The Golden Spoon and the Glittering Verse

A one-act comedy in four tableaux by Patricia Lidia

TABLEAUX:

Tableau I – The Preparations
Tableau II – The Guests Arrive
Tableau III – The Recital
Tableau IV – The Award
Epilogue – The Spoon After the Storm

CHARACTERS:

• EUGENIA APPLEBY – A self-declared poetess in her fifties, with a towering hair bun, overdrawn fire-red lipstick, excessive blush, a glittery evening gown and shiny stilettos. Think local diva meets misunderstood mystic. Speaks in slow, dramatic cadences as if everything she says is carved into marble.
• GINA MCKINNON – A volunteer events organizer in her 30s, always rushing, always flustered. Dressed in chaotic chic: floral dress, sparkly leggings and heavy boots. Never without her clipboard, which she treats like a holy script. Energetic like a caffeine-addicted hummingbird.
• MORTON MANZIE – A self-important, part-time literary critic in his 60s, bulky with a crooked bow tie and shirt riding up over his belly. Drops literary jargon like crumbs (which he also drops constantly while stuffing his face with snacks).
• MR. CHRISTOPHER CRAIN – A retired English teacher in a shabby old suit, permanently unimpressed and heavily ironic. Speaks slowly, with the quiet despair of someone who’s corrected far too many essays.
• AMY – A starry-eyed sixth-former, 16, dressed in her school uniform with artsy badges and pins. Clutches a sequin notebook and a fluffy pen. Believes poetry can change the world—and she’ll tell you about it with tears in her eyes.
• AUNTY LYNDA – In her 60s, straight out of the countryside, wearing a headscarf, floral tote bag, knitted shawl, and orthopedic shoes. She’s thrilled for Eugenia’s success—even if she hasn’t understood a word she’s said since 1987.
• A RANDOM GUEST – A regular attendee, dressed modestly, radiating common sense. The only one brave enough to raise a hand and ask, “Wait… what does that even mean?”
• THE PHOTOGRAPHER – Silent and omnipresent, snapping flash photos at all the worst moments. Has a sixth sense for interrupting emotional climaxes with a blinding light.

GENERAL SETTING:

The function room of the “George Eliot Memorial Community Arts Centre” has been recently redecorated—unfortunately. The walls are a queasy beige, like the inside of a teabag. In the back hangs a crooked banner with glitter-studded letters screaming: “VERSEZ LAUNCH – Metaphors With Soulz” (yes, with a spelling mistake… and sparkle).

Golden balloons swing limply from the ceiling, some of them obviously just repurposed supermarket bags. In one corner, a sad refreshments table features mysterious cookies and a thermos labeled “Artisan Coffee” in Comic Sans. Beneath a dusty painting of Queen Elizabeth II, someone has hung a pink scarf for “ambience.” It’s unclear whether it’s art or an accident.

TABLEAU I – THE PREPARATIONS

*(Or “Poetic Chaos with Light Catering”)

Scene: GINA flits between chairs, wielding her clipboard like a bat out of hell—or more precisely, out of an underfunded arts council grant. MORTON MANZIE lounges near the refreshment table, nibbling a suspicious biscuit with the reverence of a sacramental rite. THE PHOTOGRAPHER is snapping photos of absolutely nothing but with full artistic commitment. The door creaks open with over-dramatic flair. Enter EUGENIA APPLEBY. She does not walk. She glides. Draped in a floor-length gown that looks like it was made from a two-star hotel curtain, with a towering bun the size of a small planet and lipstick applied with a ruler and no regard for anatomy.

GINA (waving her clipboard like she’s conducting a discount symphony orchestra):
Okay—balloons are… semi-up! The banner is… legible from favorable angles! Chairs? Arranged in a sacred circle of literary inspiration. The flowers? Plastic—but Turkish imports! Eugenia, you are surrounded by beauty and… floral foam. Just like you deserve!

EUGENIA (raising one arm like she’s summoning the Muses, detached entirely from mortal concerns):
Ah… I feel it. The air is trembling with poetry. The very molecules align in ancient hexameter! The walls weep verse… and the radiator? I swear it’s reciting Neruda. Or maybe T.S. Eliot. Yes, yes—it’s geothermal poetry. Clearly.

