What Bloody Man Is That (7 page)

After another pause, Duncan swept in. His two sons bowed as he moved centre stage. He looked slowly round the auditorium, then demanded in a booming voice, ‘What bloody man is that?'

‘Erm . . .' Gavin Scholes' voice strayed tentatively up from the front row.

‘What?'

‘I think that's fine . . . I mean, as a move . . .'

‘Of course it is.'

‘But, er, Warnock, if you could say the line as you come in, rather than waiting till you've taken up your position . . .?'

‘Why?'

‘Well, you know, it's just pace, love, pace. I mean particularly at the beginning of the show, we do want it to move along. Can't have too long a pause.'

‘Are you suggesting,' asked Warnock Belvedere, puffing himself up with affront, ‘that I do not know how to judge the length of a pause?'

‘No, no.'

‘I tell you, Noel Coward himself – Noel Coward, no less – admitted that he couldn't hold a candle to me when it came to timing . . .'

‘Yes, yes, of course, but –'

‘And Tony Guthrie once said to me . . .'

‘Heigh-ho. It's going to be like this all the time,' John B. Murgatroyd whispered to Charles, with a tremor of a giggle in his voice.

‘Best spectator sport since Christians being thrown to the lions,' Charles murmured back.

On stage the diatribe continued, until Gavin once again crumbled and agreed to let Warnock do it his way. Then the director turned to the auditorium to direct the entrance of the Bleeding Sergeant.

Following instructions, Lennox supported the wounded man up the centre steps on to the stage.

‘I think they'd bow now,' said Duncan.

‘I'm not sure . . .'

‘Duncan is a King, Kevin . . .'

‘Gavin.'

‘Kevin, Gavin, what the hell? They'd bow.'

‘I don't know . . . Well, okay, try it, Charles and John B.'

They collapsed on to the floor, and Charles could feel the silent vibration of John B. Murgatroyd giggling beside him. Oh dear. He suddenly remembered that John B. was one of the worst corpsers in the business. They were going to be lucky to get through this scene every night without breaking up.

Malcolm then stepped forward and instructed the Bleeding Sergeant to ‘say to the King the knowledge of the broil

As thou didst leave it.'

Charles began, ‘Doubtful it stood:

As two spent swimmers, that do –'

‘Erm, I think we'd better have you standing for this, Charles. Want the audience to see you a bit, don't we?'

‘I don't see the necessity,' boomed Wamock Belvedere.

Well, sod you, thought Charles. See if I care. At least if I keep my back to them throughout the scene, it'll save another make-up change.

Rehearsals did progress through the week. They slipped behind a bit, but, considering the ridiculous schedule Gavin was trying to keep to, the slippage could have been a lot worse.

Warnock Belvedere, having imposed his personality on the company to his satisfaction, seemed to calm down a bit. Or perhaps it was just that he wasn't around so much. Duncan, as Charles had observed, gets killed satisfactorily early in the play and so, since they were working through from the beginning, Warnock was soon free while the rest of the blocking continued. He wasn't called for either the Wednesday or the Thursday's rehearsals. And, without his malevolent presence, the mood of the company improved.

Felicia, too, stopped making objections and buckled down to hard work. Accepting that she was not going to be allowed to discover movements that arose naturally from her discovery of her character, she began instead to devote her considerable powers of concentration to making Gavin's imposed moves fit into her developing concept of Lady Macbeth.

She also found a confidant in Russ Lavery, whose earnestness matched her own, and who was evidently more than happy to spend long hours agonizing with her over nuances of Shakespeare's text. This new friendship was a great blessing to Gavin Scholes, because it got Felicia off his back.

Her attitude towards the director changed. Whereas at first she had been trying to challenge his methods of production, now she seemed to feel only pity for his philistinism, sorrow that the fine workmanship of the Bard should have to suffer at the clumsy hands of such a botcher. But at least she didn't stop to argue every point, and the rehearsals were allowed to proceed.

