User:Andrewxc/Subterranean Homesick Blues Again

Subterranean Homesick Blues Again is a short play written by American playwright Dennis J. Reardon. Originally published in 1983, Reardon takes the audience on a bizarre journey, sinking deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine caves, and the dark recesses of the human psyche.

Characters
Tour Guide, Sherman, Naomi, Mick, Kathy

Plot
Married couples Sherman & Naomi and Mick & Kathy are on a guided tour of underground caverns, led by the Tour Guide. The couples largely ignore the Tour Guide, and his scientific facts about the caverns and are unimpressed with the spacious interior of the caves.

They bicker and make crass jokes for the simple pleasure of creating dispute and contention. As they descend into the lower levels of the caverns, the Tour Guide's speeches become filled with more and more dark humor and metaphorical speech ("directly above you, you are staring through three billion years of solid time"). Mick and Sherman make fewer and fewer jokes, and the women are ill-at-ease.

Finally, the Tour Guide bids them onto a boat to see one of the underground rivers. Once launched, the Tour Guide uses a pole to push them out further onto the river. He states that the other guides and he call this the River Styx, revealing that he is Charon, taking them to his home, the Isle of Contention, where they will spend eternity. Its occupants are cold people with dead stares and no real eyes, since the total darkness of the underworld has destroyed their ability to see.

The women are led ashore, and the men are persuaded by Charon to leave the boat, lest he allows Cerberus to harm them.

As Charon poles the boat away from the island, the couples begin pantomiming fighting with one another, passing blame for their situation on each other.