MORTON MANZIE (crumbs in beard, eyes sparkling, voice full of faux-intellectual delight):
Fascinating! Just like Paris—if Paris smelled faintly of stale waffles and had gymnasium acoustics. The ambience… it moves me. I feel the urge to reread Camus… or at least the snack menu.

GINA (tiptoeing toward Eugenia with all the grace of a moose in a crystal shop):
Dearest Eugenia, a small question about stage direction… Shall we rehearse the award moment? Just once? To avoid the ribbon tangling in your poetic heel and leaving our verse tragically hanging midair?

EUGENIA (with a smile the size of a cathedral mural, her lipstick now journeying confidently toward her temple):
The award, darling Gina… is not rehearsed. It is summoned. A cosmic revelation. An esoteric manifestation. It cannot be planned—it will happen. It is an act of spiritual self-coronation.
(pause, inhales deeply like an ancient seer)
And like all true revelations… it is a surprise.
(whispers, solemn as a discount oracle)
Especially… for me.

GINA (scribbling furiously on her clipboard, visibly entranced):
“Mystical award. Spontaneous appearance. Possible levitation.” Noted!

PHOTOGRAPHER (says nothing, but takes a photo of an empty corner with such passion that one suspects the presence of an invisible muse)
Click.
(then turns to photograph a biscuit as though it were the Hope Diamond)

(EUGENIA floats toward the refreshments table, dramatically taps a plastic flower with one finger, and murmurs something unintelligible—but it sounds vaguely poetic. GINA clasps her chest as if she’s just witnessed divine intervention. MORTON discreetly slips another biscuit into his coat pocket. The imaginary curtain trembles with aesthetic tension. In the background, the radiator gurgles like a disapproving Greek chorus.)

TABLEAU II – THE GUESTS ARRIVE

(Or “When Culture Blooms… in Plastic”)

Scene: The setting remains unchanged—if anything, slightly more depressing. The limp balloons now resemble expired dreams from a failed arts grant. The glittering banner—“VERSE LAUNCH – Metaphors With Soulz”—continues to assault grammar, taste, and reality itself. From the speakers, a pop ballad has been mauled by a digital saxophone and now wheezes along as elevator jazz. The atmosphere teeters between spiritual transcendence… and a full-blown comedy sketch.

GINA (with the energy of a flight attendant announcing landing on the moon):
Good eveniiing, dear guests! Poets and living poems alike! What shining faces! What lyrical frequencies! And what… glorious scones! (sees the baked goods) Oh yes. Culture tastes delicious!

(Enter AUNTY LYNDA, strutting like the village queen. Her coat is open, her floral tote a relic of five decades past. She clutches her baked goods like they’re Olympic medals for emotional nourishment.)

AUNTY LYNDA (booming like a church fair loudspeaker):
Eugie! My little poet-bud! Where are you, you daffodil of destiny? Remember when you wrote poems on the henhouse wall in charcoal, between two clucking critics? What times! What inspiration—smelled of bran and brilliance!

EUGENIA (from the front row, wincing, bun twitching ever so slightly):
Aunty… please… poetry is a state of being, not a barn dance. Silence… is the music of a refined soul.

(Enter MR. CHRISTOPHER CRAIN, leaning on his cane like a knight of syntax. He stops at the banner, adjusts his glasses, and sighs like a teacher correcting a final exam in August.)

MR. CRAIN:
“Versez”… with a Z… Oh dear. When spelling dies, poetry bleeds.

GINA (plastering a smile over existential panic):
Intentional, sir! It’s a stylistic deviation! A post-orthographic revolution! We’re embracing… the post-spelling era.

MR. CRAIN:
Post-logic. Post-literacy. We now live in a world where an apostrophe causes more scandal than a dissertation scandal.

(Enter AMY, floating like a freshly written poem from a teenage diary. Her eyes sparkle, her pen is fluffy, her soul is ready to faint with admiration.)

AMY (breathless with literary rapture):
Is… is it true that Miss Appleby wrote a poem on a napkin, on a train, while eating croquettes—and it was translated straight into French… with Portuguese accents?

