James and the Giant Peach Page #3

Young James:
You’re really giving me hope for the future.

James:
Well, I think actually that’s what these two (points at the narrators)

are for.

Young James:
You do?

James:
I think that they wouldn’t be here unless something really

spectacular was about to happen and our luck was about to change.

Narrator #1:
And finally there came a morning when something rather

peculiar happened to him. And this thing, which as I say was only rather

peculiar, soon caused a chain of events until a really fantastically peculiar

thing happened!

(YOUNG JAMES faces JAMES, they make eye contact, nod their heads at

each other, shake hands, and then YOUNG JAMES exits. Immediately,

JAMES gets to work miming chopping wood. AUNT SPONGE and AUNT

SPIKER wander by lazily, inspecting his work. Each are now wearing

sunglasses and sipping tall, cool glasses of lemonade. They wander past

JAMES, and sit down as if sunbathing.)

Narrator #2:
Ah I see, his Aunts have put him to work chopping wood in the

blazing heat of the day!

6

Narrator #1:
That’s because Aunt Sponge who is enormously fat with small

piggy eyes doesn’t care if James faints in the heat. And Aunt Spiker who is

lean and tall and bony, doesn’t care if the insects ate his body while he

fainted in the garden.

Narrator #2:
How gruesome!

Narrator #1:
Well that’s the kind of family James is left with now. The kind

that doesn’t care about him. In fact while, James is slaving away in the

terrible heat, sweating all over, they aren’t watching him when all the

sadness of his life finally consumes him and he begins to cry!

(JAMES sits down and burries his head in his arms.)

Aunt Spiker:
(Screeching and angry)What’s the matter with you?

Aunt Sponge:
Stop that immediately and get on with your work you nasty

little beast!

James:
Oh Aunt Sponge! And Aunt Spiker! Couldn’t we all – please – just for

once, go down to the seaside on the bus? It isn’t very far, and I feel so hot and

awful and lonely…

Aunt Spiker:
Why you good for nothing lazy brute!

Aunt Sponge:
Punish him!

Aunt Spiker:
I certainly will! I shall punish you later on in the day when I

don’t feel so hot. And now Sponge, it’s time for our afternoon stories on the

telly.

Aunt Sponge:
Oh goody! Shall we watch Days of Our Lives? Or One Life to

Live?

(Gossiping, the two ladies exit. Defeated, JAMES sinks to the ground and

begins to cry and cry. THE MAGIC MAN suddenly appears.)

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