Hippolytus and Phaedra in Hell
By Benjamín Gavarre
Contact this address if you have produced it or wish to do so: gavarreunam@gmail.com
CHARACTERS:
- HIPPOLYTUS: A Greek prince turned shadow. Weary, cynical, and trapped within the remnants of his own legend. He wears tattered stage costume tunics.
- PHAEDRA: His stepmother and eternal lover. Clad in frayed velvet, she searches through the boredom for a trace of her former, incinerating passion.
- SANTIAGO: A young man from the outside world. Alive, impulsive, and utterly oblivious to the shadows surrounding him.
- VALENTINA: A young woman from the outside world. She shares a refuge of flesh and bone with Santiago amidst the ruins of the theater.
(The stage is in half-light. HIPPOLYTUS is sitting on the edge of the proscenium. PHAEDRA, behind him, caresses his shoulders. The atmosphere is one of solid, dusty, suffocating calm).
PHAEDRA Do you hear it?
HIPPOLYTUS (Without looking at her) Hear what?
PHAEDRA The silence. It’s not the silence of the ancient nights; that one had crickets and the roar of the sea against the rocks. This silence... it has dust. It smells of old wood and waiting.
HIPPOLYTUS (He turns and takes Phaedra's hand, kissing it with weary devotion) I’ve stopped searching for the sea, Phaedra. I’ve stopped searching for my father’s shadow in the corridors of this theatre. I have succumbed to you, and in this embrace, I lost the map of the world. Who was Theseus? Who was my mother, the Amazon? All that remains is the weight of your velvet against my skin.
PHAEDRA Do you realize how ridiculous it is, Hippolytus? We chased each other through the halls of history as if our skin were a forbidden fire, only to discover we don’t share a single drop of blood. We were a tragedy for lack of a birth certificate.
HIPPOLYTUS Horror kept us young. Now that we are free to love each other, we are just two ghosts fighting not to vanish out of pure tedium.
PHAEDRA (With contained anguish) Are we just two retired old people? Who are we if we no longer have a labyrinth? No Minotaur, no guilt. We are just two strangers who only recognize each other when the lights go out. I love you, Hippolytus, with a peace that terrifies me. Silence is the most punctual hell.
HIPPOLYTUS (He rises and embraces her) Every night we are reborn. We desire each other, we consume each other... and then we wait. We wait to return to a place that no longer exists. This limbo convinces me that we no longer are: no one looks for us, no one remembers us. We stretch the hours until time dies of disgust.
PHAEDRA Have you tasted the dust, Hippolytus? It tastes different from the palace. That one tasted of salt and horses. This one tastes of oblivion. Of shredded paper. Of that "outside" which is our new and forbidden labyrinth.
HIPPOLYTUS The taste of time sticks to our tongues. We are no longer a curse, not even a scandal. We are this silence that no one interrupts.
PHAEDRA (With bitter irony) And to think that Artemis expected eternal devotion from you. How absurd chastity is when you have a thousand years to contemplate it. Your marble goddess abandoned us at the first corner of history.
HIPPOLYTUS You are my stepmother and my lover. You are the body my father covered with his image of a modest hero. Theseus never touched you, did he? He kept you as a decorative wife while you were dying for my image—a young, desirable version of himself. Theseus discarded you, I rejected you... and in the end, oblivion won. Now Theseus is a painting on the wall that is fading away. A piece of scrap.
PHAEDRA You, tiny and chaste object of desire from millennia ago... I’d like to have you tortured just to prove your marble thighs still have blood.
HIPPOLYTUS I don’t know if I want to kiss you or choke you. I suppose that’s what love is after three thousand years: the indecision between the crime and the caress. Desire won by exhaustion, not by glory. We surrendered because there was no one left to hold us accountable. No laws, without the weight of that "incest" that men invented so they wouldn’t have to accept that the body doesn’t understand family trees. We only share this shipwreck.
