Light Thickens

Chapter 5 DRESS REHEARSALS AND FIRST NIGHT

The days before the opening night seemed to hurry and to darken. There were no disasters and no untoward happenings, only a rushing immediacy. The actors arrived early for rehearsals. Some who were not called came to the last of the piecemeal sessions and watched closely and with a painful intensity.

The first of the dress rehearsals, really a technical rehearsal, lasted all day with constant stoppages for lights and effects. The management had a meal sent in. It was set up in the rehearsal room: soup, cold meat, potatoes in their skins, salad, coffee. Some members of the cast helped themselves when they had an opportunity. Others, Maggie for one, had nothing.

The props for the banquet were all there: a boar’s head with a lemon in its jaws and glass eyes. Plastic chickens. A soup tureen that would exude steam when a servingman removed the lid. Peregrine looked under the covers but the contents were all right: glued down. Loose: wine jugs; goblets; a huge candelabrum in the center of the table.

The pauses for lights were continual. Dialogue. Stop. “Catch them going up. Refocus it. Is it fixed? This mustn’t happen again.”

The witches each had a tiny blue torch concealed in their clothes. They switched these on when Macbeth spoken to them. They had to be firmly sewn and accurately pointed at their faces.

Plain sailing for a bit but still the feeling of pressure and anxiety. But that, after all, was normal. The actors played “within themselves.” Or almost. They got an interrupted run. The tension was extreme. The theatre was full of marvelous but ominous sounds. The air was thick with menace.

The arrival at Macbeth’s castle in the evening was the last seen of daylight for a long time. Exquisite lighting: a mellow and tranquil scene. Banquo’s beautiful voice saying “the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.” The sudden change when the doors rolled back and the piper skirled wildly and Lady Macbeth drew the King into the castle.

From now on it is night, for dawn, after the murder, was delayed and hardly declared itself, and before the murder of Banquo it is dusk: “The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day,” says the watchful assassin.

Banquo is murdered.

After the banquet the Macbeths are alone together, the last time the audience sees them so, and the night is “almost at odds with morning, which is which.” Otherwise, torchlight, lamplight, witchlight right on until the English scene, out-of-doors and sunny with a good King on the throne.

When Macbeth reappears he is aged, disheveled, half-demented, deserted by all but a few who cannot escape. Dougal Macdougal would be wonderful. He played these last abysmal scenes now well under their final pitch, but with every wayward change indicated. He was a wounded animal with a snarl or two left in him. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …” The speech tolled its way to the end like a death knell.

Macduff and Malcolm, the lairds and their troops arrive. Now, at last, Macbeth and Macduff meet. The challenge. The fight. The exit and the scream cut short.

The brief scene in which Old Siward speaks the final conventional merciless word on his son’s death, and then Macduff enters downstage, and behind him Seyton, with Macbeth’s head on his claidheamh-mor.

Malcolm, up on the stairway among his soldiers, is caught by the setting sun. They turn their heads and see The Head. And finally:

“Hail, King of Scotland!” shout the soldiers.

“Curtain,” Peregrine said. “But don’t bring it down. Hold it. Thank you. Lights. I think they’re a little too juicy at the end. Too pink. Can you give us something a bit less obvious? Straw, perhaps. It’s too much ‘Exit into sunset.’ You know? Right. Settle down, everybody. Bring some chairs on. I won’t keep the actors very long. Settle down.”

They settled.

He went through the play. “Witches, all raise your arms when you jump.

“Details. Nothing of great importance except on the Banquo’s ghost exit. You were too close to Lennox. Your cloak moved in the draft.”

“Can they leave a wider gap?”

“I can,” said Lennox. “Sorry.”

“Right. Any more questions?” Predictably, Banquo. His scene with Fleance and Macbeth. The lighting. “It feels false. I have to move into it.”

“Come on a bit farther on your entrance. Nothing to stop you, is there?”

“It feels false.”

“It doesn’t give that impression,” said Peregrine very firmly. “Any other questions?”

William piped up. “When I’m stabbed,” he said. “I kind of hold the wound and then collapse. Could the murderer catch me before I fall?”

“Certainly,” said Peregrine. “He’s meant to.”

“Sorry,” said the murderer. “I missed it. I was too late.”

