by Simon Brett
‘No, it’s not on me.’ Oh shit, thought Charles. ‘It’s on Tony Copeland Productions.’
The ‘Phew’ that formed in Charles’s mind was almost audible.
‘The fact is, old boy …’ Since when had the enfant terrible of English theatre been calling people ‘old boy’ like some superannuated actor/manager? It’d be ‘laddie’ next. ‘The fact is that it was in connection with this production of Hamlet that I wanted to talk to you. You know, the StarHunt one which—’
‘I know the one you mean.’
‘You wouldn’t believe the amount of flouncing backstage that goes on with that show. I mean, when we rejected that Bangladeshi girl Anjali, well, the story was leaked to the tabloids that …’ And Ned English was off again into anecdotage about his fame as a television star.
As their conversation moved further and further away from potential work for Charles Paris, his hopes slowly deflated. Reality had caught up sufficiently for him to realize he wasn’t going to be offered Hamlet. But Claudius was surely a possibility …? Or Polonius …? Of course, Charles wasn’t really old enough for the part, but he could ‘age up’.
As Ned English blethered on, though, his hopes moved down through the dramatis personae. Fortinbras …? Osric …? Second Gravedigger …? Reynaldo, Servant to Polonius …? A character that didn’t even have a name …? A Captain …? Sailor …? Attendant …?
This mournful downward spiral was interrupted by his hearing Ned say, ‘… so I’d like you to double the Ghost and First Gravedigger.’
‘The Ghost? The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the First Gravedigger?’
‘Yes.’
Charles Paris’s spirits lifted. All right, it wasn’t Claudius or Polonius. But the Ghost and the First Gravedigger were both decent roles. Also, he’d have to use different accents for the two of them, and there’s nothing actors like more than demonstrating their versatility.
No, the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and the First Gravedigger were good parts. Not the best parts, which, of course, involve gibbering. But the only character who gets to gibber in Hamlet is Ophelia in the Mad Scene. It is a fact that all actors love gibbering parts. Caliban, the deformed slave, is so much more fun to play than Prospero, the po-faced voice of authority. As well as dragging various malfunctioning limbs around the stage, with Caliban you can give him a kind of deformed voice as well – a wonderful gibbering opportunity. Even Edgar in King Lear, that most dull and upright of heroes, gets a chance to gibber when he’s disguised as Poor Tom o’ Bedlam. There’s nothing actors like better than being deformed and gibbering on stage. ‘I want to be deformed and gibber!’ they cry. It’s a hell of a lot more fun playing Smike than Nicholas Nickleby. There are even Oscars in it. ‘Cast me in My Left Foot, please!’ ‘Let me be in Rain Man!’ Daniel Day Lewis and Dustin Hoffman have done very well out of gibbering. And then again, coming back to basics, playing people who gibber is so much easier than playing real people. ‘Please,’ is the actor’s nightly prayer, ‘whatever I’m cast in next, may it be someone who gibbers!’
All right, Charles Paris reassured himself, the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and the First Gravedigger don’t get to gibber, but they’re still a nice doubling opportunity. A very attractive proposition.
‘So,’ asked Charles tentatively, ‘are you offering me the parts, Ned?’
‘Pretty much. I mean, I have to run all the casting past Tony …’
‘And is he likely to raise any objections?’
‘Oh, he’ll do the usual producer’s thing of wanting starrier names …’
‘Ah.’
‘… but I think I can win him round on that.’
‘Good.’
‘The thing is, when you’ve got leads who are not very experienced, not in stage work, anyway—’
‘Oh, by the way, you haven’t told me the most important thing about the production. Who is playing Hamlet?’
Ned English looked elaborately around the room, scrutinized the table cloth as if checking it for hidden microphones and leant across towards Charles. ‘Now I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s embargoed till the night of the StarHunt final, but our Hamlet will be … no less a person than …’ Ned had certainly mastered the reality show trick of holding a very long pause before a revelation; he was only lacking the dramatic build-up music ‘… Jared Root.’
