The Twist of a Knife

4 The First Review

Going backstage at the theatre is always a bizarre experience. It’s like stepping into a secret world.

All the comforts that the audience enjoys and expects disappear the moment you step through the stage door. Backstage, everything is relentlessly old-fashioned and utilitarian, as if the architects have deliberately set out to remind the actors and the crew that they are only the servants and matter less than the paying guests. The Vaudeville was built in the Romanesque style back in the late nineteenth century. Henry Irving had his first noticeable success there. I’ve described the luxuriousness of the lobby and the auditorium. But the corridors and dressing rooms on the other side of the mirror were quite another matter. Here, the flooring was covered by linoleum. Pipes and cables snaked willy-nilly along the walls, twisting between fire extinguishers, alarm boxes and overbright, naked light bulbs. I was fascinated by the pieces of defunct machinery that had been screwed into place a century ago and then forgotten. Even the noticeboard with its tatty cards and clippings could have come from a police station or a failing secondary school. I found it all rather alluring. The backstage area of any London theatre would make a great set. One glance and you’d know exactly where you were.

It was pelting with rain when I made my way back to Maiden Lane, the little backstreet in which the stage door of the Vaudeville was located. Normally, the theatre would have closed by ten o’clock, but Keith, the deputy stage-door manager, had agreed we could hang out there until midnight. Sky Palmer had arrived ahead of me and was shaking water out of a Gucci umbrella. It had the trademark diamond-shaped pattern and logo and, unlike Ahmet’s watch, I didn’t think it was fake. I was quite surprised she had agreed to come. She didn’t often socialise with the rest of the company, but perhaps, on the first night, she felt she couldn’t let the others down.

I had barely spoken to her at the party and congratulated her on her performance. ‘I thought you were great tonight.’

‘Did you? I don’t know …’

Why did she have to be so unenthusiastic? ‘I think the audience enjoyed it.’

‘Maybe.’ She didn’t sound convinced.

Fortunately, we were rescued by Keith, who stepped out of his cramped, awkwardly shaped office carrying a white box. ‘This came for you,’ he said. He handed it to me.

It was a first-night present with a label wishing me good luck, signed by Ahmet. Sky was looking at it dubiously but I have to say I was rather touched. I opened and took out an object tightly wrapped in tissue paper. I tore off the paper to reveal, of all things, an ornamental dagger, about twenty centimetres long, in a black leather sheath. The blade was silver and very sharp. The handle was wooden, embossed with a circular, metallic medallion decorated with what might have been Celtic knotwork. It looked like an old Scottish dirk, although it was obviously a reproduction and not very well made. The medallion wobbled when I touched it.

‘Oh … look at that,’ I said, showing it to Sky. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking that it was also rather odd. ‘I don’t know what it’s got to do with the play,’ I added. It was true. Mindgame is violent, but nobody is killed – and certainly not with a dirk.

‘You have to look at the blade,’ Sky said.

I did as she suggested and saw four words engraved in the metal: Is this a dagger …?

‘He did Macbeth last year,’ she went on in a matter-of-fact way. I was surprised that, unlike most actors, she wasn’t superstitious about naming what most of them would call ‘the Scottish play’. It reinforced my impression that she wasn’t completely committed to the acting world. ‘He put it on in the ruins of a castle in Yorkshire, but it didn’t last very long. It poured with rain for the first three performances, Banquo slipped over in the mud, and it closed at the end of the week. He had these made for the cast.’

‘And he’s giving the ones that were left over to us?’

‘That’s right. I’ve got mine in my dressing room. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.’

‘Well,’ I tried, ‘I suppose it’s the thought that counts.’

‘Yes. He thought we wouldn’t notice he’s a complete cheapskate.’

We signed our names and added the time in the register that was kept in the corridor, then went through the swing doors and past the first dressing room. Jordan Williams came out and laughed when he saw me with water trickling down my face. Unlike Sky, I hadn’t had an umbrella.

‘You look like a drowned rat!’ he exclaimed, enunciating every word as if they’d been rehearsed. He handed me a towel. At the same time, he noticed the knife. ‘I see you’ve picked up your opening-night prezzie.’ He produced his own and waved it at me. ‘Touché’. He was evidently in a good mood. As far as he was concerned, the performance had gone well and he’d already had plenty to drink. ‘Shall we go down?’

