Were they really shouting my name again?
(Macready nods.)
What the hell did they think they were doing?
MACREADY: You obviously—for them. For some of them. Represent— (Shrugs)
FORREST: I’m an actor!
(Macready shrugs again. Pause.)
MACREADY: Any money I do receive I shall give away. I did not perform for . . . (Beat) I’m not a greedy man. (Beat) The charities I support, I should give you a list, I also give anonymously to—
FORREST: Shut up. (Short pause) Please. Your generosity is well known.
MACREADY: Is it? (Beat) Good. (Looks toward a clothes trunk, hesitates, then goes to look in it)
FORREST: Take whatever you need. Whatever might fit. A cape maybe . . .
(Shrugs. Pause. Macready begins to look through the costume trunk. From outside, the gunshots and shouts come closer.)
(Suddenly he turns to the noise, screaming) Leave us alone in here!!!!!
(Pause.)
MACREADY (Pulling something out of the trunk; quietly): Is this your Lear?
(Forrest nods.)
It’s funny how we rarely get a chance to see each other’s . . .
FORREST: I’ve seen your Lear. (Beat) I found the time to see your Lear.
(Short pause.)
MACREADY: Is that it? You’ve just seen it? You don’t want to say—?
FORREST (Quickly): I enjoyed it.
(Short pause.)
MACREADY: You’ve got an interesting costume.
FORREST: So did you.
MACREADY: Actually this sort of looks like mine. (Short pause. Without looking up) How was your play tonight?
FORREST: Fine. (Laughs to himself) There was no riot. A large section of my audience did not try to murder me. The theatre is not burning. Not a bad night. (Beat) They love Metamora, the noble savage. (Beat) Who has the decency to die. (Smiles) So they cheered as always. I was not very good tonight, I thought. (Shrugs)
MACREADY: As we get older . . . It’s funny, isn’t it? When we begin—when I began—I thought always about what they would think about me. (Beat) You want so much to please them. (Beat) But you get older—and that’s still there—but . . . Well, it’s us who start to judge them, isn’t it?
FORREST: I’m not that old yet.
(Short pause.)
MACREADY (Choosing to ignore him): Sometimes you stand on that stage and know you are achieving a level of excellence few before you have ever achieved. And you watch an audience watching you as if on some riverbank staring at the natural flow of water. (Beat) And then on other nights—probably like you felt tonight—you hate what you’ve done, perhaps even embarrassed—
FORREST: I didn’t say I was—
MACREADY: And your audience receives you with rapturous attention and applause. (Beat) There seems to be no rhyme or reason. (Beat) The older you get, the more confusing it all becomes. The reaction. Like tonight, what you were telling me about your performance. Where’s the logic.
(Forrest looks at him.)
And I’ll tell you what makes it all even worse. It’s going to see another perform—especially a part that you know like your own soul—and then witnessing grotesque exaggeration, which one could forgive perhaps in a novice, but when it’s an actor of some note, some ambition. And then when the crowd—the mob, one should call them in this case—greets this fraud with its misplaced adulation, I find myself in an almost state of total fevered despair.
(Short pause.)
FORREST: I enjoy watching other actors—
MACREADY: When they are excellent! Which is so rare, as we both know so well.
(Short pause.)
FORREST: I enjoy watching other actors even when they’re bad, even when they’re silly.
MACREADY: But then when an audience praises—
FORREST: I enjoyed your Hamlet a great deal. (Beat) When I was in London. I enjoyed it. (Short pause) That dance you did—Hamlet’s little dance before the Gertrude scene. I’d never seen anything like it. I will never forget it.
MACREADY: You’re not the first to—
FORREST: A fancy dance? I asked myself. Where does this come from in the play? I knew no reference to it. I had never before seen an actor—
MACREADY: An expression of his madness. A color. A texture of the performance.
FORREST: And a costume for this dance which, if I remember correctly, had a dress with a waist up to about the armpits, huge overlarge black gloves—
MACREADY: True, I—
FORREST: A great big hat with a gigantic plume—
MACREADY: The character is mad!
FORREST: Is this Hamlet or Malvolio, I remember saying to myself. But still, I enjoyed it. (Suddenly turns to Macready) It’s true, Hamlet is mad. And in preparation for my own performance I became a student of the mind’s disease, visiting asylums and talking not only with the doctors, but also with the ill. And the result of this study, Mr. Macready, was the knowledge that true madness is expressed through the heart, not the costume. Madness is not funny clothes, but a funny soul.
MACREADY: We are different actors.
FORREST: This is very true.
MACREADY: You study asylums and I study the play.
FORREST: That’s not—
MACREADY: Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I continue to believe that all one needs is to be found in the play. Mr. Shakespeare knew what—
FORREST: I don’t disagree.
(Beat.)
MACREADY: Then perhaps all I am saying is—from one actor to another—a little more time with the text and a little less in asylums might do a world of good.