They plowed on. Attention to details. Getting everything right, down to the smallest move, the fractional pause. Changes of pace building toward a line of climax. Peregrine spent three quarters of an hour over the cauldron scene. The entire cast were required to whisper the repeated rhythmic chant as in a round.

At last they moved on. There were no more questions. Peregrine thanked them. “Same time tomorrow,” he said, “and I hope no stops. You’ve been very patient. Bless you all. Good-night.”

But again there were stops, next day. A number of technical hitches cropped up during the final dress rehearsal, mostly to do with the lights. They were all cleared up. Peregrine had said to the cast: “Keep something in the larder. Don’t reach the absolute tops. Play within yourselves. Conserve your energy. Save the consummate thing for the performance. We know you can do it, my dears. Don’t exhaust yourselves.”

They obeyed him but there were one or two horrors.

Lennox missed an entrance and arrived looking as if the Devil himself was after him.

Duncan lost his lines, had to be prompted, and was slow to recover. Nina Gaythorne dried completely and looked terror-stricken. William went straight on with his own lines: “And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?” and she answered like an automaton.

“It was a dose of stage fright,” she said when they came off. “I didn’t know where I was or what I said. Oh, this play. This play.”

“Never mind, Miss Gaythorne,” said William, taking her hand. “It won’t happen again. I’ll be with you.”

“That’s something,” she said, half-laughing and half-crying.

At the end they rehearsed the curtain calls. The “dead” characters on the O.P. side and the live ones on the Prompt. Then the Macbeths alone, and finally the man himself. Alone.

Peregrine took his notes and thanked his cast. “Change but don’t go,” he said.

“ ‘Bad dress. Good show.’ ” quoted the stage director cheerfully. “Are we getting them down tomorrow?”

He put this to the company.

“If we get it rotten-perfect now, you can sleep in tomorrow morning. It’s just a matter of working straight on from cue to cue with nothing between. All right? Any objections? Banquo?”

“I?” said Banquo, who had been ready to make one. “Objections? Oh no. No.”

They finished at five of two in the morning. The management had provided beer, whiskey, and sherry. Some of them left without taking anything. William was dispatched in a taxi with Angus and Menteith, who lived more or less in the same direction. Maggie slipped away as soon as her sleepwalking scene was over and she had seen Peregrine. Fleance went after the murder, Banquo, after the cauldron scene, and Duncan, on his arrival at the castle. There were not many holdups. A slight rearrangement of the company fights at the end. Macbeth and Macduff went like clockwork.

Peregrine waited till they were all gone and the night watchman was on his rounds. The theatre was dark except for the dim working light. Dark, coldly stuffy. Waiting.

He stood for a moment in front of the curtain and saw the caretaker’s torch moving about the circle. He felt empty and dead-tired. Nothing untoward had happened.

“Good-night,” he called.

“Good-night, guv’nor.”

He went through the curtain into backstage and past the menacing shapes of scenery, ill-defined by the faraway working light. Where was his torch? Never mind, he’d got all his papers under his arm fastened to a clipboard and he would go home. Past the masking pieces, cautiously along the Prompt side.

Something caught hold of his foot.

He fell forward and a jolt wrenched at his former injury and made him cry out.

“Are you all right?” asked a scarcely audible voice.

He was all right. He still had hold of his clipboard. He’d caught his foot in one of the light cables. Up he got, cautiously. “All serene,” he shouted.

“Are you quite sure?” asked an anxious voice close at hand.

“God! Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me, guv.”

“Props! What the blazes are you doing? Where are you?”

“I’m ’ere. Thought I’d ’ang abaht and make sure no one was up to no tricks. I must of dozed off. Wait a tick.”

A scrabbling noise and he came fuzzily into view around the corner of a dark object. A strong smell of whiskey accompanied him. “It’s the murdered lady’s chair,” he said. “I must of dropped off in it. Fancy.”

“Fancy.”

Props moved forward and a glassy object rolled from under his feet.

“Bottle,” he said coyly. “Empty.”

“So I supposed.”

Peregrine’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom. “How drunk are you?” he asked.

“Not so bad. Only a few steps down the primrose parf. There wasn’t more’n three drinks left in the bottle. Honest. And nobody got up to no tricks. They’ve all vanished. Into thin air.”

“You’d better follow them. Come on.”