GINA (channeling the BBC at its most reverent):
True. Documented on her blog! And translated into Portuguese—thank you, budget app magic. But the emotion… oh, the emotion survived.

AMY (whispering like it’s a sacred invocation):
I’ll ask for her autograph. And… maybe… a fresh tear of raw inspiration.

(Enter a RANDOM GUEST, modestly dressed, holding a manila folder and the haunted look of someone who’s walked into the wrong dimension.)

GUEST:
Evening… Is this event free? Or… do I need to contribute a couplet? Maybe a metaphor? A haiku?

GINA (arms wide like she’s baptizing them in verse):
Come in, come in! Here, we inhale poetry and exhale reverence. No cost… except perhaps a small piece of your logical soul.

(The audience begins to settle. MORTON already has three full plates. AUNTY LYNDA is distributing scones like holy communion. AMY scribbles in her notebook: “Spoon = Fate.” MR. CRAIN mentally counts ten spelling violations. The GUEST opens a sudoku and retreats into numerical refuge. GINA, now centre stage, raises her hands to the ceiling like a priestess of misplaced metaphor.)

GINA:
In mere moments… it shall begin! There shall be reciting. There shall be vibrating. There shall be… awarding! And perhaps… forgiveness for forced rhyme.

(EUGENIA rises in slow motion. Her train sweeps across two chairs, knocks over a biscuit tray, and she does not blink. MORTON swallows a canapé in panic, prepping for applause. A pale spotlight illuminates Eugenia’s bun like a sacred monument under renovation. The imaginary curtain falls slowly—like a shower curtain in a living room that once aspired to be a library.)

TABLEAU III – THE RECITAL

(Or “Where Metaphors Go to Die… and Be Reborn in Sequins”)

Scene: The decor still stands—miraculously. A slideshow rolls in the background: EUGENIA in a wilted wheat field, on a rusty bench, next to a paralyzed dandelion. In every photo, her lipstick stages a coup and spills triumphantly across her cheeks in a bold aesthetic rebellion. The microphone whines like a drunken cricket, while a digital piano sobs a breakup ballad between two radiators.

GINA (her voice blooming unnecessarily through cheap speakers):
Dearest lovers of literature and Instagram story poets! Welcome to a singular moment in modern verse! Tonight, emotion pours into rhyme… and rhyme, indulgently, drips into your soul—or onto the floor. Prepare for a revelation with glitter!

(Enter EUGENIA. Her gown ripples like dollar-store lace in a breeze of self-importance. Her bun seems governed by its own gravitational field. The train catches on a chair, but she walks on, like a queen at a clearance sale.)

EUGENIA:
My beloved… chosen ones of the evening… tonight, my soul shall flow… in stanza form. I am a vessel of feeling, anchored in a harbor of tears. And you… are my poetic lifebuoys.

MORTON (leaping up with unjustifiable enthusiasm):
Madam! Permit me this sacred outburst:
“I am a woman. I am a mystery. I am coffee with milk from the sky!” — Masterpiece! Sublime! Highlighted in neon three times! My pancreas is resonating!

MR. CRAIN (panting with educational exhaustion):
Coffee doesn’t fall from the sky, Madam. It topples from a shelf… and stains. Just like this metaphor. It stains common sense.

AMY (eyes wide with literary lust, clutching her fuzzy pen like a relic):
Ms. Appleby… last night… I dreamt butterflies died in my stomach. I wrote: “Inside me… a graveyard of wings.” It’s your fault. You infected me… with metaphor!

EUGENIA (voice trembling like an autumn leaf on a Word document):
Oh! How beautiful! Never let anyone trample your butterflies—neither in your stomach nor your similes! You write from the spleen of the soul.

AUNTY LYNDA (from the back, hands raised like cheerleader flags at a bingo match):
Tell ‘em, Eugie! You were always different! You cried at detergent commercials and made haikus out of medicine labels!

GUEST (flipping through the poetry book like a tourist map with no north):
Page 27 says: “I cried with my left side.” You meant… intensely?

