The game? Boy, the game ended ten thousand stumps back. You’ve turned the Truffula groves into bric-a-brac and a shack! You’ve silenced the Swomee-Swans, choked the Humming-Fish dumb. And still you sit there, counting your nails and your thumb.
(A pause. His voice softens.) You kept it. the lorax musical script
(To the audience, breaking the fourth wall) He lifted me up by the scruff of my soul. He said, “Unless someone like you…” (He stops, choked.) …cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. The game
I couldn’t plant it. I couldn’t let go. That seed was a mirror—too painful to show. But hiding the seed doesn’t hide the crime. The Lorax was right. I was stealing… not time. His voice softens
No, Once-ler. I want something harder than blame. I want you to speak a forgotten boy’s name.
(Muttering, to himself) Go away, little pest. There’s no profit in shame. And you can’t knit a Thneed without playing the game.
Setting: A murky, grey wasteland. The stage is littered with jagged stumps and skeletal factory parts. A single, rusty ladder leads up to the ONCE-LER’s shuttered window. The air smells of "smogulous smoke."