Real Gone

The play is called The Bed-Sitting-Room, and it starts at the end of World War III. "It was the only time available --everything else was booked," explains one of its authors. The war lasted 2 min. 28 sec., with 14 million British casualties.

On the radio, an announcer is seeking a home for a clerk who has changed into a spotted dog. "The government is also investigating reports that several people have turned into--quaawk--have turned into . . ." and he trails off into a long rooster cackle. Very popular is a hat with a small rotating radar antenna built into its crown. "It's my four-minute early-warning hat," explains its owner. "Gives me that extra minute in bed."

Roasted Mac. Lord Fortnum of Alamein soon begins to fear that he is turning into a working-class flat in Paddington. Sure enough, he does. His new name is 29 Scum Terrace, W.2. A doctor examines him from the inside. Putting a stethoscope on a table, he says, "Cough." No. 29 Scum Terrace coughs, and a knob falls off a bureau drawer.

"Are you married, sir?"

"No."

"Then I fear you must not."

A young couple move in. They have with them a brilliantly feathered macaw. The parrot was once Harold Macmillan. That is, the parrot actually is Harold Macmillan, but he looks different now that he is full of roentgens.

"Hello," says the parrot, proving he is no bit-player. A civil servant arrives. "Don't flap, sir," he says, "I bring you a message from General de Gaulle. He wants to see you stuffed." One night last week, the parrot took off in a swooping flight and alighted on the railing of a box. An actor climbed over the footlights, held out his arm, and Macawmillan hopped aboard. Wild applause. "You're very popular with the House, as you know, sir," said the actor, exiting. But alas, in the third act the parrot is roasted and eaten.

Electric Clouds. This charade has been convulsing London audiences for three months. Its co-authors are Actor-Writers John Antrobus and Terence A.P.S. ("Spike") Milligan. Spike climbed Mount Everest from the inside on BBC radio's Goon Show. He also appeared in The Running, Jumping, and Standing Still Film, the craziest movie short ever made.

Antrobus, educated at Sandhurst, is the sensible partner who takes on the practical problems of the production, such as settling with the unions the question of whether the parrot is an actor or a prop. Milligan, a 45-year-old Irishman born in India, has his head in electric clouds. "It's the end of the bike," he glooms. "Fin de cycle." He has lots of other ideas about life after World War III--selling plots of sea, for example, because land is so expensive. The phone rings on his desk --and rings and rings and rings. "If it rings 104 times, it's my wife, and I answer it," he says. "So far, it's my mistress."

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