The Vaudeville is unusual among London’s Victorian theatres in that it has a green room where the actors can meet and relax. We went down the stairs and along the corridor to a door that opened into a small, square space where Ewan and Tirian were already waiting for us. As promised, Tirian had opened a bottle of Scotch. He was sitting at a table with a half-filled glass in front of him and a backpack resting against his chair. Sky had popped into her dressing room, which was next door, and returned with a bottle of vodka and a chocolate cake – both of them gifts from friends. Jordan, in the dressing gown that he always wore between performances and still holding his dagger, threw himself into an armchair with his leg lolling over one side. Ewan poured him a glass of whisky, spilling a few drops onto the carpet and adding to the stains from a hundred first nights, a liquid history of the Vaudeville. The room would have been shabby in any other context but here it seemed homely, with a battered table, chairs and a worn-out sofa. There was a sink on one side and an old fridge. The rain was hammering at the window, but inside it was warm and cosy, with a two-bar heater turned on full and a CD of Noel Coward playing in the background. Everyone was relaxed. Even Jordan and Tirian seemed at ease with one another.

When I look back on the London production of Mindgame, I think this was my only truly happy night. It represented the brief interval between believing that the play might have succeeded and knowing that it hadn’t. For that one hour in the green room, I was part of the company and during that time all the tension and the hostility that had accompanied the rehearsal process evaporated – as if we had accepted that whatever happened, we were all in this together. We had given it our best shot. We might as well get drunk and enjoy ourselves. We talked. We laughed. We retold some of the stories from rehearsals and the road. Tirian did an imitation of Ewan that actually caught him remarkably well. Jordan used his Scottish dagger to cut slices of cake.

At about half past eleven, Ahmet turned up with two bottles of Turkish champagne and – no surprise – Maureen accompanied him. She had dressed very smartly for the first night. Along with the fur and the jewellery, she’d had her hair permed so ferociously that it looked like one of those balls of wire you use to scrub pans. Ahmet was in an ebullient mood, smoking a foul-smelling cigarette even though it wasn’t allowed backstage. He had come from the party with compliments ringing in his ears. He was certain the play was a success and grabbed me with both hands.

‘You are a genius!’ he exclaimed. ‘A great genius!’ He sounded almost relieved. As if he had never believed it until now.

Everyone picked up their glasses and drank a toast to me. By now we’d all had too much to drink.

It couldn’t last long. And it didn’t.

It was at exactly twelve o’clock midnight when Sky suddenly looked up from her phone.

‘There’s a review online!’ she exclaimed.

‘That’s a bit early,’ Ewan said. He didn’t look pleased. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘Harriet Throsby.’ She gazed at the screen and we all saw the look that came over her face. ‘I can’t read this,’ she said, in a low voice.

‘Let’s see it.’ Tirian snatched the phone from her and laid it on the table. We all crowded round. This is what we read:

MINDGAME AT THE VAUDEVILLE

by Harriet Throsby

Is there any torment greater than the comedy thriller that is neither comedic nor thrilling? It’s so easy to fall between the two stools … and what you might call a theatrical stool, in quite another sense, will inevitably result. That, I’m afraid, is what Anthony Horowitz provides at the Vaudeville Theatre. Known for his Alex Rider series of books, which, to be fair, have encouraged a generation of boys to read, his talents fall lamentably short of what is required for an entertaining evening in the more adult arena of the West End and he must take much of the blame for what ensues. Having said that, I have to ask what it was that drew so much talent to this painful farrago.

We can dispense with the story fairly quickly. A journalist, Mark Styler (Tirian Kirke), arrives at a lunatic asylum to interview one of the inmates, a serial killer by the name of Easterman. But first he has to persuade the asylum’s director, Dr Farquhar (Jordan Williams), to allow him access. We quickly realise that things are not as they should be. Why is there a skeleton in Dr Farquhar’s office? What are the strange screams coming from B Wing? Why is Nurse Plimpton (Sky Palmer) terrified?

The lunatics have taken over the asylum, that’s why. Nothing is what it seems, and as the identities of the main players are shuffled around like playing cards before a particularly feeble magic trick, even the set joins in. A door opens into a cupboard one minute and into a corridor the next. A picture on the wall changes slowly. It may be that these special effects are meant to say something about madness and sanity, about how we can’t trust our perception. But sadly, the production has been so cheaply mounted that they aren’t very special at all and tell us only that we should have gone somewhere else.

