I've been wondering why Peter Shaffer should have raked in so much dough
for so little effort and have embarked on a play of my own -- Wunderhorn,
with a central character called Gustav Mahler, a late nineteenth-, early
twentieth-century composer and conductor.  However, my character is neither
the real Mahler (since he's dead) nor the historical Mahler (since that
would involve fact-checking), but a fantasy Mahler (perfect!).  I can
easily imagine him played by Woody Allen, since they look so much alike,
except for the hair.  The glasses both wore are a lucky break, and we can
always put Woody in a wig.

Here is the deathbed scene.  I've had a little trouble with it, mainly
because, unlike Shaffer, I have a sense of humor about my own work.  But
it may not be noticeable.  At any rate:

Scene 16 - Mahler's apartments in Vienna

(BRUNO WALTER downstage, staring at the audience)

MAHLER: Oh!  Oh!  Oh! ... Oh! ... It's nowhere near finished!

(waves around a sheaf of manuscript paper, which is the Tenth Symphony)

A work unfinished and that no one wants to hear!  Oh! ... Surely God can't
want me to leave my artistic legacy muddled!  All I need is two more years!
... Two more years, and I will have finished another masterpiece for God
and mankind!  Is He so indifferent to Art? Is God merely another philistine
in the audience, judging, judging, judging ...  judging the life and blood
of the Artist? Is He ultimately actively against Art or merely phlegmatic?

WALTER (still staring): God is a large dog with a biscuit.  The biscuit
is His eternal mystery, which he so jealously guards and growls over.

MAHLER: A biscuit!  Yes!  I see it now! ... It is the biscuit, the wafer
of communion, that is both His mystery and His gift to the divine in us!
We eat of God's substance, which is His mystery, and we are infused with
it!  We ourselves become mysterious!  Oh, if only he would grant me more
time -- two years, at the outside!  I would renounce conducting for that
final chance at immortality.

(He stares off into space)

Oh, I never had it easy.  My life began as a mistake, and now it ends the
same way!  Was I an evil person? How could God have let ME suffer, I who
sought Him so fervently? Answer me!  How?!??

WALTER (still staring): God may not even know you're alive.  Or He may
be coming around to sell you cookies and candy bars.  Or He may never
answer, just to watch you squirm in your discomfort.  But I believe in
you.  Someday, the world will believe!  Art is the only thing we can cling
to!  Without learning and art, our lives are muck!  Our only hope is the
Mahler symphonic boxed set from BMG, now priced at 80% off.

MAHLER: But with the shipping charges, it comes to only 15% off.  Oh, how
could God let this happen?

(Mahler's father enters)

MAHLER'S FATHER: Such a deal I have for you!  From Berkshire Record
Outlet, only twenty measly bucks.  Of course, it's the Musical Heritage
Surplus Warehouse and Kazoo Band of Nutley, New Jersey, but at that price?
How can you pass it up?

MAHLER: Papa? Is that you, Papa?  ...  PAPA!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Barbra Streisand begins singing in the background)

(MAHLER screams in despair.  The Streisand song stops abruptly)

WALTER (still staring): Yes, you searched for your father, the kindly,
forgiving father you never had, in your faith and in your music.  That is
why you searched for God the father as well.  And this is what is left to
you: a really good offer.  Damn!  this staring business is giving me itchy
corneas.  Anybody got some Visine?

MAHLER (singing): "Oh, we'll march, march, march to the end of our days,
Where God is a word and freedom just another word for nothing left to
lose."

WALTER (blinking and tearing): Thus, the greatest musical intellect of his
day (1860-1911) is reduced to anachronistic driveling.

(The first movement of Mahler's 9th symphony begins to play in the
background.)

(Enter ALMA)

MAHLER: Alma!  My own!  I'm dying!  Oh, God, I'm dying!  Oh!  Oh!  Oh!
And yet again, Oh!

ALMA: I know!  My dearest!  My love!  I rushed to your side as soon as I
heard!

MAHLER: Oh, where from?

ALMA: From my lover's bed.

MAHLER: I thought you were playing canasta with the girls.

(The Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony begins to play in the
background)

ALMA: Oh, what does it matter now, now that the greatest Viennese artist
of his time, who straddled the late Romantic and early Modern eras, is
dying? How can God let this happen?

MAHLER: That's what I said.  So let me get this straight, you've been
cheating on me?

ALMA: Oh, for months!  Don't you remember? Your guilt over my affairs sent
you to that remarkable meeting with Dr. Freud.

MAHLER: I'm having trouble remembering.  Give me a break, for Christ's
sake, I'm DYING!  Hel-LO-o? So, who with?

(ALMA takes out the Viennese phone directory and begins to read softly,
beginning with the A's)

ALMA: Aab, Aaron; Aache, Adolf; Aar, Abram ...

(Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings begins to play in the background)

MAHLER (weeping): Oh!  Where is God now? I, who hungered for Him, am left
hungry!

WALTER: And you will, like all of us, be left hungry, waiting for the
divine Whopper (with fries).  Your heart, so full of the mystery and the
cholesterol of God, is now blocked and broken, and so you die.

MAHLER'S FATHER: I'm dead already, but my children never come to visit me.

ALMA: So HERE's Gropius's telephone number!

        Finis

Steve Schwartz