RANDALL MEETS DICKENS
🎭 The Lightkeeper: The Trial of Robert Randall Rendered in the Manner of Mr. Charles Dickens, Esquire
A Play in Three Acts, Drawn Forth from the Randall Archive; or, The Remarkable Account of a Man Who Dared to See
ACT THE FIRST: In Which Blindness Yields to Botanical Bravery
Theme: Truth Versus the Law
Time & Setting: The Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Five through Seventy-Six; with scenes laid principally in a modest apartment in the Federal District, in courtrooms and committee chambers, and within those sepulchral bastions of bureaucracy known as the FDA and HEW.
Synopsis: Behold Robert C. Randall, a young man afflicted by the slow theft of sight. Physicians, in their great and learned wisdom, bestow upon him tinctures and tablets most disagreeable, which do as much harm to his constitution as the illness they are meant to treat. In desperation, our protagonist turns to a plant—common in appearance, criminal in designation—which grants him fleeting reprieve. With his beloved Alice, faithful and indomitable, he cultivates said plant in their humble abode.
The constables descend. The court convenes. The charge: cultivation of a forbidden herb. The defense: necessity born of affliction. A judge, unexpected in his sympathy, dismisses the charge. Thus ends Act the First, in which a flickering light of justice is kindled.
Key Tableaux:
The Monologue of Mr. Randall: "I was the first American to legally smoke marijuana... but I had to nearly lose my sight to do so."
An Arrest Most Curious: Officers of the peace confront houseplants with the gravity of an opium den raid.
The Legal Ruling of Magnanimous Import: Judge Washington, with no small measure of courage, invokes the ancient principle of necessity.
ACT THE SECOND: In Which Red Tape Strangles Reason
Theme: Bureaucracy Versus Compassion
Time & Setting: Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Six through Seventy-Eight; unfolding amidst the labyrinthine offices of federal governance, behind the doors of scientific committees, and within the shadowed parlours of congressional intrigue.
Synopsis: Victory in court yields not freedom, but a new and monstrous adversary: the bureaucracy. Lady Alice, gallant in her pursuit of righteousness, finds herself entangled in letters unanswered, petitions rebuffed, and committee hearings where compassion drowns beneath a tide of procedural apathy. Enter DARAC—whose initials belie the inertia within. Physicians speak truth, yet refrain from prescription. The Paraquat Panic ensues; the government sprays poison on the very herb it condemns.
At last, a programme emerges—an Investigational New Drug protocol. Mr. Randall becomes Patient Zero in a system designed to vindicate him quietly, without upsetting the established order.
Key Tableaux:
The Testimony of the Learned Men: Presented verbatim, with interjections by a satirist (one Mr. Carlin) to skewer absurdity.
The Poisoned Harvest: Press conference farce, narrated by Eeyore and Bugs Bunny, in a moment of tragicomic theatre.
A Metal Tin and a Federal Seal: Randall receives lawful cannabis—an irony as sharp as any Dickensian twist.
ACT THE THIRD: In Which the Archive Refuses to Be Buried
Theme: Memory Versus Erasure
Time & Setting: From the late Seventies into the Present Year; a span encompassing graves, archives, and stages both literal and legislative.
Synopsis: Time, relentless and cruel, claims Mr. Randall. Alice, now a widow of both love and cause, sifts through dusty boxes and brittle papers to preserve a truth others would rather forget. Veterans arise—new inheritors of the cause—demanding not privilege but parity. They speak of trauma, of the herb’s relief, of science warped by commerce.
A final tribunal unfolds: the audience, once passive, becomes the jury. Randall returns, spectral yet unyielding, and demands not pity—but memory. The curtain falls not on closure, but on a call: "We are the patients. We are the proof. We are the lightkeepers now."
Key Tableaux:
Alice, Alone: Her monologue a mournful aria of archival resolve.
The Veteran’s Plea: Fragments of testimony, stitched from letters and verse, echoing Randall’s eternal refrain.
The Final Tribunal: A courtroom of conscience, with ghosts and living witnesses alike. The audience holds the gavel.
On the Modes Employed Therein
As Mr. Boz might delight in characters grotesque and sublime, so too this tale employs a company of voices:
Mr. Carlin, a truth-jester, interrupting scientific solemnity with well-placed derision.
Messrs. Eeyore and Bunny, whose comedic melancholy belies the tragedy of poisoned harvests.
Mr. Ray Charles, a bard of rhythm and soul, whose letter to the FDA is a sermon in song.
A Stoic Philosopher, robed as Epictetus, who teaches of sovereignty not from thrones, but from reason.
Roy Cohn and Edward Murrow, legal pugilist and moral anchor, dueling in dialectic beneath a single, swinging bulb.
The Moral Sentiments Advanced by This Tale
That law, unguided by justice, is tyranny adorned in robes.
That medicine denied by statute is cruelty made policy.
That memory, though fragile, must resist erasure.
That the sovereign good is not profit, nor conformity, but healing in harmony with Nature.
And so, dear reader (or viewer), should you find yourself in doubt as to the truth of this tale, know that it is no fiction. The names are true. The documents are real. The lightkeeper lived—and lit a path now tread by countless others.
Let the gavel fall—or let the record rise.
