From I Went To Albania
We’ve just come out of the museum. We’ve seen a Chinese tank and exquisite Orthodox icons. Photographs of Zog – and a partisan jacket with a bullet hole. Embroidered traditional costumes – and a section of the communist border fence. The lists of people Hoxha had killed...
And in the corner of every room, an assistant sitting at a desk with a Bakelite telephone and an ashtray. It’s a museum where you can smoke ... And then, in the gift shop, Sam notices something. He’s lost his baseball cap. The Bakelite telephones start ringing – and before you know it every assistant in the museum, every curator of Illyrian artefacts, every expert in bourgeois reactionary monarchists is up on their feet. They’ve squashed out their fags, and they’re advancing through the priceless exhibits. They’re like lines of Highland beaters flushing pheasants from the heather... Even the woman at the front desk has abandoned her post to shout at the gardener – who’s weeding the treads of the Chinese tank in the yard – and get him looking for my son’s baseball cap. Everyone in the museum has dropped everything to look for my son’s baseball cap. Imagine the National Gallery grinding to a halt while the entire staff go in search of a Japanese tourist’s daughter’s friendship bracelet. They won’t give up until ... Ah, here it is. Here’s the baseball cap. Found underneath a sofa ...
The thing is, it’s like this everywhere we go. It’s as if everybody’s expecting us. I get the feeling the gunmen in Durrës would understand this better than we do.
'I Went To Albania' was first performed during Ferment at Bristol Old Vic. It's currently in development with Ferment and director Andy Burden.