EUGENIA (with a saintly smirk, patron of private pain):
It’s an asymmetrical tear. An emotional rebellion that leaks… sideways. I don’t cry like ordinary people. I cry conceptually.

GINA (arms raised like a priestess in a temple of the mundane):
And now… the sacred moment. A poem composed just last night, by candlelight… in the bathroom… staring at the moon through radiator bars…

EUGENIA (in the tone of a provincial oracle):
The poem is called… “I Am.”
(clears throat dramatically—twice)

EUGENIA (reading):
I am a woman.
I am a mystery.
I am bitter coffee,
With sweet milk from the sky.
I am a stem of roses,
In a pot of longing,
But not just any pot—
A pot hand-painted by an artist,
On the seaside… in the clouds.

(A silence so deep descends, one can hear a biscuit crack under spiritual pressure. MORTON applauds like it’s La Scala.)

MORTON (with fake tears collecting like dew):
Postmodernism isn’t dead! It just moved into a one-bedroom in Swindon and writes in golden nail polish!

GUEST (raising an eyebrow of suspicion):
“Sky” with “cloud”? Really?

EUGENIA (hovering on her own sense of superiority):
Naturally. It’s an imperfect rhyme. Like all of us. Like this speaker. Like… raw emotion.

GINA:
And now… breaking news! The collection “The Metaphors of My Soul” has been automatically translated into four languages! Thanks to the PoemTrans™ app—bringing raw emotion to the diaspora!

MORTON:
I read the Portuguese version. Didn’t understand a word… and still cried. Might’ve been beauty… might’ve been fear.

(A dramatic recording begins—EUGENIA’s voice echoing through cathedral reverb, with background music from a rejected telenovela. The audience stirs uncomfortably. AUNTY LYNDA makes the sign of the cross. GINA cries into a biscuit.)

EUGENIA (hand over heart, lipstick now on her teeth):
This is me. This… is art.

GUEST (in a whisper, lucid and a little dangerous):
This is… the art of pouring syrup over the ghost of a thought… and selling it on Goodreads with five self-awarded stars.

(The lights flicker. The piano wheezes out one final note. The imaginary curtain trembles like a shower curtain caught in a poetic breeze. The audience lingers between laughter, coughing, and disbelief. EUGENIA smiles. She does not see the ridiculousness. She is the ridiculousness—written in free verse.)

TABLEAU IV – THE AWARD

(Or “When the Spoon Becomes Destiny”)

Scene: The decor? Still standing—though clearly questioning its own existence. Balloons sag lower. Plastic flowers droop in shame. The glittering “VERSE LAUNCH – Metaphors With Soulz” banner smirks from the back wall, a passive-aggressive typo. At center stage, under the flicker of a half-dead bulb praying for release, rests the crown jewel: a wooden spoon, painted gold (possibly with leftover Black Friday nail polish), adorned with purple glitter applied using a yogurt lid. In the background, the digital piano wheezes out a version of Titanic that sounds like it was recorded in a flooded basement full of cats. A sacred hush falls. GINA approaches the mic, pale but proud, with a tear ready to drop like a dewdrop on an unfinished haiku.

GINA (voice trembling between ecstasy and emotional heartburn):
Dear friends of art, of poetry, of domestic symbolism… the moment has come. The moment! Awaited with fever, tremor, trance—and a touch of eye strain.

Tonight… the Golden Spoon for Exceptional Artistic Existence shall be awarded to… a singular voice. A lyrical being. A woman who has transformed life… into a bowl of metaphors.

(She pauses. All eyes turn to EUGENIA. The room holds its breath. Poetic tension thickens—along with the faint smell of burnt coffee. Then, in one sweeping motion, EUGENIA rises like a statue deciding to have a destiny. Her train squeaks over the parquet. Her bun remains untouched by gravity. She floats to the stage like a porcelain bird.)

EUGENIA (voice trembling between grandeur and divine revelation):
…to me.

(A silence. The kind of silence that could precede either a miracle… or a collective nervous breakdown. AUNTY LYNDA bursts into wedding-style applause. MORTON drops a canapé. THE PHOTOGRAPHER flashes into the eyes of a child who isn’t there.)