‘Ah,’ said Charles profoundly, as if the name meant a light to him. ‘Jared Root, the … er …’
‘The winner of last year’s Top Pop.’
The programme’s name was vaguely familiar. ‘But wasn’t that a music contest?’
Ned English nodded excitedly. ‘Yes. And given Jared Root’s profile with the teen audience, his presence is going to mean lots of lovely young bums on seats.’
‘So,’ asked Charles, a little bewildered, ‘Hamlet is going to be played by a singer?’
Another excited nod.
‘Couldn’t they get an actor?’
‘Ah now, Charles, this is where it gets really good. It turns out that Jared Root is not just a singer. He came out of Italia Conti.’
‘The stage school?’
‘Yes. So it means he can act as well as sing!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. He played Badger in Toad of Toad Hall in his final year!’
‘Wouldn’t you say it was a bit of a jump from Badger to Hamlet?’
‘Not with me directing, Charles, no. But the thing is, because Jared Root is not very experienced … and because our Ophelia is unlikely to be very experienced either …’
Charles thought back to what he had seen of the aspirants on StarHunt. ‘You can say that again.’
‘… I want to surround them with actors who are absolutely rock solid.’
‘Oh.’ Charles Paris smiled, recognizing that he’d just been paid a compliment.
‘And if Tony Copeland argues about my casting, I’ll tell him: I have gone, not necessarily for the best actors for the roles, but ones who I know won’t cause any trouble during the production.’
‘Ah.’ Charles Paris stopped smiling, recognizing that the compliment he’d recently been paid had now been considerably diluted.
‘I’m going to have my hands full,’ Ned English went on, ‘with two comparative amateurs in the leading roles, so I have to make sure I surround them with solid, biddable professionals.’
‘Solid’ and ‘biddable’ were not the two adjectives Charles would have chosen to be carved on the tombstone of his career, but on the other hand he had just been offered some work. Two nice parts. He resolved to be exactly as solid and biddable as Ned English required.
When, at the end of their meal, the waiter asked if they would like any digestif, Ned said they ought to have something to celebrate what he hoped would be a renewal of their working relationship.
Charles didn’t demur. Ned had an Armagnac, Charles a Laphroaig malt whisky.
And on his way back to Hereford Road, he stopped at a convenience store in Westbourne Grove for a bottle of Bell’s. To continue celebrating.
FOUR
‘And the set, as you can see from this model,’ said Ned English, ‘is kind of like the interior of a cranium.’
Oh God. Charles winced inwardly, remembering the productions with which the director had first made his name. He’s not going to set the whole thing inside Yorick’s skull, is he? Years before, Charles Paris had actually taken part in another production set in a cranium. The Tempest, directed by someone who, as the rehearsal unwound, revealed himself to be a complete loony. As ever, Charles could remember the notice he’d received for his very small contribution to the production. ‘Even Charles Paris, as the Shipmaster, looked as if he’d rather be acting in another play entirely. And he had my sympathy.’ – Shropshire Star.
‘Now,’ the director went on, ‘I’ll hand over to our designer to have a few words about how the set’ll work.’
Charles Paris remained at the ba
ck of the cast as they crowded round for a look at the neatly carved cardboard set model. It was the first day of rehearsal for the Tony Copeland Productions’ Hamlet. The rehearsal room was in an old barracks in Kilburn, which had ceased to be a military building in a recent round of defence cuts and was awaiting redevelopment. Before the cast arrived, the stage management team had marked out the dimensions of the set with coloured tape on the wooden floor. In the centre of the space they had set up a large table surrounded by chairs for the read-through. Against the wall was a smaller table with a tall water heater, tins of coffee powder, tea bags, biscuits and all the other necessities of the rehearsal period.
The designer’s explanation of his set was, to Charles’s mind, somewhat abstruse. He seemed to have got overexcited by the idea of reproducing the human skull and kept on about how closely what he was building would mirror the real thing. Very proud of his knowledge of human anatomy, the designer showed how the giant interior of the cranium would be built up in sections matching the bones of a human skull. There would be a frontal bone, two parietal bones, and two temporal bones. And the main entrance at the back of the stage would correspond with the gap in the occipital bone through which the vertebral column is connected to the cranial cavity.
