Laughter Is The Best Medicine
BARKILPHEDRO
[Spoken] And so here we find ourselves gathered once again to worship at the altar of sweet distraction. Prepare yourselves for a tale so utterly horrid and yet so strangely uplifting that all your earthly woes will be riddled with worms of unspeakable joy. Welcome to a time in history that never was. In a world wildly different and yet weirdly similar to your own. Here, in the nation’s great capital city Lonnn’donn - yes, Lonnn’donn! With the freaks and quagmire of Trafalgar Fair, the steaming effluence that gurgles through the open sewers of Whitehall, and the loathsome hog brothels of Downing Street. All a far cry from the shimmering turrets of the mighty royal palace in Catford. Oh, Lonnn’donn, you human cesspool. In a world of inescapable misery…
[Sung] Look around, unhappy people, see the truth you can’t deny
Read the faces of your neighbours
Life is pain and then you die
You’re here because your hearts are broken
Here to mock the tears you’ve shed
And escape the poison spoken
By the voices in your head
For here amid the raging pain
There is one tiny crumb of joy
A lesson burnt into my brain
When I was but a little boy
BARKILPHEDRO & COMPANY
However foul misfortune smells
However sharp her vicious claws
There is always someone else
Whose life is even worse than yours
BARKILPHEDRO
Laughter is the best medicine
Laughter is the best…
Medicine
BARKILPHEDRO & COMPANY
Feel so low your pulse needs checking
Be you bishop, king, or thief
Healing comes from rubbernecking
Some poor other bugger’s grief
BARKILPHEDRO
That’s the rule my mother taught me
As she whacked me black and blue
The only joy in life’s to laugh at those
Less fortunate than you
BARKILPHEDRO & COMPANY
Laughter is the best medicine
If I may suggest medicine
Make you beat your chest medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
BARKILPHEDRO
[Spoken] Behold, the most miserable man in the most miserable city in the most miserable country on earth. King Clarence! Here he is with his three miserable children: Duchess Josiana, a screaming hedonist hungry for every sensation she can lay her hands on. Lord David Dirry-Moir, obsessed with the pursuit of beauty. David is also a keen swordsman. His blade is sharp; his wit is not. Princess Angelica, their brutalised half-sister, the family outcast. Locked in an unfeeling world of her own wordless agony. And then there’s me: their clown
CLARENCE, JOSIANA, DIRRY-MOIR, ANGELICA
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
CLARENCE
Governing this stinking kingdom
Is a hard and thankless task
How d’you keep your pecker up?
Is what the people always ask
Look at my unhappy children
What a torrid form I pay
When I’m sad I look at them
And laugh and laugh and laugh again
LORDS
We’re the lords of Catford Palace
What are all our castles for?
Sniggering through our portcullis
At the undeserving poor
COMPANY
Laughter is the best medicine
When you are distressed medicine
BARKILPHEDRO
[Spoken] But look where bonny Prince David is heading now, in his search for new sights: the squirming, squealing, sore-bleeding den of bottomless iniquity right at the top of Whitehall
OSRIC
[Sung] Welcome to Trafalgar Fair
Where money’s spent to kill despair
The more you pay, the more you’ll shriek
With laughter at my gibson freaks
COMPANY
Look, we have a huge collection
Of the crippled and the damned
Wooden Mary, very scary
Osric and his shrunken hand
Chained beasts fighting, so exciting
Hubert and his anal snake
Stab an old man with an eagle
Drown a kitten in the lake
DIRRY-MOIR
[Spoken] Bravo, my good man! Here, have a coin
OSRIC
Hey, you ain’t poor. The Egyptian lavender comes off you in wafts and you speak like you shit pearls. Here, what’s your name?
DIRRY-MOIR
Why, it’s… Tom! Jim! Jack! Tomjimjack
OSRIC
Well, Tomjimjack, if you’ve got the money, I’ve got the misery!
COMPANY
[Sung] Laughter is the medicine
Make you change your vest medicine
BARKILPHEDRO
[Spoken] Cruel laughter, teasing you like a whip, peaking you to a point like a meringue, throttling your friends, goosing your enemies. So comforting, so hollow!
COMPANY
[Sung] Laughter is the best medicine
If I may suggest medicine
Make you beat your chest medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
Crack a smile in jest medicine
Make you stage a mess medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
Laughter is the best medicine
BARKILPHEDRO
[Spoken] Stop! For the love of God, make it stop! I hate this pissing song!
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I was thinking
But just imagine laughing without any cruelty at all. What if someone could make you cackle a laugh so silvery sweet that it lifted you from your wallowing pit of despair, pulled you inside out and sat you plum on the knee of joy and happiness forever? But who in this age of misery could work such a miracle?