EUGENIA:
I’ve waited my whole life to be seen. To hear: “There she is!” But the world… was blind. So I saw myself. With the eyes of my heart. And the rearview mirror.

(She pulls out a monogrammed handkerchief, dabs the corner of a perfectly dry eye.)

EUGENIA:
This award… does not come from an institution, a foundation, or a judging panel. It comes from a sacred place—between my sternum and this poetic scarf. From deep within… where inspiration lives. And… occasionally… heartburn.

(She raises the Golden Spoon like an absurd scepter. The spotlight flickers. The audience doesn’t know whether it’s witnessing a metaphor… or a breakdown.)

EUGENIA:
This spoon… is testament. It is relic. With it I have stirred the stew of existence, blended trauma, longing, and awkward rhymes. And what emerged? Poetry. Pure. Sticky. Immortal.

GINA (bedazzled, clearly overwhelmed):
A visual metaphor! A domestic life trophy! A lacquered reflection of creative femininity!

EUGENIA:
I dedicate this award… to myself. And to my inner child. Who… was misunderstood. Who scribbled rhymes on walls and was punished.
And to my artistic parent… who passed away never knowing… I debuted on Wattpad.

MORTON (tears and cream on his face):
Sublime! That spoon… it has weight. Heavier than a Nobel. Literally. I tried lifting it.

MR. CRAIN (resigned, but dryly amused):
At last! Something to scoop up the absurdity served in the bowl of modern culture.

AMY (scribbling furiously in her sparkly notebook):
“Spoon = soul.” “Award = self.” “Life = poetic Ikea.”

GUEST (dazed and oddly impressed):
Self-awarding? Self-validation? Self… spooning? Is this avant-garde… or ego with glitter?

AUNTY LYNDA (waving scones like flags of maternal pride):
Clap, people! That’s my girl! If you don’t have a spoon—go buy one! But make sure it sparkles!

GINA (weeping slightly, like a 1997 TV presenter on a cultural channel no one watches):
And with that… I declare this event… solemnly… concluded. But not the emotion. The emotion remains! In this hall. In these biscuits. In our minds.

Please stay for photos, autographs, waffles, and maybe… a spontaneous bonus revelation.

(In the background, the piano releases a final off-key sigh—like a wounded cat. THE PHOTOGRAPHER captures the moment EUGENIA re-adjusts her bun like a crown resisting gravitational betrayal. The audience fidgets but no one dares leave. The imaginary curtain falls slowly… like an eyelid tired of so much metaphor. The spoon gleams alone in the dim light. A ridiculous relic in an unintelligible museum.)

🎭 THE END

Epilogue – The Spoon After the Storm

Applause, in slow motion. Post-spoonal emotions linger. Waffles demolished. Glittery metaphors floating like dust in stage light.

As the echoes of poetic delirium fade, here are some post-launch reflections that floated in, unsolicited and mostly unfiltered:

Prof. Julian Plankwood, PhD in Applied Wooden Literature:
“A performance-event that made me dream in verse and sweat in metaphor. Truly unforgettable. I may never recover.”

Dandelion Petal-Mae, literary critic and part-time crystal healer:
“An event that scratched my retina and tickled my soul. I sighed. I cried. I searched for meaning with a magnifying glass… and then gave up. Beautiful.”

@verse_and_dust, cultural influencer with 30K followers and a cat named Haiku:
“Eugenia Appleby is the new voice of rented-flat poetry. A must-read for anyone who believes in wallpaper emotions and teacup trauma.”

A Random Audience Member, slightly confused but well-fed:
“I didn’t understand anything. But the canapé? Divine.”

🕯️ And with that, dear readers, dear dreamers of glitter-stained verse… we end. The Spoon rests now. But the poetry? The poetry will haunt your kitchen drawers forever.

This was “The Golden Spoon and the Glittering Verse”

A tribute to poetry… and to all those who have ever confused it with decorative pathos. Stay tuned for an exclusive interview with the author herself— conducted by the author herself. Because if no one else asks the questions… you write them, you answer them, and you win the award. That’s not vanity. It’s avant-garde autonomy.