Much Ado about Macbeth

by Randy McCharles

  Anna Bortolotto raised her hand. “I’m a stagehand. I don’t have a costume.”

  “Not just any stagehand, Anna. You are the lead stagehand.” Paul reached into a second box and retrieved a blank notebook. “Your job is to keep a list of all nonpersonal props. In your copy of the script, you will make notes for the movement of all the props listed in your notebook. During rehearsal and the public performance, you will ensure that those props are where they should be, when they should be. That includes the scenery flats, tables, chairs, and any other set pieces.”

  Anna’s eyes nearly exploded. “That’s more work than acting!”

  “You should have considered that during auditions.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  Paul couldn’t keep the smile from his face any longer. “And that’s why you have six assistants. But you’ll lose three during the performance. Trevor and Jocelynn will be ushers, and Sally will run the lights.

  “None of you will need costumes, but you will need to wear dark clothing. Black shoes and pants. Black turtlenecks if you have them. Stagehands must be as invisible as possible. It doesn’t hurt for the ushers to wear black either.”

  From the second box, he pulled out a rolled-up newspaper tied with string. “Does anyone know what this is? Come on, you saw it in second year.”

  Lenny said, “A fake prop.”

  Paul nodded. “We’ll use these when the script calls for a missing prop.” He waggled the newspaper. “The sooner we stop using these, the better. Okay. I have a dozen swords and one dagger in this box. Who thinks they need one?”

  Scene 2: With Thy Keen Sword Impress

  “Gah!” Netty spat great gobs of chili, cheese, and mystery meat all across the plastic surface of the table shared by the three witches. “This doesn’t taste like any dog I’ve ever eaten.”

  Agatha stared down her long nose at the mess and managed not to comment.

  Gertrude chuckled. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s a rare fool who doesn’t know that canines and cheeses don’t mix.”

  “Netty is a rare one,” Agatha said, no longer able to hold her tongue.

  The two witches cackled together while Netty fumed and rinsed out her mouth with soda pop.

  “I fail to see the humour,” said Hecate, who stood suddenly by the table, scowling distastefully at Netty’s lunch, even though the senior witch looked little better. Hecate was dressed from head to foot in heavy, grime-stained grey denim, her luxurious, black hair tucked up beneath a hard hat. Thick dust coated her face but failed to mask the woman’s elegant bone structure and inherent beauty.

  “Been sweeping chimneys?” asked Gertrude. “Heh. Now that’s an honest profession.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said the senior witch. “There are no honest professions. And chimneys haven’t needed sweeping since the invention of the gas furnace. I was paying a visit to the Kunynak silver mine in Uzbekistan.”

  “Hmph,” said Agatha. “Visiting Kunynak is number two thousand six hundred and twenty-seven on my bucket list.”

  “You have a bucket list?” asked Netty. “Why would you include a silver mine on a list of buckets?”

  Agatha ignored the onion-shaped witch. “Some of the silver from that mine is used by goblins to make jewellery.” The tall witch lifted a tarnished pendant that hung from a thin chain around her shrivelled neck. “A niece who lives in Kunynak bought this for me some years ago.”

  “You have a niece?” asked Netty.

  Agatha continued to ignore her. “It’s the only thing anyone has ever given me. I’d always hoped to visit my niece and the mine someday.”

  “Well, you can strike Kunynak off your list of buckets,” Hecate said. “I turned all of the support beams into kindling and buried the mine under a mountain. There’s nothing left to see.”

  Agatha’s fingers froze on her pendant, and her eyes bulged.

  “Why would you do that?” asked Gertrude. “Kunynak seems a little out of the way, even for you.”

  Hecate sniffed. “I had a lover there once.”

  “You had a lover?” asked Netty.

  Everyone ignored her.

  “And?” Gertrude asked.

  Hecate looked at her. “And he was in the mine when I buried it.”

  “Oh, my.” Gertrude smiled wickedly. “Lovers’ spat, huh? He done you wrong? Left you for another woman?”

  “None of the above,” said Hecate. “I murder all my lovers. Just me being me. Now down to business. How is your curse coming along?”