He took Props by the arm, steered him to the stage door, opened it, and shoved him through.

“Ta,” said Props. “Goo’night,” and made off at a tidy shamble. Peregrine adjusted the self-locking apparatus on the door and banged it. He was in time to see Props being sick at the corner of Wharfingers Lane.

When he had finished he straightened up, saw Peregrine, and waved to him.

“That’s done the trick,” he shouted, and walked briskly away.

Peregrine went to the car park, unlocked his car, and got in.

“Oh, Lord!” he said, and drove himself home.

Emily in her woolly dressing gown let him in.

“Hullo, love,” he said, “You shouldn’t have waited up.”

“Hullo.”

He said: “Just soup,” and sank into an armchair.

She gave him strong soup laced with brandy.

“Golly, that’s nice,” he said. And then: “Pretty bloody awful but nothing in the way of practical jokes.”

“Bad dress. Good show.”

“Hope so.”

And in that hope he finished his soup and went to bed and to sleep.

Now they were all in their dressing-rooms, doors shut, telegrams, cards, presents, flowers, the pungent smell of greasepaint and wet white and hand-lotion, the close, electrically charged atmosphere of a working theatre.

Maggie made up her face. Carefully, looking at it from all angles, she drew her eyebrows together, emphasized the determined creases at the corners of her mouth. She pulled back her reddish hair, twisted it into a regal chignon, and secured it with pins and a band.

Nanny, her dresser and housekeeper, stood silently, holding her robe. When she turned there it was, opened, waiting for her. She covered her head with a chiffon scarf; Nanny skillfully dropped the robe over it, not touching it.

The tannoy came to life. “Quarter hour. Quarter hour, please,” it said.

“Thank you, Nanny,” said Maggie. “That’s fine.” She kissed a bedraggled bit of fur with a cat’s head. “Bless you, Thomasina,” she said and propped it against her glass.

A tap on the door. “May I come in?”

“Dougal! Yes.”

He came in and put a velvet case on her table. “It was my grandma’s,” he said. “She was a Highlander. Blessings.” He kissed her hand and made the sign of the cross over her.

“My dear, thank you. Thank you.”

But he was gone.

She opened the case. It was a brooch: a design of interlaced golden leaves with semiprecious stones making a thistle. “It’s benign, I’m sure,” she said. “I shall wear it in my cloak. In the fur, Nanny. Fix it, will you?”

Presently she was dressed and ready.

The three witches stood together in front of the looking-glass, Rangi in the middle. He had the face of a skull but his eyelids glittered in his dark face. Around his neck on a flax cord hung a greenstone tiki, an embryo child. Blondie’s face was made ugly, grossly overpainted: blobs of red on the cheeks and a huge scarlet mouth. Wendy was bearded. They had transformed their hands into claws.

“If I look any longer I’ll frighten myself,” said Rangi.

“Quarter hour. Quarter hour please.”

Gaston Sears dressed alone. He would have been a most uncomfortable companion, singing, muttering, uttering snatches of ancient rhymes, and paying constant visits to the lavatory. He occupied a tiny room that nobody else wanted but that seemed to please him.

When Peregrine called he found him in merry mood. “I congratulate you, dear boy,” he cried. “You have undoubtedly hit upon a valid interpretation of the cryptic Seyton.”

Peregrine shook hands with him. “I mustn’t wish you luck,” he said.

“But why not, perceptive boy? We wish each other luck. À la bonne heure.”

Peregrine hurried on to Nina Gaythorne’s room.

Her dressing-table was crowded with objects of baffling inconsistency and each of them must be fondled and kissed. A plaster Genesius, patron saint of actors, was in pride of place. There were also a number of anti-witchcraft objects and runes. The actress who played the Gentlewoman shared the dressing-room and had very much the worst of the bargain. Not only did Nina take three quarters of the working bench for her various protective objects, she spent a great deal of time muttering prophylactic rhymes and prayers.

These exercises were furtively carried out with one scared eye on the door. When Peregrine knocked she leaped up and cast her makeup towel over her sacred collection. She then stood with her back to the bench, her hands resting negligently upon it, and broke out into peals of unconvincing laughter. There was a strong smell of garlic.