FORREST: You haven’t even seen—
MACREADY: One hears, Mr. Forrest, one hears! It is a small business we’re in.
FORREST: In that case, as we are talking text, perhaps—as one actor to another—I can make a suggestion as I have also seen your Othello.
MACREADY: You are a fan, I’m flattered.
FORREST: As I’ve said, I enjoy watching other actors—whatever they do. Anyway, Othello. (Begins to recite)
Rude am I in my speech,
And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace;
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith
(Macready joins in:)
FORREST AND MACREADY:
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field;
And little of this great world can I speak
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;
(Forrest drops out.)
MACREADY:
And therefore little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself.
FORREST: “For myself”! That’s just how you said it when I saw you.
MACREADY: And that is the line.
FORREST: That’s not the meaning though. (Laughs) Othello starts by saying he is rude in speech, how there is little he can speak about except battles. So what he is saying here is that he’s bad at speaking, not that he doesn’t want to talk or have people talk about him. He’s not being humble, for Christ’s sake, he’s saying that he’s awkward and out of place where he is! So the line should be:
And there little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself.
(Beat.)
MACREADY: That’s a different reading. It’s interesting. But it’s just a different reading.
FORREST: It’s the right reading!
MACREADY: That’s your opinion.
FORREST: And when I go and see your Othello again that’s how you’ll be saying the line, I’m sure. (Smiles) Here, you want another one! The same scene:
Which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate . . .
And so on. (Beat) “. . . good means”! Not: “. . . good means”!
MACREADY: I don’t he
ar the difference.
FORREST: He was after a good reason, a good way, a just way to get his promise. As opposed to a successful means to—
(From outside, sudden gunshots are even closer. Short pause.)
MACREADY: The other reading maybe. But not this . . .
FORREST: Fine. Fine. At least I got you to agree about one. (Short pause) I only brought it up because— What you said, about reading the . . .
(Crowd noise is heard from off. Macready looks through the trunk. Long pause. Macready pulls out a costume.)
MACREADY: Richard?
(Forrest nods. Macready pulls out an identical costume.)
Why two?
FORREST: I started with the hump on my left, and my left hand curled—then I broke my right wrist, so I had to change, put the hump on the right.
(Macready nods.)
Now I keep them both. I’ve found that if I’ve got three or four Richards close together, I switch back and forth. It helps the back.
MACREADY: Kean I think did that, too.
FORREST: Did he?
(Pause.)
MACREADY: Kemble too. I think. (Beat) Ever see Kemble’s . . .
(He mimics Kemble’s walk as Richard III. Forrest laughs.)
I don’t know what it was about him. Every time he tried—
Hamlet. Richard. Macbeth. (Beat) But did you see his Cassio?
FORREST: No, I— No.
MACREADY: Brilliant. (Beat) He was a first-rate actor, but only in a second-rate parts.
FORREST: I’ve known other—
MACREADY: An incomparable Cassio. (Beat) You’ve never played—
FORREST: No.
MACREADY: Neither have I. (Pause) There are so many great supporting parts in Shakespeare. When I was young we’d fight for them.
FORREST: They still—
MACREADY: Not in England anymore. You used to have to constantly look over your shoulder. People had ambition! Now no one wants to work. No one wants to begin. But they work in my productions. (Laughs) And so they hate me. (Laughs) You want to know what it’s like in London today? I tried to correct this actor. He works for me. And he’s a nothing. All I say to him is, “Please do not speak your speech in that drawling way, sir.” I’m very polite. “Here,” I tell him, “speak it like this: ‘To ransom home revolted Mortimer!’ That’s how you speak it!” (Beat) He turns to me, in front of the whole company, and says, “I know that sir—that is the way, but you’ll please remember you get one hundred pounds a week for speaking it in your way, and I only get thirty shillings for mine! Give me one hundred pounds and I’ll speak it your way; but I’m not going to do for thirty shillings what you get paid one hundred pounds for.”
(Macready laughs, Forrest smiles.)
Actors. (Shakes his head. Short pause)
FORREST: What I hate is when they come late for rehearsal.
MACREADY: Which happens more and—
FORREST: Once, a rehearsal of mine was being delayed by this actor; he only had a small part, but it was quite an important part in the first scene. So we were all waiting. (Beat) I became visibly upset. Everyone knew enough to stay away from me. And when finally the truant—a quiet gentlemanly man, who had never before been late for one second—once he arrived I knew I needed to make an example of him. (Beat. Smiles) So I said, “Sir, you have kept these ladies and gentlemen waiting for a full half hour.”
(Macready nods and smiles.)
“You cannot be ignorant, sir, of the importance of a rehearsal in which every member of the company is to take part!” (Beat) At that moment, this actor looked at me. I could see there were tears now in his eyes.
(Macready smiles and shakes his head.)
And then he spoke. “Mr. Forrest, sir,” he said, “I beg your pardon. I could not come sooner.”
