by John Gardner
Knowing that his agent usually reached his office about ten, Kapstein called him on the dot of the hour and was irritated to find him not yet there. He called his home number to discover that the man had left and was already on his way to the office.
Two frantic telephone calls, and half-an-hour later, a frustrated Kapstein got his agent on the line. Within fifteen minutes the actor’s anger was as uncontrolled as before, his plans demolished and the future uncertain.
Morrie had started by recounting to his agent a quiet, and grossly inaccurate account of what had happened. He was amazed when the man spelled out the real facts to him: that Douglas Silver had every right to sack him; that the director had witnesses to prove, not only that Kapstein was drunk and incapable at the first rehearsal, but also that he had been abusive in the extreme; that the renewal of his television contract was in the balance anyway and if the news got out that Maurice Kapstein had been sacked from Shireston because of alcoholic instability it might well be the end; apart from this, the actor was made very aware that if he did not prove himself with a superlative Shylock at Shireston this season, the only person to suffer would be himself ; his only reasonable course of action, therefore, was to throw himself on Douglas Silver’s mercy and try for reinstatement, at the same time praying that the story did not find its way into the press.
The flare of resentment, following the conversation, finally resolved itself in another bout of self pity. To start with, Kapstein wanted to go out and get drunk again, but there was enough of the old solid professional left in him to see that, however badly he felt, his agent was right. Once he had reached this point in thought, it was an easy step to centre his mind on the problem of how best to get off the hook without losing too much face.
***
At the age of forty-nine, Graham Harper knew deep within himself that he was a weak, ineffective failure. He knew it in little things like the fact that, while he tried to dress smartly the frayed cuffs and uneven shoes heels always showed; also the internal things, the knowledge that he had to take extra care because of natural smells and that too many cigarettes over the years had now not only robbed him of enjoying his food but also caused him to have bad breath. A Shireston man by birth, Harper had drifted for years before finally settling down in the job of box office manager at the festival, work which did not bring him much pleasure but at least provided a steady income, a small status and little in the way of really difficult mental or physical labour.
He tried not to think too deeply about his own private life: of the marriage which had pitifully been allowed to drift on for years, dead and hopeless, or the long affair which was now almost as dead as the marriage, shrivelled to one night a week at the pub with Elsie Williams and usually one night in her bed, puffing and sweating away at the oldest routine in history, the rite they had both gradually ceased to appreciate, neither of them being blessed with the agility, wit or imagination to make it stimulating or inventive.
Last night had been one of those evenings and, as always on the morning after, Harper allowed himself a little extra time, rarely arriving at the office much before eleven (a shade sooner during the season), never expecting Elsie to come in before time — that luxury had begun years ago as a pinch of mild pampering. Now it seemed to be the only mutual arrangement which worked for them.
As he drove up the hill from the town, Graham Harper thought about the previous evening, his stomach turning over in mild disgust: at himself, Elsie, the whole business. All the obligatory trimmings that were once part of the sweet icing that they had blindly thought of as love: silly small things like the black lace panties she always wore because eight years or so ago the sight of her in black underwear was a rousing assistance (now turning to fat Elsie always removed her girdle and pulled on tight nylon pants for one of their evenings so that, half stripped, her appearance had become almost bizarre); the fruitless, adolescent, and inept gropings and fumblings and kissings, wet and unarousing until the final undressing and, somehow, going through the necessary procedures of the act until one or the other of them reached some kind of mild satisfaction. Perhaps, thought Harper, it was his fault; plenty of his contemporaries seemed to thoroughly enjoy sex: unless they were lying, putting up a front; now it simply left him with a sense of embarrassment.
He turned in through the main gate, parked the car, locked it and slowly walked in through the main door of the house, along the corridors, active and live with noise, to his office.
Harper sensed the presence of someone within as he turned the knob. David Wills, the executive director, sat at Harper’s desk, idly thumbing through the files.
‘Ah,’ said David looking up and then, most pointedly, at his watch. ‘I was beginning to think that you had been taken ill, Mr. Harper.’
Despite his ineffectuality as a man, Harper had long since been able to cover most of his faults and ineptitudes. He smiled and spoke with some diffidence. ‘There’s not much on at the moment, Mr. Wills. I usually allow myself one late morning a week.’
