Theatrical

by Maggie Harcourt

  I have no idea whether I’m supposed to comment on Tommy’s rehearsal schedule. Amy would probably hit me with one of her folders for even considering the question. Discretion, discretion, discretion. Non. Disclosure. Agreement. But the way I see it, if someone’s prepared to stand out in the freezing cold and the wet hoping for just a glimpse of him, a smile, in return for helping make Tommy into “Tommy Knight”, then they deserve something. Without people like her, Tommy wouldn’t be anyone.

  She’s not so different from me, hiding around the corner from the Bristol Old Vic and watching Rick Hillier walking away down the street.

  “He’s due in this afternoon,” I whisper, checking over my shoulder just in case Amy has suddenly strolled into earshot. “If I were you, I’d go warm up for a bit and come back later.”

  “When?” she whispers back, but I shake my head.

  “I can’t. I’ll get in trouble. But later.”

  “Thank you!” Her face lights up as she tucks the picture into her pocket, wraps her coat more tightly around her and vanishes round the corner. I go the other way.

  “You took your time.” Luke is holding one of the main foyer doors open, waiting for me. Waiting for me. “What was that about?”

  I duck through into the entrance. “Nothing.”

  “You shouldn’t talk to them, you know. If too many of them come, they’ll cause problems. Roly won’t like it – and when it comes to the stage door, Roly’s word is law.”

  “They only want the chance to say hello to him. And anyway, without them, there’s no show – remember?”

  That isn’t just true in Tommy’s case – it’s true for any show. No audience means it’s just actors wandering about on the stage, talking to one another. It’s why nobody ever says the last line in a dress rehearsal, and nobody ever, ever bows to an empty auditorium. No audience means the show doesn’t exist.

  And while a production like Piecekeepers, one based on a book that sold so many copies, one that so many people have already read and loved, will do fine on its own, there’s no denying that having the face of a star like Tommy gazing moodily out of the posters pushes it into “unmissable” territory. A Piecekeepers production is intriguing. A Piecekeepers production with Tommy Knight playing lead character Jamie is an event.

  Inside, the foyer is partway through its transformation: one side of it looks exactly the same as it always has, its scarlet carpet emblazoned with the swirling golden ET monogram, the smart gilt-covered mouldings surrounding the box office window…and then, on the other side, there’s a stack of cardboard boxes taller than me, and a row of rolled-up Piecekeepers banners propped against the wall ready to be unfurled and hung around the theatre.

  It makes me think of the ceiling of the auditorium when you look up from the stage – half of one thing, half another.

  “You know why I like coming in this way sometimes?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Come on. I’ll show you.” Luke bounces down the half-flight of stairs to the door into the back of the stalls, leaving me to follow.

  I push open the door.

  Inside the auditorium, the house lights are down but the decorated iron safety curtain is up, the black-painted back wall of the theatre on show and the stage lit. Not perfectly, but nothing’s finished yet – that’s what the next few days are for – focusing the lights, spiking out the layout of the stage with rolls of coloured tape to mark where this chair goes or that candlestick. This is the skeleton of it, the bare bones. The technical rehearsals that are coming are the few days we have left where it’s fleshed out; where the muscle and sinew is added. People always think that rehearsals go on for ever, all of us going through everything from beginning to end, over and over and over…but that’s not how it works. Not even here. Being under-rehearsed, sure, that’s not great – but being over-rehearsed is worse. It’s the fastest way to kill a production’s soul. The trick is finding a happy medium. But right now, that doesn’t matter. To me, this – the way it looks now – is perfect. Everything begins and ends with this.

  The rows of red seats march away towards the stage. In the middle of the stalls, there’s Rick’s working desk, already stacked up with his notes and script. Nina’s sit next to them, and at the other end is Amy’s bag. And beside that, looking completely out of place sitting in the middle of the scarlet and gilt: the prompt desk with its switches and monitors, wheeled out from its usual spot backstage to sit next to the main creative desk, a basket full of headsets plonked beside it.

