Write your abstract
here.
Imagines that Da Vinci was in a narcoleptic coma
when
he was taken
for
dead and brought to the handiest
Charnel
House for disposition of his remains. Waking on the
slab,
he is so invigorated to find himself alive he begins
capering, calculating mathematical proportions and
planning
how in a flurry of activity he'll complete all the
projects
he's left unfinished in the 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 or
whatever
years remain to him.
It's not to be. He can't come to terms with the
family
he's fallen among on a ransom to make up their losses
(Da
Vinci being a client of almost unique prestige and
monetary
value, their ticket back to Florence and the high
life).
The Lascas, father and son, drown him in the bucket
they
use for excretions, spit and vomit.
Even this isn't the worst of the indignities Leonardo
suffers. Centuries later he is being summed up by a
lecturer in a rote speech so bloodless and cold (Now
that
he is truly dead, we may safely say) it suffers by
comparison with the sickly sweet ballad that wells up
to
close the play:
Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa
Or is it the way to hide a broken heart?
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa
Or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art.
(This isn't the half of what's in the play, only a
bare
bones synopsis. There is also a disquisition on the
plague
and its treatment (and the lucrative market for shit as
a
preventive, which is how the Lascas made their first
fortune once upon a time) immaculate in its scholarship
but
given in a style somewhere between compressed epic
narrative and British music hall sketch; a visit from
Death, played on this occasion by a snotnosed zitfaced
adolescent; a great deal else besides.