‘Not much on?’ queried David. ‘Have you seen one of these yet?’ He tossed the new booking form across the desk; it was a two page colour leaflet, the cover embossed with the Shireston bell symbol and the names of the leading members of the company, together with the four plays; on its flip side there were details of the plays and how to book seats; the second leaf was detachable, with spaces for making any possible per-mutation of booking for any, or all, of the plays, leaving room for preferable and alternative dates.
Harper picked up the leaflet without really looking at it, then dropped it back on to the desk. ‘Yes,’ he said without noticeable enthusiasm. ‘Yes, I’ve seen it. They tried something similar a couple of years ago. Didn’t make much difference.’
‘Really?’ For the first time since Douglas had approached him about the box office, David Wills felt a violent reaction. ‘Really Mr. Harper? How close to the ground do you keep your ear?’
The man shrugged. ‘Well, you know...’
‘Have you read your newspapers, studied the memos that have been circulated here? Have you used your eyes? Do you know what we’ve got going here?’
‘It’s all been tried before, Mr. Wills. All the gimmicks. People don’t really go for gimmicks anymore. Some big names and a lick of paint here and there isn’t going to provoke a miracle. This place has been tottering on quietly for years and—’
‘And it’s going to stop tottering. On the first of February over one million of these booking leaflets will have been circulated. There will be a massive publicity campaign which I promise you is going to bring in orders for seats the like of which you have never seen. Our aim is a total sell-out for the entire season, and from what I can see here you’re not even equipped to flog half-a-dozen of the cheaper seats in one day. Now, I’m answerable directly to Mr. Silver, and I give you two days, two days to get off your arse and study exactly what we’re trying to do and work out what the end result should be. I shall expect you to digest all that and come up with specifications of your requirements. You’re going to need extra temporary staff to deal with the mail bookings and, I suspect, extra staff on the box office counter itself. You’d better go through those files and memos, Harper, and get yourself into the picture. I know exactly what you need, and if you don’t come up with an approximation of what I have already worked out you’ll be looking for a new job. Now get to it, and be in my office at nine o’clock on Thursday morning to face your moment of truth.’ He rose and marched from the box office manager’s office before the astonished Harper could utter a word of protest.
The morning’s Othello rehearsal had gone well and Douglas was pleased with the progress; he was even more pleased when, just after noon, Frank took a call from Deborah in the office to say that Maurice Kapstein was anxious to see him. He sent a message back saying that he would see Kapstein at twelve-fifteen, knowing well enough that he would not get to his office until, at the earliest twelve-forty.
Kapstein had a hal
f-hour wait, but Douglas was happy to note that the actor wore a distinctly shamefaced expression as he entered. The director knew that he had done the right thing: a show of strength at the start was worth a great deal.
‘Well, Morrie?’ he began.
‘Douglas,’ Kapstein spread his hands wide. ‘What can I say?’
‘Sorry might be good for starters.’ There was no doubt about Kapstein’s dramatic ability, thought Douglas, it was all there: the look of contrition blended with dignity to hint that really he was a man who had been caught in one weak never-before-or-again moment. The voice was also modulated to just the right pitch, signifying that he was utterly penitent.
‘Douglas, I’m sorry. Truly I am; an old man’s fear at being among so much talent and faced with such a task. You must know that this sort of strain leads one to folly.’
‘You crafty old devil,’ chuckled Douglas. ‘You don’t deserve it but the matter won’t be mentioned again if you make me three promises.’
‘Anything, my boy, anything: you know me.’
‘You apologize to The Merchant cast before this afternoon’s rehearsal, and you stay off the heavy drinking for the rest of the season. You also make private apologies to Carol Evans and Lonnie Barnes for your unmitigated racial perversity; and, while you are at it, Joe Thomas and my wife.’
Kapstein looked stunned. The well-built characterization fell away for a second and his face flushed with anger.
‘Well?’ asked Douglas.
Slowly Kapstein nodded, speaking in a low husky voice. ‘For you, Douglas Silver, for you I’ll do it.’
