Fault in the Structure

CHAPTER 17

« ^ »

Broke violence, madness, fear

In most amateur productions the first night is one of nerves and misgivings.

‘Do I look all right?’

‘I can’t remember my first lines!’

‘Will the press be here?’

‘Oh, doesn’t anyone know what’s happened to the box of safety pins?’

‘Who’s pinched my Number Six?’

‘Suppose they don’t laugh?’

‘I bet somebody’s brought some ghastly infant who’ll howl the place down in my first solo.’

‘How’s the house filling up?’

‘Sybil isn’t here yet. We’re not really covered by understudies, you know.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past Ma Blaine to bring in a bunch of her Guild and bust up the show. They’re all Women’s Libbers, that lot.’

‘Laura, you will give me a clear prompt if I dry up, won’t you?’

The second night is apt to find the entire cast, even the principals, feeling slightly flat, but the third and last night sees everybody keyed up to the highest pitch, chattering, excited, confident, peeping from behind the curtain to watch the audience coming in, trying to find out how many bouquets will be presented and to whom they will go (although the second and third leads among the ladies are apt to make certain that each will receive at least one bouquet because she will have ordered and paid for it herself) and altogether the atmosphere will be noisily electric. The whole cast, assured of the success of the show, will love everybody with almost excessive fervour and the actors will even praise one another’s performances, hoping, of course, for reciprocity on the lines of ‘I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine’.

No doubt all this would have been the case on the third and final night of the Chardle and District dramatic, operatic and literary society’s production of The Beggar’s Opera, but for the presence behind the scenes of a diabolus or diabola ex machina. It became, later on, the self-imposed task of Dame Beatrice to expose this cuckoo in the nest.

However, it was not until the end, or almost the end, of the last Act that the Beggar’s original thought was transformed into drastic and unrehearsed action and, as the poet says, ‘violence, madness, fear’ broke out and the opera ended in confusion.

With no suspicion, in spite of Dame Beatrice’s dire prediction that the past was in process of raking itself up, that anything more untoward than, without a prompter, somebody in the last Act was going to dry up, or that the stage manager (the meek, devoted, hardworking Ernest Farrow who, as the Beggar, had only a few lines at the beginning and end of the piece) might mislay the bottle of ratsbane or some other important prop, Laura drove herself in her own small car to the town hall in good time to assume her costume and make-up, leaving Dame Beatrice to be piloted, a little later on, by George, for whom a seat had been booked in the front row of the balcony. From where he sat he had not only an excellent view of the stage, but of his employer in her seat near the O.P. end of the front row of the stalls. Next to her was to have been the empty seat which, at this last performance, would be occupied, after the first Act, by Laura.

As she entered the austere and stone-floored vestibule of the town hall, the first person Laura met was William Caxton wearing a lounge suit and a rather striking BBC style tie.

‘Hullo,’ she said, ‘you’re early. You don’t go on stage to speak your little piece until the end of the first Act, do you?’

Denbigh, at first, had opposed the speaking of William Caxton’s little piece from the town hall stage, claiming that it was entirely out of place in the middle of an early eighteenth-century comic opera, especially as the speech had been composed by Mrs Blaine herself in what she fondly believed was the English of Caxton’s day. It ran as follows:

Hear me, ye merry gentles of good making,

And you, ye gentle ladies, with none quaking,

That here upon this stage I ye entreat

To think on them that looken well to eat.

When of your bonté ye do keepen kind,

Have Sister Charity, sweet maid, in mind,

And when Will Caxton’s pageant ye endorse,

Give of your plenty that shall not fare worse.

For Edward Fourth, the Woodvilles and crook’d Dickon

Did favour Caxton and his books y-quicken.

I say you sooth, me needeth not to fain,

To give to charity shall be your gain.

The second to last line was pinched directly from Chaucer, whether Mrs B. knew it or not, but the rest of the lines were her own and she was proud of them.

As the money collected in the streets was to go towards the town council’s Old People’s Holiday Fund, Denbigh, as stated, had given in. He stipulated, however, that Caxton was to appear alone, thus placing an embargo not only on ‘Edward Fourth, the Woodvilles and crook’d Dickon’, but upon the Duke of Clarence (judicially killed before Caxton printed the second edition of the book on chess originally dedicated to him) and also upon that arch-economist, Henry Tudor. All of these were to have appeared on stage and in costume, and for each of them Clarice had composed what she called ‘a little poem of gentle pleading for alms’. However, Denbigh had stood firm about all these ‘extras’.

The first interval had been selected for Caxton’s speech, this for more than one reason. For one thing, in Denbigh’s production, the changing of the scenery from Peachum’s house to the tavern near Newgate took longer than any other of the scenic changes for which the students had opted; for another, also, because the scene took some time to change, there was a more permissible break in the action at this point than at any other.

‘Oh,’ said Caxton, in reply to Laura, ‘I’m to go on first tonight. Lord Denbigh’s orders. He refuses to have a break in his show on the last night. I don’t blame him.’

