toys … and bake you cookies and candies. I don’t have any parents.
PIP: Oh Fimm, when Father returns tonight he will bring enough cookies and candies for us all to share!
MIMSY: (screams.) CHICKEN!!!!!!!!!
FIMM: Let us be off to the magnificent toys then! I do yearn for their aesthetic pleasure.
MIMSY: After Mr. Gizzles’ toy shop we could sing Christmas carols at Mr. Scrooge’s house!
FIMM: Oh yes, Mimsy! That is a lovely idea!
MIMSY: Mr. Gizzles’ toy shop. Perhaps we will even see the Queen!
PIP: Huzzah!
End of Scene
Productions
Behind The Scenes
PLAYWRIGHT JACK SALE TALKS ABOUT
“THE GRAND ADVENTURES OF PIP AND MIMSY!”
Q: WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS PLAY?
A. The inspiration for The Grand Adventures of Pip and Mimsy!" grew from my experiences in British plays and musicals set in Victorian England. There was always the stereotype of British street urchins who were incredibly impoverished yet remained confidant and cheery in spite of their terrible predicaments. My endearing theatrical experiences with such shows as "A Christmas Carol," "Sweeny Todd," "My Fair Lady," and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" inspired the beginnings of the ideas for these characters and they became to take shape in my mind though time. I wanted to somehow create a world in which they could live – I wrote this play so they could live on stage.
2. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART OR LINE IN THE PLAY? WHY?
A. I love that the Queen is allergic to tea - of all things for a Queen of England to be allergic to! But my favorite aspect of the play is the language. The way Pip and Mimsy talk is so utterly funny, charming, annoying and at the same time familiar to us. We have all encountered these characters in literature and stories. There is always a happy-go-lucky street urchin.
3. WHERE DID THE CHARACTERS COME FROM? ARE THEY BASED ON PEOPLE YOU KNOW?
A. The characters in the play are inspired from background characters created in productions I have been in and in my imagination all these characters began to form. How they walk, talked, and acted in my mind gave rise to their characteristics in the play. My friend’s personalities definitely contributed to these characters and you can see a lot of my sense of humor in them as well.
4. WHAT DID YOU TRY TO ACHIEVE WITH THIS PLAY?
A. There were many themes explored with the creation of this play. The constant waiting for a missing father is one of them – similar in spirit to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Other themes are the nature of love, friendship, ultimate evil and how reality mingles with imagination. I also wanted to create a theatrical piece where actors could be free to embody these colorful characters and to create their own world of “overly-dramatic” physical comedy without the worry of being grounded in a realistic world.
5. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO ADD?
A. I would like to thank all those who inspired the characters in this play, particularly the original Pip and Mimsy created by Melynda Kiring and Charlie Levy, and the Begeloits doll who still lurks in the shadows of some theatrical properties shop.I hope that you enjoy this play as much as I enjoyed writing it.