Atomic Split

The play is set close to a palace in the tropics.

The children as usual created the characters in all their detail. One of these is an atom; hence the backdrop curtain over one side of the stage of which Lian is in charge. This represents a magnification (though rather too slight) of the background so that Atom can become visible. Note the magnified heel of Beth’s shoe.

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Lian introduces the play and does her best to help the audience see when Atom appears, by slowing the action down. Although she is the Palace lion & part of the story, she also has the ability to see the bigger picture & can therefore help out when things are getting difficult.

Betty Bluebell loves dogs. Beth is a very shy and intelligent physicist and mother of Betty.

Edmund is the palace physicist and is coming close to a breakthrough in his search for a way to create a wormhole and therefore the possibility of travelling in time, where the wormhole is the year zero gateway for those who can already travel in time. He’s desperate to find the right atom to split; he’s afraid of the unspeakable happening, the creation of a fission bomb & not a wormhole. Really he wants support; so that the responsibility is not all his, but who could be qualified enough to give this? Then he spots her...

Queen Gaenilla and her brother Gunther have a close but stormy relationship because, in their parent’s will, Gaenilla was left control of the palace, the all-important Particle Accelerator and the experimental dogs. Gunther just got an allowance. Gunther tries to prove himself to be the true hero he is by ‘saving’ Betty, or separating her unnecessarily from her mother. Still, Betty wants to be good and helpful despite losing her mother, Beth.

Beth meanwhile, in her pain at losing Betty, has been manipulated by the evil Atom into helping to make a fission bomb by using him to do it. Her knowledge of physics & Edmund’s hopes for support mean that she gets control of the particle accelerator. She is about to destroy the kingdom when our would-be-hero, Gunther ruins her plans. He becomes a hero after all (albeit a Zombie as well!)...