The Fourth Wall

by Barbara Paul

  Rosemary spoke up. “I think you ought to do it Hugh’s way. I mean, he’s the actor, after all.”

  Hugh blew her a kiss.

  “But there are other actors involved. Hugh, if you go out there and start playing it the regular way, you’re going to throw everybody else off.”

  “Not if you tell them to switch back.”

  Ah, that was it. In John Reddick’s absence, Hugh wanted me to order the cast to return to acting the play the way they’d rehearsed it. Well, I wasn’t going to do it. I shook my head. “No, Hugh. You can’t switch back now.”

  He was on the verge of accepting it when Rosemary said, “He doesn’t have to do what you say. I mean, you’re not the director. You only, uh, well.”

  Wrote the play, you fool girl.

  Rosemary got up from the dressing table and slipped her arm around Hugh’s waist. She smiled up at him, feeling her power. “I think you ought to do it the way you want to, Hugh.”

  I sighed. I was too old and too tired to have to compete with sweet young things like Rosemary Odell. When a man doesn’t marry until he reaches fifty, he sometimes chooses a mate that leaves his friends and well-wishers a little nonplused. Rosemary’s attraction was blatantly sexual; Hugh couldn’t keep his hands off her. Rosemary was of the generation that had grown up on rock music and television, so she was both a petrophile and a bibliophobe. Hugh worshipped her.

  While I was trying to think what to say next, Hugh moved over to the washbasin for a glass of water and swallowed some pills. He suffered from asthma, and I mean suffered. Daily medication and weekly injections kept it under control, and the only way the respiratory ailment had interfered with his career was to prohibit his making a Hollywood movie. He’d acted in movies and television shows filmed in New York and Europe, but California had defeated him. He’d turned out to be allergic to all the grasses growing in the southern part of the state. The one time he’d gone out there to make a movie, he’d had to drop out after two days.

  “Hugh,” I said, “I can’t force you to do anything. All I can do is appeal to your professionalism. Right now the performance is the only important thing. Act with the others, not against them. Please.”

  There was a rap on the door. “Two minutes, Mr. Odell.”

  I started to leave, but Hugh stopped me. “Don’t worry, Abby. You can count on me.”

  Relieved, I thanked him. As I left, I could hear Rosemary complaining. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s only one performance. I mean, it’s not the end of the world or anything.”

  Soon after the beginning of the second act, that idiot audience finally tumbled to the fact that they were seeing something extraordinary. Hugh Odell and the rest of the cast continued to support Ian Cavanaugh’s heroic efforts, and the audience began to respond. At the end of the performance they pounded their hands together and someone even yelled “Bravo!” I tried to convince myself I was glad for Ian’s sake, but the afternoon left a sour taste in my mouth.

  Home was a brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street, and that’s where I headed. Perhaps it was an unconscious avoidance of the problem of the second act, but all I seemed able to think about was Sylvia Markey’s cat. I prowled around turning on lamps, but lighting the rooms didn’t lighten my mood a bit. I opted for the distractions of late-afternoon television. Rerun Heaven.

  Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy were all reminding one another of their duties. Scotty spoke of his engines in the language of lovers. Lt. Uhura opened the hailing frequencies.

  My ex-husband and I had kept a cat. She’d lived with us for six years, a funny little animal that gave us at least one good laugh every day. If I’d ever come home and found her head on my dresser …

  Who? I couldn’t think of anyone in the Foxfire company capable of that kind of malice. If the cat had been, say, poisoned—that would have been bad enough. But the vicious, sadistic dismembering of the animal could only be the work of someone not quite right in the head. And the dismembering had gone on backstage at the very time everyone else was getting ready for the performance.

  The backstage crew was small for Foxfire. I knew them all fairly well with the exception of the properties manager, a rather shy young man named Jerry. He was the one Leo Gunn had chewed out for letting the attaché case get on stage with its grisly contents.

  John Reddick and most of the cast I knew like family. None of them could have done it, I was sure. But against my will, one name floated to the surface of my mind.

