Positively Glorious!

Act II

LIGHTS come up on an office containing a single desk. Papers are scattered all over the office including on the desk, side table and floor. Sitting at the desk is a man. He is completely still and slouched in his chair as if trying to lay down. He has a blanket over his legs and is wearing a heavy wool sweater, scarf, vest, wool hat and wool fingerless gloves. He’s still shivering even though it is roughly 75 degrees in the office. He moves only to cough, or slowly drink from his cup of hot tea.

MUSIC plays, quietly at first, but quickly building to a normal volume, at which the man, still unmoving, begins to sing in a croaking voice.

John
I feel sickly, 
Oh, so sickly, 
I feel sickly and icky and blah! 
And I pity 
Any boy who feels like me to- (or three days from now when I’ll probably still be sick!) 

I feel awful, 
Oh, so dreadful 
I can’t fit all this snot in my head! 
And so sickly
That I hardly can believe I’m not dead. 

See the sickly boy in that mirror there: 
Who can that greenish ghoul be? 
Such a sickly face, 
Such an achy bod, 
Such a scratchy throat, 
Such a sickly me! 

I feel phlemmy 
And condemny, 
And I feel that of life I’m bereft, 
For I’m sickly
And I haven’t got a sick day left!! 

The music builds to a crechendo as happy co-workers enter from off-stage and dance around the still unmoving John, throwing papers, tossing phones, jumping up in the air and singing comic verses that are as poorly written as the ones above.