Macduff and Banquo were in the next-door room to Sir Dougal’s and were quiet and businesslike. Simon Morten was withdrawn into himself, tense and silent. When he first came he did a quarter of an hour’s limbering-up and then took a shower and settled to his makeup. Bruce Barrabell tried a joke or two but getting no response, fell silent. Their dresser attended to them.

Bruce Barrabell whistled two notes, remembered it was considered unlucky, stopped short, and said, “Shit.”

“Out,” said Simon.

“I didn’t know you were one of the faithful.”

“Go on. Out.”

He went out and shut the door. A pause. He turned around three times and then knocked.

“Yes?”

“— humbly apologize. May I come back? Please.”

“Come in.”

“Quarter hour. Quarter hour, please.”

William Smith dressed with Duncan and his sons. He was perfectly quiet and very pale. Malcolm, a pleasant young fellow, helped him make up. Duncan, attended by a dresser, benignly looked on.

“First nights,” he groaned comprehensively. “How I hate them.” His glance rested upon William. “This is your first First Night, laddie, is it not?”

“There’ve been school showings, sir,” said William nervously.

“School showings, eh? Well, well, well,” he said profoundly. “Ah, well.” He turned to his ramshackle part propped up against his looking-glass and began to mutter. “So well thy words become thee as thy wounds.”

“I’m at your elbow, Father. Back to audience. I’ll give it to you if needs be. Don’t worry,” said Malcolm.

“You will, my boy, won’t you? No, I shan’t worry. But I can’t imagine why I dried like that. However.”

He caught his cloak up in a practiced hand and turned round: “All right, behind?” he asked.

“Splendid,” his son reassured him.

“Good. Good.”

“… Ten minutes, please.”

A tap on the door. Peregrine looked in. “Lovely house,” he said. “They’re simmering. William” — he patted William’s head — “you’ll remember tonight through all your other nights to come, won’t you? Your performance is correct. Don’t alter anything, will you?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s the ticket.” He turned to Duncan. “My dear fellow, you’re superb. And the boys. Malcolm, you’ve a long time to wait, haven’t you? For your big scene. I’ve nothing but praise for you.”

The witches stood in a tight group. The picture they presented was horrendous. They said, “Thank you,” all together and stood close to one another, staring at him.

“You’ll do,” said Peregrine.

He continued his rounds. It wasn’t too easy to find things to say to them all. Some of them hated to be wished well in so many words. They liked you to say facetiously, “Fall down and break your leg.” Others enjoyed the squeezed elbow and confident nod. The ladies were kissed — on the hands or in the air because of makeup. Round he went with butterflies busily churning in his own stomach, his throat and mouth dry as sandpaper, and his voice seeming to come from someone else.

Maggie said: “It’s your night tonight, Perry dear. All yours. Thank you.” And kissed him.

Sir Dougal shook both his hands. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” he said.

“Amen,” Perry answered.

Simon, magnificently dark and exuding a heady vitality, also shook his hands. “Thank you,” he said, “I’m no good at this sort of thing but blessings and thank you.”

“Where’s Banquo?”

“He went out. Having a pee, I suppose.”

“Give him my greetings,” said Peregrine, relieved.

On and on. The thanes, nervy and polite. The walking gents, much obliged to be visited. Finished at last.

Front-of-house waiting for him: Winty’s assistant.

“All right,” he said. “We’re pushing the whole house in. Bit of a job. There are the Royalty-hunters determined to stay in the foyer but we’ve herded them all in. Winty’s dressed up like a sore thumb and waiting in the entrance. The house is packed with security men and Bob’s your uncle. They’ve rung through to say the cars have left.”

“Away we go?”

“Away we go.”

“Beginners, please. Beginners,” said the tannoy.

The witches appeared in the shadows, came onstage, climbed the rostrum, and grouped around the gallows. Duncan and his sons and the thanes stood offstage, waiting for the short opening scene to end.

An interval of perhaps three interminable minutes. Then trumpets filled the air with their brazen splendor and were followed by the sound of a thousand people getting to their feet. Now the National Anthem. And now they settled in their seats. A peremptory buzzer. The stage director’s voice.

“Stand by. House lights. Thunder. Curtain up.”

Peregrine began to pace to and fro, to and fro. Listening.