‘Will you be in the audience after that?’

‘No. I haven’t a seat.’

‘You can have mine for Act One, because I’m on, if that’s any good. After that I shall want it for myself. I’m not prompting this evening. It’s a good seat, front row, next to Dame Beatrice, but you’ll have to hop out of it at the first interval because, as I say, it’s earmarked for me and I want it.’

‘Fair enough, and thanks awfully. So far, I’ve only been able to get a few glimpses of you from the wings. It will be nice to be out in front and have a proper view. The only trouble about your performance, you know, is that it must make the rest of the show fall rather flat.’

‘You’ve got the offer of my fauteuil, so this tribute is unnecessary, although appreciated. Be seeing you.’ She went to the dressing-room she shared with Sybil and Melanie and she thought no more about Caxton-Caret until the end of the first Act, when she slipped into the auditorium to claim her front-row stall.

‘You were a riot,’ he said, standing up as she approached. ‘Many congratulations.’

‘How did your speech go?’ Laura asked.

‘I received polite sporadic applause.’

‘I believe, if you scouted round, you know, you could find an empty seat somewhere if you want to see the rest of the show.’

‘Thanks. I might just do that. There’s no bar here, so people don’t seem to have moved about much.’ He removed himself and Laura seated herself next to Dame Beatrice.

‘There may not be a bar for the audience,’ she said, ‘but there’s plenty of the right stuff flowing freely backstage. I could have topped myself up like a tanker at full load if I’d wanted to. Sybil is laying off, but Melanie, who’s had the dressing-room all to herself until now, is what I should call in mellow mood and as I passed the door of the men’s dressing-room it seemed to me that it was full of the joys of spring. I just hope the silly asses won’t go and overdo it, that’s all. There’s quite enough last-performance joie de vivre about and around without adding any liquid sunshine.’

The second Act of The Beggar’s Opera opens with dialogue. Macheath’s gang reminisce and encourage one another. To them enters Macheath and later he is joined by the ladies of the town. Laura watched him closely, but decided that either, behind the scenes, discretion had proved the better part, or else that he carried his drinks well. The scene, which was lively and tuneful, went even better than on the previous nights. The dance met with spontaneous applause and there was a good deal of laughter at Sukey Tawdrey’s speech: ‘Indeed, madam, if I had not been a fool, I might have liv’d very handsomely with my last friend. But upon his missing five guineas, he turn’d me off. Now I never suspected he had counted them.’

After that, the business of Jenny Diver, Sukey Tawdrey, the pistols and the arrest of Macheath by Peachum and the constables brought the scene to a dramatic end, and the audience settled down to its boxes of rustling chocolates and its appreciative conversation while the scene was changed to Newgate gaol.

The first indication that there were to be certain departures from what had been rehearsed came with the entrance of Melanie as Lucy Lockit. There was no doubt that Melanie had not only looked upon the wine when it was red, but upon a fair measure of gin also.

She almost tripped over her own feet as she approached the perfidious Macheath, and her opening remark: ‘You baish man, you!’ was delivered with such concentrated venom that even Laura, accustomed as she was to Melanie’s histrionics, was surprised and startled by the outburst and by the slurred sibilant, and when the next bit of the diatribe came out as: ‘How can you look me in the faish after what hash parshed between ush?’ surprise turned to certainty.

‘My gosh!’ said Laura in a whisper. ‘The fool’s as tight as a tick!’ She left her seat, crouching low, and slipped round to the back of the stage. In the wings she found Ernest Farrow literally wringing his hands.

‘What on earth are we to do?’ he said. ‘Melanie is drunk.’

‘Superbly so,’ agreed Laura. That this was no overstatement was proved a moment or so later. Upon the words: ‘I could tear thy eyes out!’ Melanie caught Lawrence a smack across the face which made him recoil and then she followed this up with a furious attack upon him which gave a vivid impression that she intended to carry out this threat.

Laura hissed at the students who were manipulating the curtain. As it came down, she and Ernest dashed on stage and pinioned the fermenting Lucy Lockit and hustled her into the wings, where she collapsed into a heap at the top of the O.P. stairs and broke into noisy, tipsy weeping.

Laura said to Ernest: ‘I’ll find Marigold Tench and tell her to get into my Mrs Peachum costume and stick some make-up on. You push out in front and tell the audience that Melanie has a temperature and can’t continue. Crave their indulgence for a few minutes.’

At this moment Hamilton Haynings, who had been waiting on the Prompt side for his entrance as Lockit, Lucy’s father, came across to them.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Is she ill?’

‘Yes. Get on and say so. All right, Ernest. You just put the word round backstage that we shall be resuming as soon as Marigold is ready.’ She pulled the weeping Melanie to her feet. ‘Come on. The dressing-room for you,’ she said. There was a chaise longue in the dressing-room. There was also Marigold Tench. Laura pushed Melanie on to the former and tackled the latter.

‘Put my costume on. We’re much of a height,’ she said. ‘You know the book of words and the solos and duets as well as she does. This is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. I’ll help you dress.’