As the play continues, the gratuitous violence mounts. It turns out that Easterman, the killer, is free and in control of the action … which becomes ever more distasteful as Nurse Plimpton is tied to a chair and threatened with immolation. By this point, I myself was tempted to punch an usher and make a break for the exit. The casual use of a woman as a would-be victim of male-inflicted aggression is particularly displeasing. Sky Palmer is a talented actress who struggles with a part that demeans and devalues her at every turn. By contrast, Jordan Williams seems to be having a good time as Dr Farquhar, but has failed to notice that nobody else is. Mr Williams is becoming increasingly grandiloquent with age and gives the impression that he is only performing to entertain himself. In this, he may well be right. One really must wonder how many more bad career choices he can make before he realises that he no longer has a choice or, indeed, a career.

Most disappointing for me is Tirian Kirke, whom I recognised from the first time I saw him as one of the most promising actors of his generation. It’s a promise broken. His performance is quite childish and, surprisingly, he is completely unconvincing when things turn violent. Kirke was so very good in Line of Duty on TV, but has failed to make a successful debut on the stage. He has been poorly assisted by Ewan Lloyd, who seems to be directing on autopilot. In his hands, the play never really catches fire, limping to a conclusion I had guessed long before the interval.

My advice to Mr Horowitz would be to stick to children’s books, where, perhaps, he will find a less discerning audience and one that will put up with his somewhat jejune ideas. And my advice to the audience? I’d say you should run to get tickets for this one – if you really want to see it. I suspect it won’t be around for long.

There was a long silence once everyone had read it.

It was Ewan who spoke first. ‘Well, at least she’s given us a quote,’ he said. ‘“Run to get tickets”! We can put that outside the theatre.’

I didn’t know if he was joking or not.

It was a gut punch; there could be no denying it. The fact that it was the first review – and out so quickly – only made it worse. Would other critics read it? Was this to be the opening volley in an onslaught? Almost every person in the room had been insulted by Harriet Throsby and I could imagine each one of them obsessing about the parts of the review that referred to them. Ewan Lloyd on autopilot. Jordan Williams grandiloquent. Tirian Kirke childish. Only Sky Palmer had got off relatively lightly. She was a talented actress undermined by the idiot writer. And what of me? Harriet had devoted more words to me than to anyone else, cheerfully apportioning me ‘much of the blame’. Of course, I would have to pretend that I didn’t mind, that it was just one review, that she didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was already overwhelmed by a sense of failure that had fallen on me like a huge wave, dashing away any chance of a long West End run, a transfer to Broadway, the film of the play, the sequel. What struck me more than anything was the malice that ran through the review, the sense that she had enjoyed thinking up her little bons mots and spitting them in my direction. That joke about the stool, for example. Did she really have to do that?

‘What is “jejune”?’ Ahmet asked. There was a suggestion of hopefulness in his voice. Perhaps he was thinking that it might be a compliment.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maureen said. She was standing right next to him, white-faced, her lips pressed tightly together.

‘The bitch!’ Jordan had not raised his voice, but the words exploded out of him. His eyes were staring, his face filled with fury. ‘This isn’t a review. This is a filthy piece of slander! And it’s the third time she’s done this to me. Everything I do – every time – she has it in for me. I’ll kill her. I swear to you … !’ He was holding the dagger that Ahmet had given him. He slammed it down into what was left of the cake.

‘It’s just one review.’ Ewan was echoing exactly what I had been thinking, doing his job as director, trying to hold us all together. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘This is just her opinion,’ he went on, tiredly. ‘The other critics often disagree with her. It was the same when I directed Antigone.’

‘Someone should put a knife in her!’ Jordan hadn’t finished yet. ‘She’s a monster. She shouldn’t get away with it.’

‘How did she manage to write it so quickly?’ I asked. ‘The curtain only came down a couple of hours ago.’

‘She starts her reviews before the play’s finished,’ Ewan explained. ‘She’s famous for it. She writes about the first half during the interval and does the rest on her way home.’

‘She lives in the back end of Paddington,’ Sky said. ‘She’s got a place near the canal. She probably finished it in the back of a taxi.’

‘But why has she posted it?’ I went on. ‘Couldn’t she wait until Sunday?’

‘She must have wanted to get ahead of the pack.’ Sky hastily turned off her phone and slid it into her pocket. ‘I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t opened it now.’

