Green Forms
Two-hander · Comedy
Green Forms
Green Forms · Simon Law
1 / 1
Green Forms
Published by scriptsandsketches.com
Doris and Doreen, two office workers, engage in a humorous exchange about the fate of their colleagues and the quirks of their workplace, revealing their personalities and the absurdities of office life.
Duologue
Characters: DORIS RUTTER, DOREEN BIDMEAD
(Doris and Doreen work in an obscure department of a large organisation in the North of England. Their office is cosy, if a little run down, and they spend most of their time chatting.)
DOREEN:
Are green forms still going through Mrs Henstridge? (Pause)
DORIS:
Newcastle
DOREEN:
Newcastle?
DORIS:
Newcastle
DOREEN:
You don’t mean Manchester, Fordyce Road?
DORIS:
No. I mean Newcastle, Triad House.
DOREEN:
Then where’s Mrs Henstridge? (Pause) She was green forms for as long as I can remember. And now you say it’s Newcastle. (Pause) Newcastle?
DORIS:
Staff appointments and changes in personnel: Newcastle. (The green form is inside an inter-office envelope. One look inside the envelope tells Doreen the form is green and therefore not their pigeon. If she does take the form out of the envelope she should not read it.)
DOREEN:
Thin-faced woman. Blondish. She had a son that wasn’t right. Lived in Whingate.
DORIS:
I don’t know where people live.
DOREEN:
Well, where’s she gone and got to if she’s not doing green forms? It used to be Southport.
DORIS:
It isn’t Southport.
DOREEN:
I’m not saying it is Southport. Southport is being wound down.
DORIS:
Up.
DOREEN:
Up what?
DORIS:
Wound up.
DOREEN:
Wound down. Wound up. Phased out anyway. I hope she hasn’t been ... you know ...
DORIS:
What?
DOREEN:
Well ... redundant. I wouldn’t like to think she’s been made redundant; she was very nicely spoken.
DORIS:
I never had the pleasure.
DOREEN:
Mrs Henstridge? Oh yes, you’ll have gone up in the lift with her many a time. Smartish woman. Check costume. Brown swagger coat. (She pauses) Fancy them phrasing out Southport. I never thought they'd phrase Southport out. (Pause)
DORIS:
Phasing, not phrasing.
DOREEN:
Come again?
DORIS:
Phasing. The phrase is phase. Not phrase.
DOREEN:
What did I say?
DORIS:
Phrasing.
DOREEN:
Oh. Well. If you'd come up to me ten years ago and said 'They're going to phase out Southport' I’d have laughed in your face.
DORIS:
You wouldn’t.
DOREEN:
I would.
DORIS:
You wouldn't. If someone had come up to you ten years ago and said 'They're phasing out Southport', you wouldn’t have known what they were talking about! you didn't work here then. (Pause.)
DOREEN:
How’s Mother?
DORIS:
Naught clever
DOREEN:
No. I didn't think so, somehow.
DORIS:
Anyway, why single out Southport? I ran into Mr Butterfield in planning and he says a question mark definitely hangs over Ipswich.
DOREEN:
Ipswich! That’s only been going five years
DORIS:
Four. She was on the commode half the night again.
DOREEN:
Poor lamb.
DORIS:
I think she must have eaten something. You can’t turn your back. Last time it was the vicar. I caught him dolling her out the Milk Tray, else that would have been another three o’clock in the morning do. She’s on a knife edge. People don’t realise. One coffee cream and it three months devoted nursing down the drain. I’m trying to build her up.
DOREEN:
What I'm wondering is .. . . where will the axe fall next?
DORIS:
I know one thing. It won't fall on yours truly.
DOREEN:
Why not?
DORIS:
Because I’m Grade 3, that’s why.
DOREEN:
Well I’m substantively Grade 3. Technically I'm Grade 4 but I'm holding down a Grade 3 job. If central hadn't gone and frozen gradings I’d have been made up months since. Anyway, I’m not going to worry: I’ve got Clifford.
DORIS:
Oh, Clifford.
DOREEN:
That’s the thing about marriage there's always the two of you.
DORIS:
There’s two of Mother and me.
DOREEN:
We’ve talked it over, and Cliff says that in the event of a real downturn in the economic climate he could fall back on the smallholding and me do my home hairdressing. People are always going to want their hair done, inflation or no inflation, and there’s always a demand for rhubarb.
DORIS:
Yes. Well. I hope it keeps fine for you.
DOREEN:
‘Which twin has the Toni?' Remember? It's stood me in good stead has that. You don’t catch me in a salon. Only you think it's Newcastle? This green form.
DORIS:
Newcastle.
DOREEN:
(Addressing the envelope: to herself) Not … Mrs .. Henstridge. Off you go to Newcastle. (She takes it to the out tray by the door) We are getting on this morning, proper little beavers. Oh, the Bulletin's come. (It’s in the tray) You didn’t tell the Bulletin had come. (She reads from the Bulletin) ‘It's goodbye to Leeds, Cardigan Road. Smiles and sadness at simple ceremony.’ Fancy shutting down Cardigan Road. That would have been unthinkable five years ago. It had its own canteen.
