Theatrical

by Maggie Harcourt

  Time ticks by unspeakably fast. People are running from one side of the stage to the other, and there’s a shout that echoes around the empty auditorium as well as through my headset.

  “Iron going out!”

  Slowly, the safety curtain rises – leaving the stage exposed. There’s no stage curtain any more – not since Rick announced that it made him feel like we were putting on a production in the nineteenth century.

  Amy passes me a laminated card with writing on it. “Right, then. Let’s open the house.”

  “Sure.”

  I can’t believe how much my fingers shake as I take the card from her – almost enough to drop it, or to miss the switch that opens the mic channel to all the front-of-house areas: the foyer, the bars, the corridors and stairs and bathrooms. But I don’t.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Earl’s Theatre. The house is now open for this evening’s performance of Piecekeepers. The house is now open. Thank you.”

  I’ve barely even finished when Amy’s reaching across me, flicking another switch and speaking into her own headset.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the house is now open. The house is now open, so please avoid crossing the stage and using the pass door into the auditorium, thank you.” Another switch. “This is a crew call, please. Work lights off, ladies and gentlemen. Blues on.”

  Around us, the lights flicker off, leaving us with just the dull glow of the blue backstage lights and our tiny little prompt light. And as we sit there, hidden in the gloom at the side of the stage, I can hear them making their way into the auditorium. The audience. Our audience. It’s barely more than a whisper at first, but gradually the sound of their voices grows as more and more people come in to take their seats.

  We make the five-minute backstage call – the beginners’ call for everyone we need at the start of the show – and suddenly, Amy nods at the monitors. “You’re opening the show too, by the way.”

  “Me? You’re kidding. Actually cue the start of the show?”

  She smiles, and looks me in the eye. “You’ve earned it, especially after your little adventure chasing jewellery across town.”

  Ah. “About that…”

  “No. You don’t need to.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s live theatre. Things go wrong. What matters is how you fix them – and that the show goes on. Besides, maybe some superstitions are right.”

  That was…not what I was expecting. But okay.

  “So?” She looks at me expectantly. “Like I said – you’ve earned it.” She pulls her headset mic a little closer to her mouth, cues the three- and two-minute front-of-house warning bells – then calmly calls beginners, presses a button and goes straight into a final front-of-house call.

  The door – the one that I remember walking through for the first time like it was only five minutes ago – opens quietly and, one by one, they appear behind us. But it’s not the actors filling the wings – not at all. It’s their characters.

  It’s not Juliet standing behind me, tucking a strand of her wig behind her ear; it’s Lizzie, smoothing down her long hair.

  It’s not Vicki from the ensemble rolling her shoulders beside the prop table; it’s the gallery security guard who Lizzie saves.

  Standing behind her, silhouetted by blue light against the door, it’s not Tommy, but Jamie, completely unprepared for what’s about to happen to him.

  I adjust my headset, flicking the switch for my mic.

  Everything builds and builds and builds to a white noise in my ears…and then Amy raises a hand and drops it, and everything is silent, waiting. Expectant.

  “Stand by beginners. Stand by sound cues one, two.” My voice is both too loud and too quiet at the same time.

  “Standing by,” says a voice in my ear.

  “Stand by elecs cue one.”

  “Standing by.”

  “Beginners, places, please.” Closing my eyes, I count to ten under my breath. “And…cue elec one.”

  I can see them through the monitors on the desk: the first few rows of the audience. I can see the girls from the queue and Haydn Swift and Marshal Arthur; their eyes fixed only on the stage and the people who step out onto it.

  Because whatever happens back here, whatever drama and tragedy and comedy might be taking place around us all…out there? The show does go on. We make it.

  It’s the smallest thing. I bet nobody in the audience even notices it – I’m not even sure whether Amy, her eyes tracking every cue in the script, picks it up. But I do. Maybe I’m just so wired, so fixed on Tommy’s performance after…well, everything, that every word, every gesture he gets through feels like a victory.

  So I do catch it, and I tell myself it’s nothing.

  The briefest of all possible pauses, halfway through a line.

  A place that, ever since I started this role, he has never put a pause.

  Maybe it’s just because he needed to take an extra breath. It doesn’t mean anything.

  And it doesn’t…until the next one. A definite break in the middle of a line, a tremor in his voice…and then a desperate fast glance over at the prompt desk. His eyes lock onto mine and, very quietly, Amy leans in and whispers: “Get the prompt script to the right page.” I look back at her, and she shakes her head. “Be ready to catch him if he needs you.”

  I flip ahead in the script, scanning the lines; the ground Tommy has to cover before he can retreat to the darkness of the wings. As I skim, I hear another pause where there shouldn’t be one. Amy swears under her breath and already I can feel the atmosphere starting to turn. Looking straight out at the stage, I hold up the script book so that the next time Tommy looks over, he’ll see it and know we’re there – a safety net. That we – I – won’t let him fall. All he has to do is make it through the next three minutes.

  Three minutes which must feel like a lifetime out there.

  He makes it through the next line, and the next…then stumbles again, getting a word wrong and having to rework the rest of it. Another slip and people will start to notice, and then he’ll unravel from the heart down in front of them all.