  The entire auditorium seems to be waiting. It’s filled with the most perfect, expectant silence – as though the whole building is holding its breath. All it needs is for someone to step onto the stage.

  I can almost feel the quiet seeping into my skin like a dye, a drug. I will always be chasing this; this exact silence, because this is the only place I can find it.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

  Luke’s voice cuts through the calm, shattering it. I was so lost in the space that I’d forgotten he was here – but there he is, sitting on the front of the stage and swinging his legs over the edge. Has he been watching me all this time? I head for the temporary steps up to the stage from the centre aisle of the stalls and the wood creaks under my feet.

  “I like to come in when it’s quiet. She always makes me think of an old ship.” He says it like he’s inside my head, inside my body and breathing this place in too. “Ready to sail away. You know she moves, don’t you?” he adds, pointing to the row of pillars underneath the balcony. “These – they’ve measured them, and they twist. The original structure’s built on marshland and reed beds, and when the water level rises, the whole auditorium shifts a little. Like she’s getting ready to catch the tide and sail off and take all of us with her.”

  “Or like she’s alive.” I’ve fallen into calling her, well…her. It makes sense. The theatre may be called the Earl’s Theatre, but she’s really a grand old lady. You can tell.

  “She is. Can’t you feel it?” He lays one hand on the stage, palm down, and the way he does it is so gentle, so careful, that my skin burns. What would it feel like to have him touch me the way he touches the stage? Like something precious. Something – someone – loved.

  He leans back and looks up, propping himself up on his elbows. One of the lights catches his face, and it makes him shine, illuminating him from the inside, and the play of light and shadow across his face accentuates his eyelashes, his cheekbones and the hollows of his cheeks; the line of his brow, his jaw, the curve of his mouth… He looks different under the spotlight. More relaxed, more confident. More…himself.

  “Did you get the lines down?” I have to say something, and that seems as good as anything.

  He tilts his head ever so slightly to one side, his eyebrow raised. “Lines?”

  “Sea Wall. For college?”

  “Ah.” His face clouds. “Yeah. Bombed that one.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  I wish I’d thought about asking him sooner – maybe got his number and messaged him, rather than managing to crash the moment. But then I’d have been messaging him and would that be weird? I don’t know. I feel like it would be weird…

  “Apparently I was trying too hard. I’ve got to take another crack at it next week, and try…”

  “Softer?”

  “Try softer? You ever thought about becoming a drama teacher?” He laughs, but he’s acting, and I can see him doing it.

  He’s laughing because it stung, whatever feedback he got – and I can read those lines, read between them.

  “I don’t know how you do it. Any of you.” I wave a hand around the stage, the auditorium, and I plonk myself down at the front beside him and let my feet drop.

  “Do what?” He shuffles back upright again.

  “This. The being onstage. The standing in front of people, acting. How you all just…turn into somebody else for a couple of hours, and then you turn right back again at the end of it.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if
the real me doesn’t get a bit lost,” he says quietly, then shakes his head. “Sometimes, I kind of wonder if that’s the idea. Why I need it, you know? It’s like I can just forget about everything else for a while. And anyway, I can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else. My parents were both actors – did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. That’s so cool.”

  His eyes are faraway and the part of my brain that loves to take a script apart, looking for cues and clues as to what’s not being said, circles the “were”. They were actors. So they retired…or…?

  But he’s already moving on. “My gran says I was always trying to put on shows for her…” He tails off and bites his lip as though he’s let something slip, something I’m not meant to have heard.

  Were.

  “Anyway,” he says, changing direction, “they say at college that the trick to acting is not acting.”

  “And that makes sense, does it?”

  “I think so. Sometimes.” He wrinkles his nose. “Or maybe it’s just not getting caught doing it?”

  I jerk my thumb at the wings. “I think I’ll stick to back there.”

