The Juliet Spell

by Rees, Douglas

  On the Wednesday before opening, our set started to go up. Gerry and Lou trucked it in at seven that morning, and by the time the stores closed that night, fair Verona where we lay our scene was looming over its fake Italian streets.

  And it was beautiful. Much more elaborate than anything we had talked about. There were details like fake stonework around the doors and windows, and shields with the crests of the Montagues and Capulets hanging from two of the houses. Between the houses, helping to steady them, was an arch that worked as a central entrance, a street and, at the end of the play, the way to the Capulet tomb. There was a skull and crossbones on it throughout the play. Perfect.

  All the actors walked around the set in awe that first night. We tried to look like we were being total pros, just figuring out how to inhabit this new space, not really overwhelmed at how beautiful it looked, and how much we hoped to shine in it. But we were blown away.

  “We never throw anything away,” Lou said when I told him how amazing it was.

  “Hell, tell her the truth. We scrounge from other the.aters,” Gerry laughed. “As soon as they strike a set, we show up to rescue it from the Dumpsters. I’ll bet we could stage four Oklahoma!’s at once.”

  “There’s still some work to do,” Lou said. “We have some banners and stuff. And the lights to move in.”

  “Even so,” Edmund said. “You’ve done everything you said you’d do and more. I’ve never seen better, not even in England.”

  It would have been nice if there’d been some way to stop the looky-lous from stopping by for an eyeful of free theater. Shoppers walking up and down the mall saw what we were doing, and stopped and stared, surrounded by their bags, kids and dogs, blocking the streets, which made the drivers start honking their horns. Not something actors had had to deal with back in the 1590’s.

  “To be or not to be, is that the question?” some guy in a motorcycle T-shirt shouted at Edmund.

  “Hey, Juliet, baby, over here,” hollered a guy in a Raiders cap. “I’ll be your Romeo.”

  It was hell. People were shouting at each other, shouting at us. Little kids were screaming. Two dogs started to fight.

  After that night, Elizabeth Castillo came down from her office and told us we’d have to hire at least two extra secu.rity guards for every night we were in the mall.

  “Two be damned,” Edmund said. “How much for a dozen?”

  “They’re two hundred dollars a shift,” Elizabeth Castillo said.

  “Get me six, and I want them at once,” Edmund said.

  “Edmund, there’s no way the show can make that kind of money,” I said. “Not even if we sell out every night.”

  “A fig for the cost,” Edmund raged. “We need those dog-berries and we will have them.”

  Elizabeth Castillo put her hand over her mouth like there was something she was trying to keep herself from saying. Then she said it. “We’ll cover the cost of one guard out of special-event funds.”

  “Bless ye, milady,” Edmund said.

  Elizabeth Castillo smiled. “Some nights we might be able to stretch it to two.”

  Things were better the next night, with our own pair of giants to keep people moving and quiet. Nothing like a three-hundred-pound weightlifter asking you to move along to make you want to do it.

  And the trouble on that first night actually helped. A guy came down from the paper to find out more about it, and did a nice article on the show. It ended up on the first page of the local section, and a lot of people who hadn’t known we were doing the play read it. They wanted tickets.

  But the pedestrian problems were tiny compared with the lights. It was the only time I ever saw Edmund really upset with the way things were going.

  Setting lights brought things to a crawl, starting and stop.ping while Gerry and Lou scrambled around on the rig of pipes and lines that they had rented to us and which, one by one, erased the unwanted shadows from the set. We were there past midnight three nights in a row because of all the work it made.

  The whole lighting thing fascinated Shakespeare. As the Fresnels went up, he watched with the same amazing inten.sity that Edmund brought to whatever he wanted to know. When Gerry finally called down from a pole he was hanging on, “Hey, Bill, you wanta help?” Shakespeare almost flew up to where he was and started learning to aim and mask the lights. He was so happy he started whistling, and the work went a little faster at least.

  Edmund still fumed.