  Ten lines to go.

  Five.

  Four, and then he’s got to come to me for the necklace.

  Three.

  Come on, Tommy.

  Two.

  I slip out of my seat and pick my way past the back of the flats to the prop table, picking up the necklace case, ready.

  One more line…and suddenly he’s striding towards me, a little faster than he’s done before, his eyes wide but vacant. I can see the beads of sweat pricked out across his face; the rivers of it running down under his collar. He’s there, but he’s not. He’s not Tommy and he’s not Jamie – he’s stuck somewhere in between, and he’s lost.

  He barely even looks at me as he leans in to grab the necklace, so when I close my hand around his wrist, he jumps. Tommy Knight looks up and sees it’s me, and his other hand locks around my arm and holds it like I’m a lifebelt.

  Luckily for him, that’s exactly what I am.

  I pull him as close to me as I can, until my lips are practically touching his ear, because neither of us can afford for anyone else to hear.

  “Show them you own it. All of them.”

  He takes half a step back and something flickers across his face as we let go of each other – and then he’s gone, back out into the blinding white lights.

  The second we reach the interval, Rick swoops in to herd Tommy off to the dressing room, a protective arm around his shoulders. The door backstage swings shut behind them and Amy stretches, pulling off her headset. “Great job, Hope. I’m going to get some water – you want anything?”

  I shake my head. I’m not sure I can actually manage words right now.

  As the safety curtain comes down, I look across to the other side of the stage at George – still draped in all the bits of scarf and wig and bag he’s removed from assorted actors as they rushed offstage. He looks ba
ck at me, and he’s got the weirdest expression on his face; it’s like he’s about to cry, but because he’s so happy and so relieved and so everything that he doesn’t quite know what else to do. I guess I must look the same, because he nods at me and blows me a kiss. I blow a kiss right back at him as he hurries off down to wardrobe.

  Amy isn’t gone long, and when she comes back, she’s carrying a jug of water and two glasses.

  “Well, we’re doing all right so far. He seems to be enjoying himself, anyway.” She taps the audience monitor, where a tiny black-and-white Marshal Arthur is writing thoughtfully in a little notebook. The screen is far too small to see what he’s jotting down, but that doesn’t stop us both from trying. Amy pours a glass of water and takes a swig. “I thought we were going to lose Tommy at one point, though. He really did worry me. I started thinking we should have pushed for previews, more rehearsal time, more tech time…”

  “Oh, I don’t think anyone noticed. I barely even did,” I say. Possibly a little too quickly.

  She eyes me over the top of her glass. “Mmm.” Another swig. More eyeing. “He just suddenly seemed so much less…Tommy. He’s never had to work in this kind of environment before, and I don’t think he’s used to being so exposed and vulnerable.”

  “But that’s what acting is…right?” I shuffle closer to her seat. “It is being exposed and vulnerable – it’s not about putting on extra layers of protection and pretending to be somebody else, it’s about taking them off and pretending they’re you…”

  Oh.

  That’s why Luke wanted to act. It’s not about hiding behind someone else’s skin at all. It really is about fitting someone else’s soul over your own, letting it creep inside every corner of you, and you into it, until you can’t tell where the join is any more. And you can’t just shrug that off when the lights go down – a piece of that character, that person, that soul, stays with you. You carry the memory of it around with you as part of who you’ve been. The way you might a family…the way – whether I like it or not – I carry fragments of my sisters, my father, my inescapable mother around with me.

  Suddenly, more than anything, I want to find Luke and tell him that I get it. That I understand.

  It’s family.

  Family is the key that unlocks us; the thing that makes us both different and both the same. I always felt I had too much, that I was always standing in somebody’s shadow. For Luke, his family were shadows; shadows and ghosts…and now the spotlight is the only place he feels safe. Just like I only feel safe out of sight, in the dark.

  Family is what opens us out…so it’s family we seek. Family that matters more than anything in its own way; family who depend on you – working together, making things happen.

  Which is why we both came to the theatre.

  The second half floats past like some kind of dream. Tommy sweeps past me and back out onto the stage, and the instant the light hits him it’s clear something has changed…because now, he really is owning it. The role, the stage, the name. And he’s got the audience. Out of the corner of my eye, I even catch Amy smiling. When the vanishing painting actually does vanish, I hear her whisper “Yes!” under her breath, and as the whole audience gasps, it’s all I can do not to cheer. On the far side of the stage, I watch George work: changing coats and costumes, adjusting wigs and pinning hair with only seconds to get everything done. He’s a blur of motion, and looks like he’s got fifteen hands all doing something different at once – but he’s smiling and he doesn’t miss a single cue.

  When Luke steps out onto the darkened stage – walking forward until he hits that mark he was so careful to check – and the single spotlight at the very edge of the apron catches him and makes him shine, Amy nudges me; pushing me towards the very edge of the flats for a better view. Whatever I thought this would be like, however I thought I would feel listening to him, seeing him drop to his knees as Lancelot breaks…this is both a thousand times better and a thousand times harder. On the one hand, I want to run out, pull him to his feet and tell him that everything will be okay, because my heart is aching for him…and on the other, I never want him to stop.