  “Talking of mysteries,” he says, and leans back on his elbows, “I don’t know how you do that. All the cues – I looked at Amy’s cue prompts and they might as well have been written in Greek. And the props…”

  “The props are the easy bit. Anyone touching a prop that isn’t theirs loses a finger.” It was my best serious stage-management voice, but somehow it doesn’t sound as convincing as it does when Amy says it. “And speaking of which…” Hauling myself up to my feet, I brush my hands off. “I’d better get going – I’m supposed to be checking them ready for the prop review.”

  I’m barely a couple of steps towards the wings when he calls my name. My heart somersaults inside my ribs, like it’s trying to turn all of me around just by flinging itself at the inside of my chest.

  “Are you around later? When I’m on, I mean. On the stage?”

  “Your scene? Sure.” Like I’d be anywhere else.

  “My scene. Yes. That’s the word I was looking for there. Another thing about acting – I’m not so great with words. Always better with other people’s – I really do work better with a script.”

  I try not to smile – until he smiles too, and then I can’t help it, and I don’t want to anyway. “I’ll be there – unless…you don’t want me to be?”

  “Not want you? With notes like ‘try softer’? I don’t think I can manage without you!” He laughs a little too loudly; it’s acting again…until it isn’t. “What I mean is that if you’re there, and you’re not too busy with Amy, if you’ve got time to watch, I’d…” He sighs and fidgets with the edge of his hat, turning it between his fingers and the rest of his words come out in a rush. “I’dlovetoknowwhatyouthinkofmeImeanofit.”

  He’s given me a cue, so I follow it.

  “And I’d love to tell you.”

  The air between us shimmers under the lights…

  “Hope!”

  Someone is calling me.

  “Hope!”

  What if I’m dreaming; this whole thing is a dream and Mum’s shouting upstairs to wake me up because I’m asleep and I’m late for school…

  “Jesus, Hope, what are you doing?”

  That’s not Mum.

  That’s George.

  I come back to the world, only to see him peering out of the wings, hissing at me.

  “When you’re done doing…this –” he flaps a hand at Luke, at me, at us – “Rick and Amy are heading this way. They’ve been waiting for you – we all have. You’re late! Again.”

  “Oh.” No. No, no, no…I didn’t sign in! “Right. Okay.” I scramble to my feet, casting one last look at Luke, who smiles back over his shoulder at me and slips away into the shadows at the very moment Rick flings open the stalls door.

  “Here she is!” He strides straight down the aisle, followed by Amy.

  “Sorry. I came in this way and I got a little…distracted. I was here, though!”

  None of this seems to matter much to Rick, who has his arms wrapped around a Manila folder, pressing it close to his chest.

  “There’s a last-minute addition to the props list, I’m afraid.”

  I don’t miss the look Amy gives him.

  “You’ll be responsible for it, along with the other props.”

  As he hands me the new folder, Amy gives him another look – and I don’t miss that one either. It doesn’t make sense until I open the folder.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  I clamp my hand over my mouth. You don’t talk to Rick Hillier like that. Nobody does. But before I can grovel, he shakes his head.

  “Sometimes it isn’t our decision to make. This is one of those times.”

  “But…but that’s real. We can’t use a real one!”

  Rick holds up a hand. “I know this isn’t usual, but it’s a financial decision. It comes with a rather large sponsorship fee, and this is an expensive show.”

  “It will be if it gets lost,” I hiss at George, who is peering over my shoulder at the folder. Unfortunately, I have massively underestimated how good Rick’s hearing is, because he glares straight at me.

  “Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that, do we?”

  “No.” My voice belongs to a very small child. Or possibly a small, wet kitten. But I know I’m right – I can tell by the way Amy’s nodding, and even by the way Rick lowers his chin when he says it. They aren’t happy about this either.