  “I swear, Miri, these damned lights will keep us from opening on time,” he said. “Hell’s cullions, they may keep us here till Doomsday waiting. No one needs them. We have the most glorious sun here in California. We can play in it, as they did in London.”

  “Look, Edmund,” I said. “People don’t go to the theater in the middle of the day anymore. They go at night. And believe me, light is worth all the trouble it takes. Wait and see.”

  “I like them well, brother,” Shakespeare said. “Burbage owns an old church which we might light by candles and

  Douglas Rees

  perform shows at night there. If I ever get home to England, I will talk him into it.”

  Thursday we had final dress rehearsal. And it went so well I was worried. Because you know that old saying that a bad dress rehearsal means a good opening night? It’s usually true. There’s something about having one last chance to make a bunch of mistakes that sets you up to do well the next time.

  Anyway, we were going to find out. Opening night was Friday.

  Chapter Thirty.

  Two

  One of the worst things about being an actor is the day of opening night. You are worthless. You can’t think about anything but getting onstage, and whether you’re going to screw up in front of a thousand people. You try to avoid every other human being, because if anybody talks to you, they’re almost certain to get snapped at, or ignored, at best.

  Mom and Dad kept out of my way.

  I could have worked with Edmund, but he wasn’t there. He and Shakespeare had promised to help Gerry and Lou with some of the last setup items.

  I tried to rehearse my part by myself, but that was just re.citing, not acting.

  Finally, when it was still an hour before my call, I headed down to the theater anyway, because there was nowhere else on earth for me to be.

  And when I got to there, I stopped, gasped, smiled, cried. Because Gerry and Lou and the guys had been busy.

  Lou had mentioned something about banners a week ago, and I hadn’t really paid attention. But they were there now.

  On one side of the mall hung red banners for the Montagues. On the other side, all around the area of the theater, were the blue banners of the Capulets. The expensive apartments and stores surrounding the stage had become part of the scene. I was in Verona.

  And standing on an apartment balcony was Edmund. Side by side with Gerry and Lou, and, presumably, the nice woman who lived there. She was smiling happily. Gerry had his arm around her waist.

  “Miri!” Edmund shouted when he saw me. “Come up.”

  “This’ll be the first time Juliet ever climbed up to Ro.meo,” I said, but I went into the building and took the el.evator to the second floor.

  “Hi, I’m Carol,” the lady said, letting me in. “Isn’t it amazing? You guys are amazing. Turning this whole place into something—something—I don’t know. Amazing.”

  “Something rich and strange,” Edmund said.

  From Carol’s balcony I could see both sides of the set, the beautiful façade and the strong, workmanlike backstage. The canvas-walled dressing rooms, and the short black tower where Gerry and Lou would run the lights. And the banners fluttered over it all.

  “Thank you,” I said, and slowly put my arms around Ed.mund, who had given me this.

  “No, Miri. Thank you,” Edmund said. Edmund looked down at me, and his face held that same look it had on the day when I’d knighted him at the kitchen sink. “Kind lady, gentle sirs, will ye not give me a moment alone with her in this pla
ce?”

  “Whoa,” Gerry said.

  “Oh, how sweet,” Carol said.

  They left and Edmund closed the balcony door.

  “Miri,” he said. “Ye remember that day?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So do I. I have not been able to fight down my feelings for ye,” he said. “I have tried, but failed. Miri, will ye have my love and be my Juliet in life?”

  “Aye. I will take you for my Romeo.”

  Edmund took me in his arms and kissed me, and from the other balconies and from the sidewalks below, came cheers.

  “Break a leg,” he whispered.

  “Break a leg.” I nodded.

  And we went back into the apartment.

  “’Tis well,” Edmund told Gerry, Carol and Lou. “My love loves me, and we have a play to act.”

  Carol, Gerry and Lou applauded.

  And with that, we went down to get ready.