  In the shadows, I listen as his voice fades to a whisper, and I watch the spotlight die. When it comes back up, Lancelot is gone.

  “Hope! Quick-change and crossover,” Amy hisses. “Go!”

  She holds out her stopwatch.

  I drop my headset on the prompt desk, grab the watch and run for the stairs.

  “Where is he…where is he…?” I lean into the fire door at the end of the corridor, propping it open. We’re so nearly there, so near the end that I can taste it. Just Tommy’s big changeover scene – the last scene – and we’re home free.

  We’ve kept them since the interval, all of them. I’ve heard it – the kind of silence that only comes from an auditorium full of people so caught up in what they’re seeing that they can barely breathe. And none of us want to lose them now.

  George is pacing, his whole body tense. Ready to grab the first door and open it for Tommy to run through.

  They’ve practised it every day, over and over, even without me and my stopwatch – but somehow, Tommy’s never made good enough time to be back on that stage when the lights come up. He’s always just a few seconds too slow.

  “Come on, come on…”

  There’s the crack of the sound cue (number 307) and the echoing thump of feet on the stairs.

  Here he comes, through the first doorway and along the corridor towards me, stripping off his shirt as he goes and dropping it on the floor, while George – keeping pace with him every step of the way – somehow manages to drape, wrap and throw his new costume over him, even tossing one shoe at a time ahead of him for him to step into.

  Behind him, at the far end of the corridor the door swings open again – and there’s Luke, still in his last Lancelot costume, still with a smear of stage blood across his cheek, watching.

  I look at the stopwatch.

  “Twenty seconds, Tommy…” I call down the corridor at him.

  He nods to show he’s heard me – and as he comes closer, he does the strangest thing. He raises his hand…and as I flatten myself against the door to let him pass, he gives me a high-five.

  His eyes meet mine, just for an instant.

  “Thank you. For everything.”

  And then he’s gone, running for his exit – his entrance – utterly changed.

  Quick-change managed, George flops against the wall and slides down it in a pile of discarded clothes. I walk over to him, picking up a shoe on the way, and reach down to help him up.

  “Did you hear that?” I hand him the shoe.

  “Hear what?”

  “That’s the first time he’s said thank you to me.”

  “The theatre does funny things to people,” he says with a shrug – and above us, the auditorium erupts into the loudest applause I’ve ever heard.

  I shoot a last look down to the far end of the corridor… but the door’s already closed. Luke’s gone.

  “Come on – if we run, we can make it back up for the curtain call.” I grab George’s hand, and together we sprint for it: back up the stairs and through the door marked STAGE and into the wings, packed with all the rest of the cast; with Rick in his suit and tie and Amy and her headset, and we wedge ourselves into the very side of the prompt desk at the exact moment the lights come back up.

  Together, they all walk out onto the stage for their bows, and Amy leans in to Rick and taps the right-hand monitor on the prompt desk – the one looking out into the audience.

  “Look,” she whispers – and points to the front row, where Marshal Arthur is already standing, his notebook tucked under one arm so he can clap, and…

  “Is he crying?” George squints at the monitor.

  I don’t know because I’m too busy watching the little group in the row behind, where my mother, Miriam Parker – yes, that Miriam Parker – is clasping my dad’s hand and beaming. Next to them is an older w
oman, her open programme tucked under one arm as she applauds…and there’s something about the way she holds herself, something about the way her expression slips between old grief and fierce pride as she gazes at the stage that tells me I’m looking at Luke’s grandmother. And then they’re lost to view as in front of them, a guy with untidy dark hair and the girl with long hair beside him are jumping to their feet and clapping and whooping.

  “Doesn’t look like Haydn Swift hated it to me…” Amy says quietly.

  And without a word, Rick throws his arms around her and laughs – right before Tommy comes barrelling into the wings to haul him out onstage to take his own bow.

  In the darkness of the wings, I look around me at all the people who made this happen, crowding in to hear the applause, their faces faint in the blue work lights and the ghosts of the spotlights. I hear the fly-floor creak quietly as Chris moves above us. Nobody out there can see us – half of them don’t even know we exist – and that’s exactly how it should be.

  We are invisible, inaudible, intangible.

  Theatre ghosts – that’s all we are.

  And looking around me, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be.

  The auditorium empties faster than it filled – especially tonight, with a reception in the bar and congratulations to be shared. Piecekeepers has opened, and tomorrow I’ll have to write up the show report. Until then, the job’s done. The crew have tidied up their areas and their kit and either changed into fresh clothes and headed to the bar to celebrate, or simply slipped away into the night.

  But opening night or not, someone’s always got to be the last to leave.

  I turn off the switches on the prompt desk, one by one.

  One by one, the monitors, the red lights, the blue and the green fade out.

  I flick off the work light and the fluorescents, and the wings go dark. There’s only the house lights in the auditorium now…and the ghost light, shining away in the gloom.

  I walk out onto the stage, right out into the very middle…and I catch myself before I bow. Bad luck to bow to an empty auditorium.