PHAEDRA (Caressing the lid of an old prop trunk) My mother, Pasiphae, was right: desire is a white beast that knows nothing of kinship. She gave herself to a bull because the bull didn’t judge her madness. I gave myself to you because you were the only thing alive in a court of stone men. Your father killed the Minotaur, but he became a much darker labyrinth.
HIPPOLYTUS We talk about him as if he were still in the room next door. And he’s only an echo. Sometimes I wish for one of our old fights. Your accusation, his fury, the runaway horses... Anything to feel that destiny is still paying attention to us.
PHAEDRA You are no longer the rider of chastity. You are a ghostly presence in a theater where the rats have more of a life than we do. We are characters from a forgotten book, the memory of a bad rehearsal by a tedious author. We aren’t the children of God, that’s for sure.
HIPPOLYTUS (Chuckling) Chastity was a luxury that kept me away from the world's dumpster. Now we live in a dumpster of worn-out furniture. I sleep with you just to do something. And what will we talk about tomorrow? The shadows of the rats? The watchman who passes by with his blind lantern and doesn't see us because he’s an imbecile?
(Enter SANTIAGO and VALENTINA. Without a word, they get into an old prop bed covered by shreds of gauze).
PHAEDRA (Unheard by them) Listen to them. They are the new inhabitants. No threads, no labyrinths, no gods. They only fear the watchman who smells of tobacco.
HIPPOLYTUS (Looking through the fabric with envy) They touch as if it were the first time skin was invented. How fresh their sin is. It’s so... small. So real.
SANTIAGO (From the bed) Did you feel that, Valentina? I got a chill you’ll have to cure with kisses.
VALENTINA I felt something too... but they are good ghosts. We are protected in this bed. If anyone wants to join, we’ll drive them away with our passion. Just the two of us.
PHAEDRA Innocents. They think love is a space without drama. They don’t know that generations of lovers have passed through that bed. So much promiscuity.
HIPPOLYTUS This theater is a golden brothel. A ruin for rehearsals without a premiere or an audience. No applause, just lovers who always believe they are the first to discover the night.
PHAEDRA We act out a comedy where you never died in the chariot and I never hung myself from a beam. If we didn't die... why can't we leave?
HIPPOLYTUS We have to blame someone for still being alive. Let the light come and destroy us. A fire would be a beautiful distraction.
(The sound of sirens and ambulances from the modern city is heard. The sound grows).
HIPPOLYTUS Do you hear? The fire has been summoned. Those are the furious beasts coming to devour them.
PHAEDRA The fire will finish them. The watchman fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. I feel the heat...
(Sound of broken glass and distant screams).
HIPPOLYTUS They are the new inhabitants. Their labyrinth is made of concrete. And yet, they desire each other with the same force you did when you looked at me in the woods.
PHAEDRA I feel like opening those curtains and screaming at them that time is going to eat them up. That the fire will leave them as ash, and one day they’ll be like us: two lovers, chaste out of boredom, arguing about fathers that no one remembers. Two bodies consumed by the negligence of an idiot. We should warn them...
HIPPOLYTUS Don’t. Look how she takes his face. It’s the same gesture you made when Theseus left for his last boring war.
PHAEDRA (She sits on the edge of the young couple’s bed, feeling the heat) It’s strange. Their desire warms my bones. For a moment, I forget I’m a shadow.
HIPPOLYTUS (Kneeling by her side, leaving his prop spear on the floor) The fire lends us its heat, and we will lend them our memory.
PHAEDRA And then? Will we be like Theseus? A statue?
HIPPOLYTUS (With a sad smile) Theseus is in a museum garden that no longer has visitors. We will remain here. Alive by reflection. Listen... the sirens are fading. The fire was in the building next door. Once again, we’ve been left longing to burn.
PHAEDRA Kiss me, Hippolytus. Before the watchman turns on the work lights and we become just two names in an encyclopedia that no one opens.
(Hippolytus leans in and kisses Phaedra. It is a slow, ceremonial kiss. In the bed, the final sighs of the young lovers are heard. The stage light turns blue, then violet, until only the outline of the trunk remains in the center).
SLOW DARKNESS