  Ian Cavanaugh.

  It wasn’t that I believed Ian capable of cat-slaughter; I’d thought of him simply because I had no idea what he was capable of. Although I’d known Ian for eight years, I didn’t really know him. He was a reserved man, managing to remain remote and even aloof in a let-it-all-hang-out profession. He never capitalized on his family for publicity; in eight years I’d met his wife only once and his daughter never. He brushed off interviewers who asked too-personal questions and never spoke of his life before he entered the theater. He existed for the world only while he was acting; what he did with the rest of his life was none of your business, thank you. I liked his rather prickly defense of his privacy and often wished some other people I knew would follow his example.

  But the fact remained that Ian Cavanaugh was a virtual stranger to me. I’d never particularly wanted it any other way, but right now I was wishing I knew him better.

  My refrigerator was empty; there hadn’t been time to stock up since I got back. I went to a deli for a bite before going back to the theater.

  Backstage there was some talk of the matinee audience, but mostly there was no talk at all. Jerry the prop man kept opening the attaché case (new) and checking the contents.

  “Abby.”

  I turned to face Sylvia Markey.

  “Have you finished the new opening for the second act?”

  I stared at her. She knew I’d just got back to town the day before.

  “It’s just not working the way it is,” she went on. “And we really can’t wait much longer. When can we have it?”

  “When it’s written,” I said. “Not one minute before.”

  “Now look, Abby, you’ve got to understand something.” The professional telling the amateur how it’s done. “If that second act isn’t fixed soon, this play is going to close. Gene Ramsay told me so.” Gene Ramsay was our producer. “So you can’t afford to keep us waiting. And it does take some time to learn new lines, you know.”

  “Come off it, Sylvia. You know I’ve only just learned there’s a problem.”

  “Well, it’s your problem, isn’t it? You wrote the play. Why didn’t you catch it during tryouts? That’s what you were there for, weren’t you?”

  I started to snap back at her but ended up laughing instead. We should have caught it during tryouts. That was exactly what I’d been saying ever since I got back.

  I told Sylvia her eye make-up was smeared and watched her hurry away to her dressing room. Then I told myself she was still upset about the cat, but I didn’t believe my own lie. No, Sylvia was just being her normal snotty self. I didn’t believe for one minute that Gene Ramsay had told her the play would close if the second act wasn’t fixed soon. Ramsay closed plays only when financial disaster was a certainty; artistic values had nothing to do with it. Foxfire hadn’t paid back its investors yet, but its advance sales were satisfactory. It wouldn’t be smart business to close now. Sylvia had made the whole thing up.

  Ian Cavanaugh was arguing with the wardrobe mistress. John Reddick was speaking soothing words to the young girl who played Sylvia Markey’s daughter; Hugh Odell was grumbling because the make-up cabinet was locked and he needed more pancake. Leo Gunn was swearing at a control panel lever that was stuck.

  Leo had for his assistant a young woman named Carla Banner who’d tried her luck as an actress and then decided her real talent lay in backstage work. I’d seen her perform once off-off-Broadway and I applauded the wisdom of her decision. There was a tenta
tiveness about her performance that made audiences uncomfortable, the way parents get uncomfortable at the senior class play—praying that Johnny doesn’t forget his lines. Carla Banner seemed quite happy working as an assistant stage manager, but even here her tentative approach sometimes got in the way.

  Right now she was standing uncomfortably by the open door of Sylvia Markey’s dressing room. Carla had a message for Sylvia from Leo Gunn, but Sylvia was talking on the phone. Sylvia turned in her chair and saw Carla waiting to speak to her; but instead of covering the mouthpiece of the receiver and asking Carla what she wanted, Sylvia deliberately prolonged the conversation. Carla stood first on one foot and then on the other until Hugh Odell came along and dragged her away to unlock the make-up cabinet.

  Meanwhile, Jerry the prop man was nervously opening the attaché case one more time.

  “Relax, Jerry,” I told him. “It won’t happen again.”