After the fourth scene he knew. It was all right. Their hearts are in it, he thought and he crept into the Prompt-side box. Winty squeezed his arm in the darkness and said, “We’ll run for months and months. It’s a wow.”

“Thank God.”

He’d been right. They had left themselves with one more step to the top and now they took it.

You darling creatures, he thought, suddenly in love with all of them. Ah, you treasures. Bless you. Bless you.

The rest of the evening was unreal. The visit to the royal box and the royal visit to the cast. The standing ovation at the end. Everything to excess. A multiple Cinderella story. Sort of.

Emily came and hugged him and cried and said: “Oh, yes, darling. Yes. Yes.”

The company collected around him and cheered. And finally the critic whose opinion he most valued astonishingly came up to him; he said he was breaking the rule of a lifetime but it had undoubtedly been the best Macbeth since Olivier’s and the best Lady Macbeth in living memory and he must do a bolt.

“We’ll get out of this,” Peregrine said. “I’m hungry.”

“Where are we going?”

“The Wig and Piglet. It’s only minutes away and they stay open till the papers come in. The manager’s getting them for me.”

“Come on, then.”

They edged through the milling crowd of shouting visitors and out the stage door. The alley was full of people waiting for actors to appear. Nobody recognized the director. They turned into the theatre car park, managed to fiddle their way out and up the lane.

At the corner of the main street stood two lonely figures, a thin and faintly elegant woman and a small boy.

“It’s William and his mum,” said Emily.

“I want to speak to the boy.”

He pulled up beside them. Emily lowered her window. “Hullo, Mrs. Smith. Hullo, William. Are you waiting for a bus?”

“We hope we are,” said Mrs. Smith.

“You’re not doing anything of the sort,” said Peregrine. “The management looks after getting you home on the first night,” he lied. “Didn’t you know? Oh, good luck; there’s a taxi coming.” Emily waved to it. “William,” Peregrine said. William ran around to the driver’s side. Peregrine got out. “You can look after your mother, can’t you? Here you are.” He pushed a note into William’s hand. “You gave a thoroughly professional performance. Good luck to you.”

The taxi pulled up. “In you get, both of you.” He gave the driver the address.

“Yes — but — I mean —” said Mrs. Smith.

“No, you don’t.” They were bundled in. “Good-night.” He slammed the door. The taxi made off.

“Phew! That was quick,” Emily said.

“If she’d had a moment to get her second wind she’d have refused. Come on, darling. How hungry I am. You can’t think.”

The Wig and Piglet was full. The head waiter showed them to a reserved table.

“A wonderful performance, sir,” he said. “They are all saying so. My congratulations.”

“Thank you. A bottle of your best champagne, Marcello.”

“It awaits you.” Marcello beamed and waved grandly at the wine bucket on their table.

“Really? Thank you.”

“Nothing,” said Peregrine when he had gone, “succeeds like success.” He looked at Emily’s excited face. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “On a night like this one should not think forward or back. I found myself imagining what it would have been like if we’d flopped.”

“Don’t. I know what you mean but don’t put the stars out.”

“No husbandry in our Heaven, tonight?” He reached out a hand. “It’s a bargain,” he said.

“A bargain. It’s because you’re hungry.”

“You may be right.”

An hour later he said she was a clever old trout. They had a cognac each to prove it and began to talk about the play.

“Gaston,” Peregrine said, “may be dotty but he’s pretty good where he is tonight, wouldn’t you say?”

“Exactly right. He’s like death itself, presiding over its feast.”

“You don’t think we’ve gone too far with him?”

“Not an inch.”

“Good. Winty says it’ll run for as long as Dougal and Maggie can take it.”

“That’s a matter of temperament, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. For Maggie, certainly. She’s rock-calm and perfectly steady. It’s Dougal who surprises me. I’d expected a good, even a harrowing, performance but not so deeply frightening a one. He’s got that superb golden-reddish appearance and I thought, we must be very clever about makeup so that the audience will see it disintegrate. But, upon my soul, he does disintegrate, he is bewitched, he has become the devil’s puppet. I began, even, to wonder if it was all right or if it might be embarrassing, as if he’d discarded his persona and we’d come face to face with his naked personal collapse. Which would be dreadful and wrong. But no. It hasn’t happened. He’s come near the brink in the last scene, but he’s still Macbeth. Thanks to Gaston, he fights like a man possessed but always with absolute control. And so — evilly. For Macduff, it’s like stamping out some horror that’s lain under a stone waiting for him.”