  A real necklace, with real gemstones in it. It’s not right. It is, in fact, so many different kinds of wrong. You never use real jewellery onstage; never. It’s one of the unwritten rules of the theatre, and literally the reason costume jewellery exists. Maybe it started because of worrying about someone nicking it from the prop table, but now? Now it’s as much a part of theatre lore as anything – if we’re going to put a real necklace on the stage, we might as well all run around shouting “Macbeth!” and whistling in the dressing rooms. Mum might not believe in the old superstitions, but even she’d have a fit about this one.

  Rick is already on the move, but Amy stops in front of us. I hold out the folder and give her my best helpless look.

  She’s still nodding. “I know. Not my decision – not Rick’s either. But money’s money. It’s not the kind of thing producers can turn down easily.” She pushes the folder I’m holding out back towards me. “We’ll keep it in the production office safe, not on the table or with the personals, and it’ll be fine. It’s just a superstition,” she adds, with her usual mind-reading powers. “Anyway, can I speak to you for a minute, Hope? Alone?” She gives George a firm stare, which it takes him a second or two to register.

  Eventually, he gets the idea. “Oh. You want me to go, don’t you? Okay. I’ve got…um…things to do. Sort hairpins…eyelashes. Baby wipes!” he babbles, and hurries off.

  Uh-oh. This is like school, when your teacher asks you to stay behind for a moment, isn’t it?

  “Not a big thing,” she starts, which is enough to make me feel sick. Anything that opens with “not a big thing” is usually A Big Thing. I arrange my face appropriately. “But I need to talk to you about your punctuality.”

  “I was here!” It comes out before I can stop it.

  “You weren’t in the office, and you didn’t sign in – but I’ll take your word for it this once. I need to know I can rely on you to be here and be ready to start on time. Any stage management job needs you to be on top of things right from the start – how can you avoid problems and get ahead of them if you’re always running to catch up?” She pauses. There’s more coming – I can see it in her eyes.

  “Which brings me to my next point. I’ve noticed you seem to be getting friendly with Luke, and while it’s none of my business what you do in your free time…”

  Uh-oh.

  “…I need to be sure that when you’re here, your mind’s on the job. On the theatre. This is a big productio
n for us, and I need to know that everyone is fully focused during working hours. That goes for both cast and crew. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

  I nod enthusiastically out of sheer relief. If she was going to yell at me, she would have done it by now. “Absolutely. You’re saying you don’t want anybody getting distracted.” I smile so hard it feels like my lips are never going to go back to their normal shape. “I understand completely.”

  “Good.” Her face relaxes. “I’m glad. I wanted to make sure I was clear. We’ve had…past issues with people mixing personal and professional relationships. You have to be able to keep them separate in this job, or it can be a little like working in a powder keg. Friction causes sparks, and one thing theatres don’t like is fire.” She looks at the folder. “Besides, I think we’ve got quite enough to worry about already, don’t you?” Amy doesn’t wait for my reply. “Well, come on. I’d better show you the safe, hadn’t I?”

  Following her backstage, along the corridors, I don’t see the breeze blocks or the bricks or the ducting on the way. I just keep hearing Amy’s voice in my head. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t get his number after all.

  As we pass wardrobe, there’s a shriek from behind the door, then a crash, then muttered swearing, then laughter. When we get through the office door, Amy pushes her chair sideways along the floor and unlocks the little safe under her desk. There, sitting snugly inside, is a leather jewellery case.

  “We’ll keep the necklace in here. I’ll print a sign-out sheet for it and you need to make sure we keep it filled out. In an ideal world, you should be the only person who touches it when it’s not onstage, but that’s not going to be practical, I don’t think. Let’s see. Jamie has to give it to Lizzie, doesn’t he, and then she takes it off in the next scene…and that’s it. The best solution is probably to put it in Tommy’s dressing room right before kick-off, and then he’ll have it, and he can give it directly back to you when it’s finished with onstage.” She nudges the door shut again and the box disappears from view. We both stare at the safe, and there’s a long silence.