  Gertrude snorted. “We broke a budding actor’s leg.”

  A mewling sound came from Netty. “He lost the lead role and has been reduced to playing Thane Agnes.”

  Agatha, having partially recovered from her shock and disappointment, let out a heavy sigh. “By Thane Agnes, Netty means Thane Angus.”

  “Ah!” said Netty. “So you are listening to me.”

  “Hmm,” said Hecate. “I never liked Angus. He was always a bit of a ponce. But that’s it? A broken leg. You’ve been on this for a week. I expected more.”

  “It’s just the setup,” Gertrude said. “Our candidate is still on the rise. Heh. We haven’t begun to knock him down yet.”

  “Rome wasn’t burned in a day,” Netty said.

  “Yes,” said Hecate. “It was.” Then she vanished.

  “I don’t believe it!” Netty said.

  “That Hecate murders her lovers?” asked Gertrude.

  Agatha snorted. “Comes as no surprise.”

  “No!” Netty’s cheeks shook like jelly. “That Rome was burned in a day. I’m sure it smouldered for at least a week.”

  Agatha’s gnarled fingers fiddled with her pendant. “I suppose we may as well decide what tragedy should befall the play to put our young Macbeth out of business.”

  “We could break his leg,” Netty suggested. “Maybe knock him down some stairs.”

  The squat hag’s two sisters looked at her.

  “We did that last week,” Gertrude said.

  “We told Hecate about it thirty seconds ago,” Agatha added.

  “Oh.” Netty pushed a fistful of fries into her mouth. “I thought I’d seen it done somewhere.”

  “I do love a good broken bone,” Gertrude said. “Perhaps we should break the injured boy’s other leg.”

  Agatha drummed gnarled fingers against her lips. “During rehearsal. A battle scene accident, perhaps. Macbeth could fatally stab him.”

  “What?” asked Gertrude. “In the knee?”

  Agatha shrugged.

  “Don’t these actors use wooden swords?” asked Netty.

  “Plastic,” Gertrude said. “Safer than wood.”

  “Safe!” Netty was so scandalized, she spit out a mouthful of mushed French fries, adding them to the spewed chili dog on the table. “What good is a sword fight if it’s safe? Who would waste their time watching grown men hitting each other with plastic tubing?”

  “These aren’t grown men,” Agatha said. “These are schoolchildren. But I agree. I haven’t seen a decent gladiator fight in centuries.”

  Gertrude weaved her fingers together in a show of concentration. “We could replace Macbeth’s plastic sword with the real thing,” she suggested. “Heh. Fake weapons are accidentally replaced by real ones all the time.”

  “Like on Miami Vice,” Agatha said, “when the starter pistol was discovered to be a real handgun.”

  “Don Johnson!” Netty crowed, causing heads all throughout the restaurant to turn. “So dreamy! I mean,” the bulbous witch lowered her voice to a soft screech, “he truly brought his character to life.”

  “Or Murder, She Wrote,” Gertrude suggested. “The retractable blade that wasn’t, so the womanizing stage actor got gutted like a fish.”

  Agatha nodded.

  “My favourite episode,” Netty added, “was where the supposed fresh fish was frozen, so instead of catching his dinner, the startled tourist received a pickerel, bang, straight through the heart
.”

  “I don’t think I saw that one,” Gertrude said.

  “So it’s settled, then?” asked Agatha. “Netty will swap our Macbeth’s plastic sword for a real one, and Macbeth will serve his predecessor a fatal blow to the knee?”

  The three witches cackled.

  “As soon as the boy’s back in school,” Netty added.

  The other two witches looked at her.

  Agatha snorted through her long nose. “The boy’s not back in school? It’s been three days!”

  “If I broke my leg,” Gertrude said, “I’d be back on the job in three minutes.”

  Netty let out a shrill laugh and grinned at her bent and misshapen sister. “If you broke your leg, who’d notice?”

  All three hags burst into laughter.