Ahmet was sitting with his shoulders slumped, his face darker than ever. His hair was still wet from the rain and stuck to his skull like paint. He snatched up his cigarettes and lit one, then threw the packet down. ‘What this woman says is all lies,’ he announced. ‘In Bath, in Reading, in Windsor, people liked the play. I was there! I saw them. What she writes here … this is shit.’

‘She’s disgusting,’ Maureen said quietly.

Tirian hadn’t spoken for a while. He seemed to have shrunk inside his expensive clothes, as if he – rather than they – had just come out of the washing machine, and right then he looked a bit like a teenager, sullen and scrawny, biting his lower lip as if he’d been told off for talking in class. ‘Sod her!’ he said. ‘I’m going home. I’ve had enough to drink anyway.’ He collected his few belongings, snatched up his backpack and hurried out of the room.

We all wanted to leave, but to end the party immediately would be to admit that we’d been defeated by Harriet Throsby’s review, proving her power over us. So the six of us who were left talked for a few more minutes and drank some more vodka and whisky. But our hearts weren’t in it. Sky was the next to go. It may have been that she was more miserable than any of us – but then she was the one who had spoiled the evening by showing us the review. I followed her.

I couldn’t wait to get out. I wanted to go home, to put the Vaudeville behind me, to forget the play had happened. I knew I was being childish. It was only a bad review. But there isn’t a writer in the world who hasn’t felt that sense of anger, shame, resentfulness and sheer misery that comes when a critic lets loose. It’s just that some of us hide it better than others.

The rain had eased off, but I was still damp and shivering by the time I got back to my flat in Clerkenwell. It was one o’clock in the morning and I was worn out. I went to bed in the spare room and fell asleep almost immediately. Not surprisingly, I dreamed of Harriet Throsby. Once again, I saw those horn-rimmed glasses she’d been wearing and heard the brittle edge to her voice. Jordan Williams was also there, stabbing the cake, and I heard him too: ‘Someone should put a knife in her!’ That was when I woke up.

I looked at my watch. It was twenty past eleven. I don’t know how I’d managed to sleep in so late, but the pounding in my head told me that a mixture of whisky, vodka and Turkish wine had probably helped. The moment I padded out to the kitchen in my bare feet, I knew the flat was empty. Jill would have gone to work hours ago. Sure enough, there was a Post-it note from her stuck to the fridge. Quite a good review in The Times. Hope others are OK. Back at 6 p.m. Don’t forget laundry. Quite good. I knew Jill too well. We’d worked together for years in television and we both knew that ‘quite good’ was never good enough.

I wasted the rest of the morning. I was tempted to go out and get the newspapers or check them out online, but that’s something I never do any more. Why rush out in search of a self-inflicted wound? I imagined Ewan or Ahmet would call me with the bad news. It was always possible that Throsby had turned out to be the lone voice of dissent. Throsby and The Times. Maybe some of the other critics had loved the play. I decided that, for a few hours more, I would live in hope.

So I made myself breakfast. I had a bath and listened to music. I fiddled with the next book I was about to start writing – Moonflower Murders – but although I liked the idea of forward motion, moving on to the next project, anything that wasn’t a play, the words wouldn’t come. I stared out of the window at the Shard and St Paul’s Cathedral and vaguely wondered if it would be possible to hang-glide from one to the other. As it turned out, this was something Alex Rider would do in his next adventure. I drank two mugs of tea and ate too many chocolate digestive biscuits.

At ten past four, the doorbell rang.

I went to the intercom, assuming it would be a delivery. Living six floors up and with no video camera, I seldom saw anyone’s face. My day was punctuated by disembodied voices. ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Horowitz?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s the police. Can we come in?’

My first thought was that something had happened to Jill or to one of my sons. I hurried down six flights of stairs and over to the double set of doors at the end of the hallway. I was still in my bedroom slippers and I had forgotten my keys, so I had to wedge the inner door behind me with one foot whilst stretching awkwardly to push open the outer one. And that was how I was, strangely contorted, as I took in the two figures standing on the pavement and realised that I knew them and that they were really the last people in the world I wanted to see.

The bulky frame of Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw was blocking my view of Cowcross Street with an expression on her face that brilliantly amalgamated a scowl and a smile. Her assistant, DC Mills, was behind her.

‘Hello, Anthony,’ she said. ‘I wonder if we could have a word?’