George Birkitt also got better, but slowly. He still had a great many television habits to shake off. Apart from the problem of projection, he was also having considerable difficulty implanting Shakespeare's immortal lines in his mind. Actors in television sit coms are notorious paraphrasers, who give rough approximations of their lines, only homing in with accuracy on the ones which are likely to get laughs. For someone used to that discipline, it was a considerable challenge to have to repeat lines which half the world knew off by heart (and which, at Schools Matinees, might even be being followed in the script by the light of pencil torches).

For a couple of days, George floundered hopelessly. The lines just would not stick. It was only when Charles Paris gently reminded him of a play called
The Hooded Owl
that a marked improvement was seen. They had both been in the first production of the piece, in which the star, Michael Banks, unable to remember his lines, had had to go through the ignominy of having them fed to him from the wings through a radio receiver disguised as a hearing aid. The threat of a repeat of this procedure soon bucked George up – apart from anything else, the presence of a hearing aid in eleventh century Scotland would be difficult to explain away.

Once the lines had started to come, the performance grew. George had a good stage presence and, when he bothered to use it, a strong voice. And in one respect his television training proved useful. Recognising (though not admitting) that he had no instinctive ear for a comic line, he had always been quite happy to parrot intonations given him by sit com directors. Once Gavin Scholes realised that George was not offended by being told how to say the lines – in fact, even welcomed it – the director took full advantage of the concession. Whatever George Birkitt's limitations as a creative actor may have been, he had a great ability for copying an intonation. So the director spoke the lines as he wanted them delivered, George reproduced the director's emphases, and slowly a performance emerged.

The pairing of this Macbeth and Lady Macbeth was unusual, the one a mere parrot of lines, the other unable to deliver a line that had not been dissected and re-assembled half a dozen times, but, though their routes to it could not have been more different, both arrived at a remarkably consistent style.

Another problem with George Birkitt, however, was that he, the member of the cast who needed most rehearsal, was going to have least. The filming days for his new sit com, so carefully negotiated into his contract, would take him out of
Macbeth
rehearsals for two full days.

And that was not all. On the Wednesday of the first week, Gavin Scholes for the first time outlined his longer-term rehearsal plan.

‘What we're working towards,' he said, ‘with all this manic blocking, is a full run-through of the play on Saturday.'

The shock of this proposal was so great to her that Felicia Chatterton could not help reacting. ‘
This
Saturday?'

‘Yes.'

‘A full run? After five days' rehearsal?'

‘Yes. Just to fix the blocking in your minds. It won't really be a full run-through. More a stagger-through.'

‘A drunken lurch-through for Warnock, no doubt,' John B. Murgatroyd whispered to Charles, with a giggle.

‘Yes,' Gavin went on. ‘We've got to try it. See how the play hangs together. Not too rushed, though. First half Saturday morning, second half in the afternoon.'

‘Ah,' George Birkitt interposed.

‘Some problem, George?'

‘Yes. Saturday afternoon. No can do.'

‘What?'

‘Didn't the agent tell you?'

‘No.'

‘God, he's hopeless. The money I pay him and . . . No, I've got to fly to Paris for filming on Sunday. Flight late Saturday afternoon. Car picking me up here at one.'

‘Oh.'

‘I'm sure the agent must've mentioned it.'

‘I don't think so.'

George Birkitt shrugged. ‘Well, sorry, old chum. 'Fraid that's the way it is.'

‘So it sounds as if we can't have a full run-through on Saturday.' Felicia Chatterton sighed with relief.

‘Oh yes, we can,' Gavin Scholes countered. ‘We'll do the whole play Saturday morning.'

Felicia Chatterton's mouth gaped in pained disbelief. It had never been like this at Stratford.

By the Thursday afternoon, rehearsals were starting to slip behind schedule again. They were doing the Apparition Scene which, since Gavin was not resorting to any stylisation but doggedly insisted on all the manifestations being seen by the audience, was very complicated.

Gavin's little drawings of movements in his interleaved script somehow didn't match the size of the stage for this scene, and the problems of getting the apparitions on and off unseen required a major rethink of his plans. He kept saying, ‘There'll be lots of dry ice. And with proper lighting the audience won't notice a thing', but the cast weren't convinced. They'd all, at some time or other in their careers, been caught in some ungainly posture on an ill-conceived entrance or exit, and none of them wanted to get laughs of that kind again.