“And his whole performance?”

“If I could scratch about for something wrong I would. But no, he’s going great guns. The straightforward avenger.”

“I think he plays the English scene beautifully. I’m sorry,” said Emily. “I wish I could find something wrong and out-of-key or wanting readjustment somewhere but I can’t. Your problem will be to keep them up to this level.”

They talked on. Presently the door into the servery opened and their waiter came in with an armful of Sunday papers.

Peregrine’s heart suddenly thumped against his ribs. He took up the top one and flipped over the pages.

And two rave columns.

Emily saw his open paper trembling in his hands. She went through the remaining ones, folding them back at the dramatic criticisms.

“This is becoming ridiculous,” she said.

He made a strange little sound of agreement. She shoved the little pile of papers over to him. “They’re all the same, allowing for stylistic differences.”

“We’ll go home. We’re the only ones left. Poor Marcello!”

He lowered his paper and folded it. Emily saw that his eyes were red. “I can’t get over it,” he said. “It’s too much.”

He signed his bill and added an enormous tip. They were bowed out.

The Embankment was being washed down. Great fans of water swept to and fro. In the east, buildings were silhouetted against a kindling sky. London was waking up.

They drove home, let themselves in, and went to bed and a fathomless sleep.

The first member of the company to wake on Sunday was William Smith. He consulted his watch, dragged on his clothes, gave a lick to his face, and let himself out by the front door. Every Sunday at the end of their little lane, a newsman set up his wares on a flight of steps in a major traffic road. He trustfully left his customers to put the right amount in a tin, helping themselves to change when required. He kept an eye on them from the Kaff on the Korner.

William had provided himself with the exact sum. Mr. Barnes, he recollected, had said something about the “quality” papers being the ones that mattered. He purchased the most expensive and turned to the headlines.

William read it all the way home. It was glorious. At the end it said: “The smallest parts have been given the same loving attention. A pat on the head is here awarded to Master William Smith for totally avoiding the Infant Phenomenon.”

William charged upstairs shouting: “Mum! Are you awake? Hi, Mum! What’s an Infant Phenomenon? Because I’ve avoided one.”

By midday they had all read the notices and by evening most of them had rung up somebody else in the company and they were all delighted but feeling a sort of anticlimactic emptiness. The only thing left to say was: “Now we must keep it up, mustn’t we?”

Barrabell went to a meeting of the Red Fellowship. He was asked to report on his tasks. He said the actors had been too much occupied to listen to new ideas but now that they were clearly set for a long run he would embark on stage two and hoped to have more to report at the next meeting. It was a case of making haste slowly. They were all, he said, soaked up to their eyebrows in a lot of silly superstitions that had grown up around the play. He had wondered if anything could be made of this circumstance but nothing had emerged other than a highly wrought state of emotional receptivity. The correct treatment would be to attack this unprofitable nonsense.

Shakespeare, he said, was a very confused writer. His bourgeois origins distorted his thought-processes.

Maggie stayed in bed all day and Nanny answered the telephone.

Sir Dougal lunched at the Garrick Club and soaked up congratulations without showing too blatantly his intense gratification.

Simon Morten rang up Maggie and got Nanny.

King Duncan spent the afternoon cutting out notices and pasting them in his fourth book.

Nina Gaythorne got out all her remedies and good-luck objects and kissed them. This took some time as she lost count and had to begin all over again.

Malcolm and Donalbain got blamelessly drunk.

The speaking thanes and the witches all dined with Ross and his wife, bringing their own bottles, and talked shop.

The Doctor and the Gentlewoman were rung up by their friends and were touchingly excited.

The nonspeaking thanes dispersed into various unknown quarters.

And Gaston? He retired to his baleful house in Dulwich and wrote a number of indignant letters to those papers whose critics had referred to the weapons used in the duel as swords or claymores instead of claidheamh-mors.

Emily answered their telephone and, by a system they had perfected, either called Peregrine or said he was out but would be delighted to know they had rung up.

So the day passed by and the evening and on Monday morning they pulled themselves together and got down to the theatre and to the business of facing the second night and a long run of Macbeth.