  “How do you know? You don’t know it won’t happen again!” He was very nervous.

  I spread my hands. “No more cats backstage, are there?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a cat. It could be something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “How do I know, like what? I don’t know! Something else!” Jerry threw up his hands and hurried away.

  I sighed and got myself out of there. Once I’d taken my seat in the auditorium, I steeled myself for a somewhat less-than-perfect performance.

  And got the surprise of my life.

  Tonight’s audience was the antithesis of the cretins who’d attended the matinee. They were alert and attentive and with the play from almost the opening line. The actors sensed immediately they had a good audience and proceeded to give them their money’s worth. I had never seen Sylvia Markey perform better—she was strong and graceful and a thousand per cent believable. Hugh Odell was up, filling the air with electricity every time he entered. In fact, everybody was good. But once again it was Ian Cavanaugh who made me sit there with my mouth open.

  Bravura acting and ensemble acting are about as opposite as any two kinds of acting can be. Bravura acting is powerful, full of risks, elevating when it’s done right but mere scenery-chewing when it isn’t. It’s a play-length solo, food for any actor’s ego. But in ensemble playing the actor must suppress his ego; he must make himself one part of a larger whole, a piece of a pattern. He must never sacrifice the stage picture for the temporary gratifications of drawing attention to himself.

  Within a few hours Ian Cavanaugh had switched from one type of actor to the other without missing a beat. That very afternoon he’d given the bravura performance of his life, in a play not written for bravura acting—and now here he was fitting into the ensemble as snugly as if he’d never been away. What discipline the man had! I’d always looked on Ian as an attractive man I liked to watch on stage, but definitely a lightweight. I was wrong, dead wrong. The man was an actor. A real one.

  This was a performance to renew any disgruntled playwright’s faith in the theater. Even the laggy part in Act II didn’t seem too bad. At the end the audience was on its feet applauding with abandon.

  Backstage was charged with excitement. So many strangers came up to me with kind words about the play that I had to give up trying to remember all their names. Sylvia was having the time of her life playing queen bee, Ian was surrounded by admiring ladies, and John Reddick was talking a mile a minute to a group of starry-eyed youngsters.

  Gradually the visitors drifted away and the actors were able to get out of their costumes and make-up. Except for Leo Gunn, the crew had already left. Ian and John stood grinning at each other like two small boys who’d just hit back-to-back home runs.

  “Well, Abby?” asked Ian. “What do you think? How did you like it tonight?”

  Ian didn’t fish for compliments often, so I gave him one. “How would you like to be in my next twenty plays?”

  He laughed and looked pleased.

  Jake Steiner appeared to collect Sylvia, who made her exit trilling good nights. John Reddick and a few of the cast and I trooped off to a nearby watering place to congratulate ourselves on being such clever and talented people.

  3

  It took me over a week to rewrite the opening of the second act—it was even trickier than I’d thought. But at last I was satisfied. The new version moved faster, got to the point sooner. A cough suppressant for the audience.

  John Reddick had to reblock the first half of the act. Then on Sunday morning we met with the cast and understudies to rehearse the changes. Why Sunday? I wondered. There’d be more time on Monday—no performance that night.

  “We’ll be rehearsing tomorrow too,” said John, “but we have a slight problem. Cavanaugh won’t be available during the day this week. He’s taping an episode of ‘Murphy’s Law.’”

  “It’s in my contract,” smiled Ian.

  What rotten timing. Because of some asinine TV show, our leading man would be showing up at the theater exhausted every night at a time he’d need to be especially alert. Also, he’d miss the Wednesday matinee. Ian’s understudy was making no attempt to hide his delight with this arrangement.

  “I thought that show taped in California,” I said.

  “It does, normally,” said Ian. “But this season they’re shooting two episodes in New York.”

  “You’re not in both of them?” I asked, alarmed.

  “No, just this one.”

  “Murphy’s Law” was a phony-tough cops-and-robbers show in which the characters all spoke that clichéd street talk in which things don’t happen, they go down. The series used a guest villain every week, and this week it was Ian.