So, while the scene was rethought, time passed and they slipped further and further behind schedule.

‘I'm sorry,' Gavin said after a while. ‘I can't concentrate in here. Just give me a quarter of an hour – break for tea – and I'll go and work it out in the office.'

The cast all trooped up to the bar, where Norman's motherly ladies dispensed tea and rock cakes. Charles sat down at a table with John B. Murgatroyd, who suddenly asked, ‘Have you ever played the Walnut Game?'

‘I don't think so. What is it?'

‘It's an old actor's game. Has to be in a play with a big cast. Shakespeare's ideal.'

‘What happens?'

‘It's a matinée game. Or late into a run. When the director's not monitoring the performances too closely.' John B. Murgatroyd winked.

‘What do you have to do?'

‘Somebody comes on stage with a walnut and secretly . . . you know, in a handshake or something, they pass it to another actor. Then he has to pass it on. The aim is to keep it on stage throughout the show.'

‘Just passing it from one to the other?'

‘That's it. You lose if you're the one who takes it offstage.'

Charles smiled mischievously. ‘Sounds wicked.'

‘Must try it one day.' John B. Murgatroyd looked innocently out of the window.

‘If you're thinking what I think you're thinking,' said Charles, ‘be advised. There are one or two people in this company who wouldn't see the joke at all.'

‘Felicia . . .'

‘To name but one.'

‘She wouldn't see a joke if it knocked her over and raped her.'

‘No. Sad, isn't it, really,' Charles mused, ‘that someone so amazingly dishy should be utterly devoid of humour.'

‘Tragic,' John B. agreed. ‘I wonder what she does for sex . . .?'

‘Talks about it, I'm sure. At length. At great, great length.'

‘You don't think young Russ is getting anywhere there?'

‘No.' Charles lengthened the vowel in disbelief.

But further speculation about Felicia's sex-life was interrupted by the arrival of Sandra Phipps, with a shy-looking schoolboy in tow.

‘Charles, I wonder, do you mind? Could you just keep an eye on Stewart?'

‘Sure. No problem.'

‘I've been with him all afternoon, but I must go and check what's going on in the Box Office.'

‘Fine.'

‘You see, I'm meant to be chaperoning him . . .'

‘Of course.'

‘The law says kids have got to have chaperones. Good old Gavin, always ready to save a few bob, says, “Why book anyone else when we've got Mum on the premises?” so I'm doing it.'

‘Don't worry. I'll see he doesn't get into any mischief. Do you want a drink, Stewart?'

The boy looked up at him through long lashes. He was still at a downy girlish stage of boyhood, just before his skin would coarsen and his beard start.

‘I wouldn't mind a Coke, please, if that's all right, sir,' the boy replied politely.

‘Sure. But please don't call me sir. Charles is fine.'

Sandra looked at her watch. ‘I won't be long. How late do you go on?'

‘Half-past five . . . six.'

‘Stewart was called for two.'

‘Running late. The murder of the Macduffs is the next scene, though.'

‘Hmm. You think Gavin'll get to it today?'

‘I know he's hoping to.' But Charles's optimistic prediction proved incorrect. They worked on the blocking of the Apparition Scene (which now involved much use of the stage trap-door) for the rest of the afternoon. When they broke, the director shouted out, ‘Okay. Thanks for all your hard work. Macduff murder scene prompt at ten in the morning – okay?'

‘Is that okay for you?' Charles asked the boy sitting beside him in the auditorium. ‘I mean, with school?'

‘Oh, I'm sure it'll be all right.'

‘Where are you at school?'

‘St. Joseph's.'

The name didn't mean anything to Charles. But then the name of none of the local schools would have meant anything to him. Stupid question to ask, really.

‘Hey, that's great,' said Stewart. ‘It means I'll miss Double English.'

‘From your tone of voice, that's pretty boring.'

‘And how!' The boy grimaced. ‘Boring.'

‘Why? What are you doing?'