All of this talk sounded warning bells for Charles. His main concern about a set was not how closely it corresponded to what it referenced but how easy it was to get on and off. And how likely or unlikely it was to fall down.
‘The thing is,’ Ned English picked up, cutting through the hubbub of comments about the model, ‘that my reading of Hamlet is going to be based on one line that the Prince himself says. “For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”’
Oh no, thought Charles Paris. It’s going to be set inside Hamlet’s skull, not Yorick’s.
‘Which is why,’ said the director, ‘the action of the play is going to be set inside Hamlet’s skull.’
Ye gods!
‘Anyway,’ Ned continued, ‘let’s all sit down and get started on this read-through.’
The cast did as instructed. Charles Paris looked around the table. So far as he could remember, he had not worked with any of the other actors before. There were a couple of faces familiar from the telly, including Katrina Selsey, the Essex girl with blonde hair, blue eyes framed with mascaraed false lashes and teeth of a whiteness not on God’s colour chart, who had come through to triumph in StarHunt and won the coveted role of Ophelia. Sitting next to her was a smart-suited young woman to whom the new star chatted continuously. Charles couldn’t imagine what part in Hamlet the other girl might be playing. Surely she was too young for Gertrude. The Player Queen perhaps …? Though there was something about her manner that didn’t make her look like an actress. (Oops! Charles reprimanded himself. Actor!) She also kept handing out business cards to anyone who came near her.
Charles couldn’t help noticing how much make-up Katrina Selsey and the girl beside her were wearing. He felt an awful old fogey for being so aware of it. Having grown up through the sixties, Charles had a predilection for unenhanced female beauty – Frances had very rarely worn any make-up during the early, happy years of their marriage. But now young teenagers wouldn’t leave the house without levels of face-painting as thick as those used in nineteenth-century opera. He couldn’t help being reminded of a line he’d had to read in a Radio Four programme about John Evelyn. On the eleventh of May 1654, the great diarist had written: ‘I now observed how the women began to paint themselves, formerly a most ignominious thing and us’d only by prostitutes.’ Charles knew that his own views on make-up, if articulated, would sound equally reactionary. So he must make damn sure he never articulated them. Oh dear, in the brave new world he now inhabited, there were so many things he didn’t dare say out loud.
Glancing round at the assembled cast, Charles reminded himself that Hamlet wasn’t much of a play for an actor with a roving eye. Gertrude, Ophelia, the Player Queen (and that part was sometimes voguishly played by a boy). Add in the occasional Court Lady and that was it so far as potential sexual encounters were concerned. Unless, of course, you were gay. Yes, with all those male roles, Hamlet could be a very promising play if you were gay.
Mind you, one of the Assistant Stage Managers, who’d been introduced as Milly Henryson, was very pretty. Long black hair swept back into a hair tie and lovely dark-blue eyes. But terribly young. First job out of drama school perhaps. As Charles eyed her covertly, he had a nagging feeling he’d met her somewhere. But he couldn’t think where. Still, with looks like that she might go far in the theatre. Assuming she could act. Actually, with looks like that, even assuming she couldn’t act.
Charles hardly even rebuked himself for thinking so immediately about sex, but old habits died hard. He was meeting for the first time a group of people with whom he could well be spending the next six months. Or even longer. Checking out the available women was a simple knee-jerk reaction.
Except, of course, who could say whether they were actually available? And, he reminded himself, the new squeaky clean Charles Paris was intending to get back with his wife, wasn’t he? As well as give up the booze. Something which he hadn’t quite managed to do yet. Which reminded him, he really must ring Frances. How long was it since they had last spoken? Weeks, certainly. Possibly even months. Must ring Frances.
Even as he had the thought, he found himself smiling at the woman opposite. Late forties, possibly early fifties, hair dyed copper-coloured, she must be playing Gertrude. Very attractive, though. Charles was pleased to see that she smiled back at him. Mind you, he reminded himself, actresses – no, female actors, dammit – smile at anyone.