  “No matter.” Agatha cast a dark gaze around the table. “Our Macbeth shall wield his sword, and the stage shall become watered with blood.”

  The three witches nodded agreement then looked down at the spoiled tabletop as though Netty’s spewed lunch were the blood of drama students. Silence enshrouded the restaurant booth until Netty said, “I’m going to order another chili cheese dog!”

  Agatha and Gertrude turned their astonished gaze toward the rotund witch.

  “I’ll tell them to hold the cheese this time.” Netty wiggled one of her loose teeth with her tongue. “And the dog too.” She sniffed at the table. “And possibly the chili.”

  Scene 3: Unwelcome Things

  Paul had to admit that he was getting used to Sylvia’s coming to school with him for his morning class with his senior students. Of course, his wife still had her real estate work and other things to do for the house, so they couldn’t drive in together, which meant bringing both cars. And since Susie started school sometimes earlier and sometimes later than Paul, she usually caught a ride with a friend.

  That all three family members took three different vehicles to get to the same place within an hour of each other screamed dysfunction of some kind. Likely it was the same kind that prevented them from sitting down for supper at the same time. Sometimes Paul wondered what the world would be like if families spent more time together.

  The one drawback of having his wife as a workmate was that it had become more difficult to find a parking spot. With Sylvia helping him prepare for class, he could often arrive twenty minutes later than he normally would, meaning he was sometimes the last teacher to arrive at the school. And he needed a second stall for Sylvia’s car. But the aggravation was worth it. Twenty extra minutes first thing in the morning was worth an hour at any other time of the day. Paul was enjoying being spoiled.

  After finding a parking spot and climbing out of his car, he grabbed his briefcase and waited for Sylvia. His wife parked in the only remaining stall and joined him on the way to the main entrance.

  “I’ll have a word with Winston,” Paul said. “It’s the same thing every year. Over the summer, students somehow forget all of the school regulations, including that they aren’t allowed to park in the teachers’ lot.”

  Sylvia patted him on the arm. “The students’ lot is filled to overflowing. I don’t wonder that they park wherever they can.”

  Paul turned in a circle as he walked, his arm flung wide to take in the whole area. “The school is surrounded by residential streets. It wouldn’t kill a healthy, young teenager to walk a block.”

  “Or a teacher,” Sylvia said.

  Paul smiled. “I miss the good old days. When I was in high school, perhaps a dozen students drove cars.”

  “And when I was a teenager,” Sylvia said, “I had to walk twenty miles to school, uphill, both directions.”

  “What?”

  Sylvia laughed. “That’s what you’ll sound like if you tell your classes that, in your day, students walked to school.”

  Paul laughed as well, knowing she was right, and stooped to pick up a piece of litter outside the school entrance. It was a white slip of paper the size of a book cover. The side facing up was blank. He turned it over and saw what he could only describe as a cartoon witch, complete with long nose; warts; and a tall, pointy hat. Stamped over the witch was a red circle with a diagonal line running through it.

  Sylvia looked over his shoulder and read the caption. “Witches are not welcome at Ashcroft High.”

  “What cereal box did this come out of?” Paul crumpled the paper in preparation to toss it into the recycling bin he knew was just inside the school’s doors.

  “You don’t suppose it has anything to do with the play?” Sylvia asked. “You did say that Mrs. Cadwell has a bee in her bonnet about witches.”

  “Of course it’s about the play,” Paul said. “I’m surprised it took Cadwell this long to take another shot at me.”

  Paul tried to push open the swinging door of the recycle bin lid, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Let me,” said Sylvia. She grabbed the entire lid with both hands and pulled it off the bin.

  Paul’s jaw dropped when he saw that the bin was filled to the brim with leaflets. He pulled out three that were in reasonable shape and tossed in the crumpled one so Sylvia could replace the lid.

  “Not that Winston won’t have seen them already,” Paul said as he slipped the leaflets into a pocket of his sport coat. “The things I miss when I come to school twenty minutes late.”