  The other actors began to arrive. Drew and Bobby, Maria and Vivian, Phil, Bill London and everyone else. They all seemed to be charged with some special beauty that shone out of their faces and made their movements full of mean.ing. There was a power in us that I’d never felt before on any opening night.

  Which is not to say we felt that way about ourselves. We were scared.

  Drew was pacing back and forth, whispering his lines, occasionally stabbing at the air with an empty hand. Bobby was in a corner, made up, coiled into himself. Vivian kept checking her face.

  A low murmur that grew louder as we waited told us that the audience was arriving. The sun slanted down below the roofline of the apartments, and a breeze off the sea made the banners stream and fall so it looked like the show itself was breathing.

  Bill Meisinger, dressed in a handsome black suit and gleaming shoes stood with his arms wrapped around him.self, waiting in the wings. Beside him was Tanya Blair in

  plain black work clothes. She was carrying her faithful clip.board and wearing a headset. Total pro.

  I saw her adjust the mike and whisper into it, nod. She touched Bill on his shoulder, strode out into the light and welcomed the audience.

  She exited, and a couple of people actually applauded her. Then Gerry changed the lighting cue, and Bill walked out.

  Now understand, Bill was an announcer. And always be.fore he’d done his role by zeroing in on the center of the stage, announcing his lines and leaving the way he’d come in. And I would swear that that was exactly what he meant to do this time. But somehow, when the lights hit him, he changed.

  He walked along the set upstage, not strolling, but lead.ing the audience. He had something important to show us as well as to say. His arm shot up, pointing to the Capulet banner.

  “Two households, both alike in dignity,

  In fair Verona where we lay our scene,

  From ancient grudge break to new mutiny….”

  He wasn’t announcing, he was telling us a story, a story that mattered hugely. And the actors standing backstage heard his words fresh and full of new meaning, and were gathered in.

  He cast a look at the Montague banner and shook his head. He walked downstage, bent forward a little to clue in the audience that he was coming to the heart of his story, and said,

  “…From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;

  Whose misadventure’d piteous overthrows

  Doth, with their death, bury their parents’ strife.

  The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love

  And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

  Which but their children’s end, nought could remove,

  Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;

  The which, if you with patient ears attend,

  What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

  Then, his story told, he bowed, and exited upstage center and through the arch.

  The four boys who played the servants that start the brawl to begin the action bounced onstage as if Bill had conjured them there. In two seconds, with their insults exchanged, they were fighting, and the whole street was in an uproar. Tybalt appeared, and Benvolio, and Old Montague and Old Capulet, and then the Prince, with a few guards, to break things up and threaten everyone with the death penalty the next time they did anything like this.

  And the fight came off. It was almost as realistic as the brawl I got caught in the middle of that night at the party. Maybe a little too realistic—a Montague servant went limp.ing off at the end of the scene and he wasn’t acting.

  But what did that matter? The audience applauded.

  One fast burst, and then they fell silent to see what would happen next.

  And what happened next was magic. It was as though no.body was saying their lines, even though they were. It was guys hanging out, at high intensity, and the audience was getting sucked in. Drew was full of wicked bounce, kind of excited by the fight, and happy to tell Joey all about Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, and mocking his friend Romeo. Edmund, elegant, graceful, filling the stage with his character. And then me, finding out I was going to be married to a guy I don’t know, confused, showing all of my feelings by simply twisting a small white handkerchief.

  Fast forward to the balcony.

  The lights dimmed as I entered. For one second, I took in the soft night, the crisp flapping of the banners (Speak up, Miri; they’re pretty loud) and the three faint stars over my head. Then I spoke:

  “Ay, me!”

  Below me, Edmund turned his head toward the audience, alive with hope and lust.

  “Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?”

  And then my first famous line:

  “Ah, Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

  And we sailed together into our love.

  When we were done, when Edmund had exited, and the lights went down, a wave of applause rippled across the au.dience, light and fresh as if the breeze had drawn it out of them along with the sound of the banners.

  Nice.