Another of the ASMs came across to him. Good-looking boy, dark-haired, thin, nervous, probably about twenty. ‘Just wanted to check we’ve got the right mobile number for you.’
Charles looked at the proffered list. ‘Yes, that’s right. And, sorry, your name is …?’
‘Will Portlock.’
‘ASMing, are you?’
‘Yes. But I’m also playing Second Gravedigger.’
‘Oh, great, we’ll have our scene together then. Trying to screw laughs out of some of the worst puns in the whole of English literature.’
‘Yes.’ The boy grinned shyly but proudly. ‘I’m also understudying Hamlet.’
‘Wow. Congratulations.’
‘Mm. Awful position, really, isn’t it? Because, of course, I’d feel terrible if anything were to happen to Jared, but …’
Charles Paris grinned. He’d done the job often enough to know about the conflicts of ambitions and fantasies which the understudy cannot keep out of his mind. He was about to offer words of encouragement to Will Portlock, but was interrupted by the Stage Manager announcing that the read-through was starting.
‘Right,’ said Ned English when everyone was seated round the table, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’
There was a tremor in his voice and a sheen of sweat on his brow. Charles hoped that the chestnut hair dye wasn’t about to run.
But the tell-tale signs made him realize just how much on edge Ned English was. The director kept looking cautiously towards Tony Copeland, who was present with a male sidekick, a man who’d been introduced simply as ‘Doug Haye, from Tony Copeland Productions’, without any explanation as to what his role was in the business. Haye was a stocky, pugnacious-looking man with a shaved head and features that ran together like a melted candle. During the entire morning of the read-through Charles Paris did not hear him speak once.
Tony Copeland himself invariably dressed in a pinstriped suit and wore a tie. His dark hair was short with a neat parting. Rimless glasses sat on a face which looked almost bland. But he wore an unmistakable aura of power. No wonder Ned English was afraid of him.
The director also seemed very nervous of Jared Root and Katrina Selsey. The penny dropped for Charles. He wasn’t the only ‘solid, biddable’ actor who’d been drafted into the production. That was why Charles hadn’t recog
nized many of the other actors. Ned English had cast ‘old mates’, people he’d worked with before. He was preparing for possible tantrums and flouncing from his Hamlet and Ophelia, so wanted to be certain he wouldn’t get any temperament from the rest of the cast.
There also might well have been a financial reason for Ned’s selection of actors. The deal Maurice Skellern had agreed with Tony Copeland Productions for Charles Paris’s services had not been lavish, given that the four-week regional tour of Hamlet was going to be followed by – or at least there was an option clause in the contract for it to be followed by – a minimum of three months in the West End. Maybe the rest of the cast were employed on comparably meagre terms.
If that were the case, there was an obvious and not very pleasing corollary. Jared Root and Katrina Selsey must be being paid a great deal, which was the reason why money was being saved on the rest of the budget. Charles Paris was long accustomed to being in shows whose stars had been paid infinitely more than he was (and had sometimes also been on a percentage of box office receipts as well), but they had at least been genuine stars. The winners of Top Pop and StarHunt could hardly be placed in that category. They were media mushrooms which had sprung up overnight, and might equally quickly shrivel and die.
‘All right,’ Ned English continued, the tremor still in his voice. ‘Some of you I’m sure have met each other already, but just so’s everyone knows each other, let’s go round the table and each identify ourselves and what our role is in this production of Hamlet. Well, I’ll start. In case you don’t know – or haven’t worked it out – I’m Ned English and I have the great honour of directing this Tony Copeland production. OK, let’s go clockwise round the table.’
Which they did. Some of the actors tried to make jokes and get laughs on their introductions. Charles didn’t. He just said, ‘I’m Charles Paris – doubling the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and First Gravedigger.’
He was interested when the dishy woman opposite announced that her name was Geraldine Romelle. And yes, he’d been right, she was playing Gertrude.