‘I feel sick,’ moaned Melanie from the chaise longue.

‘Then for pity’s sake go and be it,’ said Laura, hauling her up and dragging her towards the lavatory.

To the credit of the cast, nobody panicked or fluffed. The new Lucy proved more than adequate. She had had enough to drink to excite without intoxicating her and she put up what, under the circumstances, was a most meritorious perforamnce. The audience applauded her warmly, not only out of kindness to an understudy who had been called upon without warning, but as a tribute to a good performance.

As for Hamilton Haynings, he was seen that evening at his best. Going in front of the curtain in the lugubrious rusty black coat and breeches of the master gaoler, he had assumed the Friend and Champion of the People rôle which had served him so well in his public speeches before council elections. He was sorry, he said, for the hold-up. A doctor was in attendance upon Miss Cardew and had diagnosed a temperature of one hundred and three degrees. It had been very plucky of Miss Cardew to attempt to play the part when she was feeling so ill, (applause, for which he waited), but it was impossible for her to continue. He craved the indulgence of the audience for just a few minutes and bowed himself off to further applause.

The opera continued on its course. Having fulfilled the promise of Trinculo’s foul bombard and shed her liquor, Melanie had fallen asleep on the chaise longue. The costume of Mrs Peachum proved to fit Marigold well enough, and Laura returned to her seat next to Dame Beatrice and was soon leading the applause for Lucy Lockit. She had been doubtful whether Marigold’s esprit de corps would prove equal to the demands made upon it and was grateful that her doubts had been dispelled. Eventually a speech from Macheath, ‘Tell the sheriff’s officers I am ready’, had brought the opera to the verge of its final scene.

Willing student hands trundled the fatal cart up the ramp and into position centre-back of the stage, but then came the second hold-up.

‘Where are those wedges for the wheels?’ demanded a voice:

‘In the corner, top of the stairs, where we always put them,’ came a reply.

‘They aren’t there now.’

‘Well, ask the stage manager.’

But the wedges had disappeared.

‘Look, the show must go on. We don’t really need the wedges. They’re only an extra precaution. The rope will hold the cart and two of you can stand by while Macheath mounts it. He’s only up there a matter of minutes, anyway,’ said Ernest Farrow, a speech which was remembered against him later. ‘Do let’s get the scene going. The chaps are ready in the corridor with the bouquets and we’re running late already. Some of the audience have trains and buses to catch and the town hall staff expect to be off duty at ten-thirty.’

Backstage Macheath was proving recalcitrant.

‘I don’t want that beastly thing over my head and I don’t want my hands tied,’ he said.

‘Of course you do,’ said Ernest Farrow, hastening over to him. Two stalwart students, taking their cue from this, pinioned him, merely looping the cord over itself as they had done at the other performances. They crammed the white cap over his head and ears, and patted him on the back.

‘Up you go, sir,’ they said, hoisting him bodily on to the cart which, lacking the wedges for its wheels, wobbled a little but was immediately steadied by the students, one of whom arranged the loop around Lawrence’s neck. It transpired, later, that he had not performed this simple act before, for the students who acted as stage-hands were changed each evening and depended upon the unlucky Ernest Farrow for their orders. He himself left them so that he could appear in front of the curtains where he was joined by the student who was acting as the Player.

Denbigh had cut this scene, as Laura knew, to a minimum. Each actor was to make two speeches only and then the curtain was to rise on Denbigh’s pièce de résistance, Macheath on the hangman’s cart and the ‘rabble’, hearing of the reprieve, rushing rejoicingly on to the stage – ‘although, actually,’ Denbigh had once confessed to Laura, ‘I think they’d have been pretty shirty at being done out of the fun of a hanging.’

Before any of this could happen, Laura had gone backstage to wait in the corridor with James Hunty for the curtain-calls – there were to be three, at least, on this the last evening, more if the applause warranted them. The Beggar and the Player were already half-way through their short dialogue in which Macheath’s reprieve was to be announced, but on this occasion the dialogue did not get finished in its original form, but sustained a surprising modern addition. It ended with these words:

Player: But, honest friend, I hope you don’t intend that Macheath shall be really executed?

Beggar: Most certainly, sir. To make the piece perfect, I was for doing strict poetical justice. Macheath is to be hang’d; as for the other—

‘Good God! Look out!’ But he spoke too late. Something hit his companion from behind the curtain and, taken utterly by surprise, the unfortunate Player was precipitated into the orchestra pit where he found himself spreadeagled across the top of the harpsichord.

Behind the scenes there was immediate and utter confusion. The audience did not know whether to laugh at what some regarded as a rehearsed effect, or whether to view the Player’s mishap with concern. Dame Beatrice, among the latter, darted forward to ask whether the Player was hurt. Reassured, she took the route she had seen Laura take and she and her secretary met face to face in the wings. Laura seized her employer’s skinny arm and said:

‘Quick! Lawrence! Do something! He’ll hang himself!’

Together they hastened on stage.