(Forrest looks at Macready, who snickers.)
“My son—my only son—died last night. I hurried here as soon as I could.”
(Macready suddenly stops smiling. Short pause. Forrest looks at Macready and shakes his head.)
Actors.
(Long pause. Macready goes back and looks into the costume trunk.
Slow fade to blackout.
The bare stage of the Broadway Theatre. Macready and Forrest enter—each having thrown on pieces of different costumes. As they enter, they are giggling and carrying swords.)
Who taught you fencing?
MACREADY: Angelo?
(Forrest shakes his head.)
You haven’t heard of him? He’s wonderful. He’s dead now. But he was wonderful when I was young.
(They are center stage looking out at the house.)
FORREST: It’s paradise. Even without an audience.
MACREADY: Especially without an—
FORREST AND MACREADY: Audience.
(Forrest tips Macready’s sword, he smiles and they begin to fence. After some time:)
FORREST: Come for a third, Laertes.
MACREADY: I thought I was Hamlet.
FORREST: You should have spoken sooner.
(They fence.)
You but dally.
I pray you pass with your best violence;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
MACREADY: I don’t know his lines.
FORREST (Stopping): You don’t know Laertes . . .
MACREADY: I’m never listening at this point. (Beat) What is it?
(Forrest thought he heard something, but now shakes his head.)
FORREST: Should we go back into my—? Ryder shouldn’t be much longer.
MACREADY: I don’t care.
FORREST: I suppose he will find us here.
MACREADY (looking out): How many seats?
FORREST: Nine hundred and seventy-eight. (Beat) I added those seats over there.
MACREADY: Can they see—?
FORREST: No one’s complained. I’ve been waiting for someone to complain, but . . . (Shrugs)
MACREADY: I wouldn’t want to sit there.
FORREST: No.
(Macready walks to the apron to get a closer look, then turns to see the particular sight line. He shakes his head.)
MACREADY: No, I wouldn’t.
FORREST: I do play to them at times. I try to. (Beat) I try to remember to, but they are way over there. Added fifty-three seats.
(Macready suddenly turns, thinks he hears something.)
It’s outside.
(Macready nods.)
I have it for another five weeks. The sound is very good. Much better than a lot of . . . I hate your theatre.
MACREADY: It’s not my . . .
FORREST: They should tear the Astor Place down, if you want my opinion.
MACREADY: That may in fact be being done.
(Forrest walks to the apron and speaks into the house, at first to show off the acoustics.)
FORREST (As he speaks Othello he gains in passion):
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light.
(He chokes up.)
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have plucked the rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again;
It needs must wither. I’ll smell thee on the tree . . .
(He cannot go on. He covers his face, hiding his tears. Pause.)
MACREADY (Without looking at him): You should add a few Othellos next week. (Beat) I’m sorry about your wife leaving.
(Forrest turns to him.
Short pause.)
Play it out. (Beat) You are certainly right about the sound.
FORREST: Go ahead and . . . (Tries to get a hold of himself) Really, go ahead . . .
(Short pause. Macready walks to the apron.)
MACREADY: You’ll be hard to follow.
FORREST: Modesty? You’re acting already, Mr. Macready. And acting well.
(Forrest smiles, Macready turns to the house.)
MACREADY:
Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire. Spout, rain.
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements—
(From outside, quite near, gunfire and shouts.)
FORREST (Screaming): I told you before, to just leave us alone!!!!!
(Pause.)
MACREADY (Continuing):
. . . you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children;
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave.
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
(He stops, continues to stare out. Ryder has entered upstage, he carries a cape. Pause.)
RYDER: Mr. Macready?
FORREST (Turning without seeing who it is): Leave us in peace!!!
(Macready turns, Forrest sees who it is.)
RYDER: I have the horses. (Beat) We must go. Put this on. (Goes to give him the cape) Why are you dressed like . . .?
(Macready looks at Forrest.)
FORREST: We were rehearsing—
RYDER: Rehearsing—?
MACREADY: Give me the cape. What’s it like out there?
RYDER: It’s gotten worse. (Beat) Reports are that there are nearly thirty-five people now dead. And hundreds seriously . . . (Beat) Hundreds wounded. (Beat) We should hurry. There are people who are running through the streets looking for that English actor “Macreilly or whatever his name is.” (Beat) Buses have been stopped, turned on their side and set afire, on just the rumor that you were aboard. (Beat) Our hotel—I had to go past. That too has been torched.
FORREST: Go.
RYDER: Put up the hood.
(Ryder pulls up the hood of the cape on Macready.)
We have a safe house for tonight in New Rochelle. We’ll go to Boston in the morning. Come on.
(As they start to leave, Macready stops and looks back at the theatre.)
There’s talk that they’ll close the theatres.
(Pause.)
MACREADY: You should come to England again, Mr. Forrest. (Beat) And get away from all these troubles.
Goodnight Children Everywhere and Other Plays Page 18