  Scene 4: And on Thy Blade and

  Dudgeon Gouts of Blood

  The hallways between the main entrance and the Ashcroft-Tate Auditorium were strewn with leaflets. Paul glanced down a side hallway and saw Jerry Noonan, the caretaker, pushing a broom with a hundred pounds of paper in front of it.

  Sylvia put a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe this. That poor caretaker.”

  Paul sighed. “Students pull stunts like this all the time. It takes an exceptional parent to outdo them.”

  “Parent? You mean Mrs. Cadwell? Where did she get all the paper?”

  “I hope she bought it, and the printing, with PTA funds.” Paul grimaced. “If she used school supplies, we’ll be printing our play programs on toilet paper.”

  When they arrived at the auditorium, Paul expected to find a truckload of paper blocking the stage area and possibly the theatre seating as well. The play could well be cancelled by the simple expedient that the Ashcroft-Tate Auditorium would be closed for cleaning. But the stage and seating were untouched.

  Sylvia must have had the same expectation. “Has the caretaker been here already?”

  Paul shook his head. “No point leaving leaflets here. It would be like singing at deaf people.”

  The students began arriving after the second-period bell, and Paul was surprised to see many of them clutching familiar leaflets.

  “Gemma?” he asked. “What are those papers stuffed between the pages of your script?”

  Paul’s Witch Number Three grabbed a fistful of leaflets and fanned herself. “Souvenirs, Mr. Samson. I’m going to take some home for my hope chest.”

  Paul couldn’t argue with that. He had three souvenirs of his own, though he preferred to think of them as evidence.

  Sylvia murmured to him in a low voice, “If that’s what Gemma keeps in her hope chest, I pity her future husband.”

  “I suspect she meant something else. A scrap box, perhaps.”

  His wife looked at him, so Paul clarified. “A three-dimensional scrap book? I don’t know what kids call things these days.”

  Lenny Cadwell slouched into the auditorium with more than just his usual disinterest on his face. Paul had expected embarrassment, but what he saw was anger. He tried and failed to imagine what Lenny’s next conversation with his mother would look like.

  Then Paul found himself feeling an unexpected emotion of his own: guilt. Susie’s passion for the play had brought them closer than they had been in years, while Lenny’s passion alienated him from his mother. He briefly wondered if there was some sort of relationship karma whose balance had to be maintained.

  Since there was nothing he could say
or do that would be helpful, he started the class. “I don’t see anyone with their prop bags. Please go and get them.”

  While the students wandered off backstage, Paul continued speaking through the megaphone so they could hear him. “Dress rehearsals won’t begin for a while yet, so you don’t have to get into costume, but I do want you to get into the habit of keeping tabs on your costumes and props.” Secretly, though, Paul just wanted his students to feel embarrassed about hauling out an empty bag each morning and remind them to think about their costumes and personal props.

  When the students returned to the front of the stage area, Lenny carried a torn bag in one hand and his prop sword in the other. His anger from earlier had been replaced by astonishment.

  “What is it, Lenny?”

  Lenny let the ripped bag containing his Macbeth costume fall to the floor and held the sword by the pommel with both hands. “I think this is a real sword.”

  Paul couldn’t help but be amused. This was the best acting he had ever seen from Lenny. “Why would you think it’s a real sword?”

  “It weighs a ton,” Lenny said. “And it cut my finger.”

  Paul leaped off his director’s chair. Even before he was close enough to confiscate the sword, he could see that the blade wasn’t hollow plastic. The weapon’s design was identical to the silver sword Lenny had bought with his costume, but it lacked the waxy look of plastic.

  Sure enough, when Lenny let him take the sword, Paul guessed that it weighed at least two and a half pounds. There was a splash of red along one edge—blood.

  He stared at the boy but couldn’t see where Lenny had hurt himself. He hoped that meant that it wasn’t much worse than a paper cut. “Lenny, please report to the nurse. You’ll need disinfectant and a bandage.”

  Lenny gawked at him. “It’s just a flesh wound.” Then he smiled as if at a secret joke.

  Hardly secret, Paul thought. What drama teacher doesn’t recognize Monty Python when he hears it? “Even so,” he said, “school policy.”