  “What dastardly deeds do you perform?” Hugh Odell asked him.

  “Oh, a couple of murders, fraud, drug distribution, illegal sale of firearms. A little wife beating. Nothing special.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating. For “Murphy’s Law” that was just an average episode.

  “Could we please get on with the rehearsal?” asked Sylvia Markey in icy tones.

  It wasn’t really a rehearsal. The cast had to go on later in the day and perform the second act in the old way, and John Reddick was afraid that rehearsing now would simply confuse them. So he contented himself with explaining the changes I’d made and the new blocking he’d drawn up. They read it through once, walking out the new blocking. Tomorrow during the day they’d rehearse in earnest, with Ian’s understudy. Monday night they’d rehearse again, with Ian. Tuesday night the new second act would be introduced into the performance.

  It should be enough. With the exception of one young girl in the cast, they’d all been through this before. It was all part of the business.

  Tuesday night wasn’t exactly a shambles, but it tried. “Murphy’s Law” had had technical troubles and ran into overtime. Ian Cavanaugh’s understudy was getting into make-up when Ian himself finally rushed in, twenty-five minutes before curtain. “Glad you could make it,” everyone said with frost in their voices. Our leading man, tired and harassed-looking, made it through the first act without any trouble, but the changes in the second act were his undoing. He blew several of his lines, and the rest of the cast weren’t sure enough of their parts to cover for him with any authority. The audience knew something was wrong.

  I was angry. I thought they should have done better. Even Ian. They were professionals, after all.

  “It’ll be all right,” John Reddick said soothingly. “You’ll see. Next week you won’t remember they ever performed it any other way.”

  “I won’t be here next week,” I snapped. “And I’d like to see it done right once before I leave.” I had to get back to Pittsburgh; I’d already made my flight reservation.

  Wednesday’s matinee went much better. Ian’s understudy played the performance, and understudies rarely blow lines. Especially now, when the whole cast knew John Reddick was auditioning actresses to replace Sylvia Markey’s understudy.

  Ian’s understudy was a Southerner named Philip Carter (no
, no relation) who’d gotten rid of his southern accent by substituting a quasi-British one for it. I thought Phil was an interesting actor, and his performance that Wednesday afternoon did much to smooth my ruffled feathers.

  I went directly home after the performance, determined not to go back to the theater for a couple of days. I’d wait until Saturday or Sunday and then take another look.

  I switched on the television and watched an automobile burst into flames. I changed channels and saw a car drive off a cliff and then burst into flames. On a third channel two cars ran into each other and both burst into flames. I sighed and turned off the set. If the automobile is indeed America’s favorite phallic symbol, what are we to make of this wholesale destruction of cars? Nationwide castration fears?

  I hadn’t done any reading for almost a week and was beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms. I was always twenty or thirty books behind anyway, so it was time to settle down to an orgy of other people’s words.

  But I had a little chore to perform first. There has never, never, been enough shelf space in my life. The books pile up on the floor, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. Periodic weeding out was necessary to maintain some semblance of organized living. The shelves in my workroom were now holding almost twice as many books as they were designed to hold. Books were thrust in sideways on top of other books, they were stacked in piles leaning precariously against the walls, they even took up needed space on my worktables. I found a large cardboard carton and got to work.

  When I’d finished, I had collected a hundred and sixty-one books to get rid of. I looked around my workroom. The weeding out had made no appreciable difference whatsoever.

  Friday morning the phone woke me from a sound sleep shortly before ten o’clock (Shakespeare’s English Kings had kept me awake until five).

  It was John Reddick. “Abby, what do you think of Vivian Frank?”

  I wasn’t completely awake yet. “Wha’?”

  “Vivian Frank. To understudy Sylvia.”

  I thought a moment. Vivian Frank was a good actress who’d never quite made it to leading-lady status. Every performance I’d ever seen her do had been strong, but I had no idea whether she could sustain a role as heavy as the one Sylvia played every night. “Don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she could do it.”