  My next scene was with Edmund and Phil, in Friar Law.rence’s cell, where he marries us. And Phil was great. His Friar Lawrence was just like himself, a seemingly nice guy with something slightly wrong about him. When we knelt down in front of him, he moved so that the blessing hand he waved over us fell like a shadow on our faces. I saw what he was doing, and bowed my head, feeding into it. A sad, almost sinister, moment. Then it was over, and Romeo and Juliet were married and happy, and doomed. And the first act raced along to the big fight between Tybalt and Mercu.tio, where, just as Edmund had said that night in the book.store, the whole play turns on what Tybalt does.

  Bobby entered, smoldering with rage, and drew his sword. Drew laughed, a little nervously, and drew his. Bobby at.tacked, and Drew defended. He was better, but Bobby’s Tybalt was empowered by a want for blood and Drew’s Mer.cutio wasn’t. Suddenly, you could see Drew’s face change. He knew he was in a fight for his life. He forced Bobby back three steps, and Bobby screamed his rage. He surged back, they were nose-to-nose, then they both broke and stood panting, watching each other for the next move. Bobby would like to retreat—Mercutio’s better than he realized— but he can’t. Mercutio would like to laugh the thing off, but that’s not going to happen and he knows it. They circle around each other, feinting with their blades.

  Enter Edmund, trying to break it up. Bobby sees his chance, lunges in a perfect thrust under Edmund’s arm, and Drew screams.

  Drew dies, still joking, or trying to. His last line comes out of him like a sob, like a curse,

  “A plague o’ both your houses.”

  Edmund looked up at Bobby. Bobby twitched his blade.

  And from somewhere out in the audience a voice wailed, “Don’t do it, man!”

  Taking that for his cue, Edmund attacked Bobby and cut him down. He didn’t even say his speech about Mercutio’s soul hovering a little way above them, waiting for one of them to join him. There wasn’t time.

  The audience m
embers were really into it now. That voice in the dark had given them permission to join in. You could hear their gasps, their mutters, a few more shouts. “Cut him!” “Take him out!” And when Bobby went down, there were cheers and boos.

  Then there was applause. Lots of it.

  The guys in the fight scene stood there, letting it wash over them. Then Edmund did something I’d never seen any.one do onstage before. In the middle of the scene, he bowed. A long, graceful, elegant bow, the kind he’d given me when he’d thought I was Helen of Troy. He held out his arms for the rest of the actors to follow him, and they did, bowing from the waist like Americans do.

  It sounds stupid, but it worked. It got the show moving again. Romeo ran off, and the scene ended.

  End of act one.

  The lights came up for intermission.

  Bobby and Drew were hugging each other. All the guys who’d been in the scene were slapping each other on the back, and the ones who’d been watching from the wings were applauding and pumping the air with their fists.

  “Oh, man,” Bobby kept saying. “Oh, man.”

  “Yeah. But what do we do for an encore?” Drew said.

  I walked over and kissed both of them. Bobby returned my kiss a little too enthusiastically. Drew gave me a fum.bling peck. Then Juliet grabbed Romeo and smeared both our makeups.

  “Thou art very, very hot, my lord,” I said.

  “Aye, but now we must recapture them,” Edmund said.

  And we did.

  Act two scrambled along through the tight, twisty plot where everything turns on missed connections, up to the scene in the Capulets’ tomb. I’ve taken the drug that Friar Lawrence gave me to fake death—but Romeo doesn’t know I’m faking. He comes back to Verona when he hears I’ve died, planning to kill himself and die next to me, finds Count Paris by my grave, gets into a fight with him, kills him, takes Juliet in his arms, takes the poison, kisses me and dies. Friar Lawrence shows up, with Romeo’s servant. Boy is the friar upset. But he runs off, because a bunch of con.stables and watchmen are coming, along with the Capulets and Montagues. Then—you know the rest—Juliet wakes up and stabs herself with Romeo’s dagger.