Overview: Mickey & Edward as Teenagers 3

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Overview: The Wedding and Unemployment

Mickey and Linda are married. However, the celebrations are cut short as Mickey is made redundant.

The wedding

The scene quickly moves forward to Mickey and Linda’s wedding, but the celebrations are short-lived as the scene moves again to the factory where Mickey works.

Redundancy

The managing director, who happens to be Edward’s father, Mr. Lyons, and his secretary, Miss Jones, are singing a song where the employees of the factory are made redundant.
Mr. Lyons lists several reasons why his employees are being fired: “the shrinking pound, the global slump and the price of oil”.
The wedding guests transform into a queue of unemployed people. The men in the unemployment queue make comments about Mickey’s demise, referring to him as “old before his time”.

Overview: The Christmas Holidays

Edward returns for the Christmas holidays. However, he cannot understand Mickey's situation. Edward confesses his feelings for Linda. Sammy persaudes Mickey to join him on a robbery.

Edward returns

The next scene shows the Christmas holidays, and Edward is home from university.
Edward is in a jovial mood and talks about all of the good times he has had at university and the “tremendous people” he has met, unaware of the struggles that Mickey and Linda have faced since he has been gone.

Edward doesn't understand Mickey's unemployment

Angered by Edward’s unintentional insensitivity, Mickey calls Edward a “dick head” and reveals that he is now unemployed and suffering from depression.
Edward asks Mickey why he needs to worry about working when he can just claim unemployment money, prompting Mickey to say that Edward doesn’t “understand anythin’”.

Mickey gets angry

When Edward tries to offer Mickey money, Mickey tells him to “piss off”.
Edward asks what happened to their blood brotherhood, and Mickey tells him that it was just “kids’ stuff” and that he has grown up now. He then aggressively forces Edward to leave.

Edward asks Linda why she didn't visit

Edward and Mickey move to opposite sides of the stage, and Sammy approaches Mickey while Linda approaches Edward.
On one side of the stage, Linda and Edward begin talking.
Edward asks Linda why she hasn’t come to see him and Linda explains that she didn’t want to distract him from all of his new university friends and didn’t “like buttin’ in”, to which Edward protests that “it wouldn’t matter if I never saw those friends again, if I could be with you”.

The stage is split in two

On the opposite side of the stage, Sammy is trying to convince Mickey to act as a lookout for a burglary.
Sammy assures him that it will be non-violent and their guns are “just frighteners. Y’ don’ need to use them”.
Back on the side of the stage with Edward and Linda, Edward reveals that he is in love with Linda: “I’ve always loved you, you must have known that.”

The stage is split in two continued...

Simultaneously, Mickey agrees to go along with Sammy’s burglary plan after a tempting offer of “fifty quid for an hour’s work.”
On the other side of the stage again, Linda sympathetically explains to Edward that she has always loved him “in a way”, but that she is now married to Mickey and they are expecting their first child together.

Overview: The Robbery

Mickey and Sammy are arrested for the robbery.

New Years Eve

It is now New Years Eve, and Mickey tells Linda that he is going out, but when he comes back later they will go out dancing together.
Linda is suspicious because Mickey won’t tell her where he is getting the money to go out with from, and she pleads with him not to go: “Mickey… Mickey… No!”

The robbery

The Narrator appears to remind the audience of the fact that the characters will have to pay the price for Mrs. Johnstone and Mrs. Lyons’ actions, and we then see Mickey keeping watch as Sammy is arguing with another man over a gun.

Sammy and Mickey are arrested

An alarm can be heard and a shot is fired.
Sammy tries to escape, but Mickey is unable to move, frozen with terror.
The Narrator reminds the audience of the children’s games the characters used to play with toy guns.
Next, we see Sammy hiding a gun under the floorboards.
Linda arrives and holds Mickey before two policemen arrive and take away the brothers.

Micky in jail

Mickey is put into jail, and Mrs. Johnstone sings a song about how the story continues.
It seems that Mickey is sentenced to seven years in jail, and becomes deeply depressed, requiring prescribed medication.
She compares the demise of Mickey’s mental health to that of Marilyn Monroe: “he treats his ills with daily pills, just like Marilyn Monroe."

Linda visiting Mickey

Next, Linda is visiting Mickey in prison and it is close to the time that he will be released.
She begs him to stop taking the antidepressant medication, telling him “they’re just junk”, but Mickey says that he simply cannot live without them.