Each morning at nine the whole company met in the rehearsal hall to exercise. The initial intention of these morning sessions was to relax the individual members of the company and therefore encourage concentration. Douglas had spent a good deal of time working with Frank and Robin, who always assisted at the morning periods, and together they had planned a course which would steadily progress through the season: beginning with simple yoga-based exercises, slow deep breathing, rhythmic movement, bending, stretching and pulling, the adoption of poses, such as the lotus; using these as a basis they would go on to the more dynamic exercises where actors and actresses would work in pairs and explore situations, sometimes in opposition to one another; there would also be physical examination exercises, again in pairs, one exploring the other’s face with eyes closed, first with the hands, then nose, then ears; they might even move on to examination of the whole body.
The greater majority of the company took to the morning sessions with enthusiasm, dressed for work, in Levis and sweaters they managed to accomplish in a few days a spirit which, under more conventional conditions, would have taken weeks.
Some of the more senior people, however, were naturally slower at becoming absorbed into one human team. Kapstein grumbled each morning, but Douglas could cope with him, turning the belligerence into a subject for humour; he was much more concerned by people like Felicity Durrant who, from talking to the younger actors, had built up horrendous anxieties in her mind about the later phases of the exercise class; or Conrad Catellier, who, like all actors, exercised regularly, yet had, over the years, built up his own scheme of training which he preferred to do alone; it was difficult to make him see that in order to develop the unified style, upon which Douglas had set his heart, they had to spend part of each day together as a company. To give him credit, Catellier turned up to most of the sessions and was obviously making an effort to overcome his natural suspicion of such things.
During the first week they accomplished much in rehearsals; Maurice Kapstein, now more malleable, began to throw himself into The Merchant rehearsals and, even after a few days it was easy to see that his Shylock could possibly become a major interpretation; Ronald Escott, as Old Gobbo, and Mark Lynton, as young Launcelot Gobbo, began to work out some very funny business, while Carol Evans, in the comparatively small role of Nerissa, started to give Liz Column’s Portia a frame in which to shine during the early Belmont scenes.
As for Othello, that too began to lift, with Joe Thomas moving gently through his scenes. As yet there was no attempt at vocal attack, but Douglas impressed upon him that he had to start slowly, using Shakespeare’s words to create the picture of a strong sane man, allowing the audience to glimpse the first fissures of breakdown as the scenes with Iago and Desdemona developed. It went without saying that Crispin’s Iago was going to be a masterpiece of intrigue and neurosis, but Jennifer Frost seemed to be holding back her Desdemona, as if to keep in step with Joe Thomas.
By mid-week they had completed a full walk through and begun to work on some of the essential moves, such as the running faena between Iago and Roderigo and Iago and Othello. This had become such a popular idea that Douglas had to restrain Crispin, Laurence Pern (playing Roderigo) and Thomas from taking the actions too far.
Two of the big technical problems came right at the end of the play with Desdemona’s murder and Othello’s suicide, both of which Douglas wanted to be dramatically spectacular. While he had devised a brilliant and theatrical end for Othello, the director had shelved the actual moves for Desdemona’s suffocation.
‘I suppose it would be in keeping if you made a goring rush at her in the last moments, like a bull,’ mused Douglas. ‘But I don’t know if that would be in tune with the text.’
‘You ever see a movie about Othello?’ asked Thomas. ‘An old movie with Ronald Colman playing an actor obsessed with Desdemona’s murder.’
‘Yes, A Double Life; where he works out the business of smothering Desdemona with a kiss.’
‘That’s it: then he has to go and try it out on some babe to see if it works.’ Joe grinned at Jennifer giving her the come on, ‘Want to try it kid?’
‘I don’t think we dare pinch that one,’ Douglas maintained a serious demeanour. ‘Let’s just walk it through a couple of times; try the goring bull, Joe, it might work at that.’
Douglas had kept quiet about the final moves of the scene, working only with Tony Holt and, on the Sunday, with Joe Thomas, as the whole thing was devised to use Joe’s acrobatic experience. Holt’s setting for Desdemona’s bedchamber had a great bed as the focal point; upstage from this an iron spiral staircase led to a short gallery, some twelve feet above the stage floor. The gallery had no protective railing, only a series of ornamental metal rails which curved up and outwards, then up again, secured under the gallery floor. Fitted to two of these rails were metal rings to which were attached strong small nylon rope nooses, the rails and gallery floor being specially strengthened.
The idea was that Joe would slowly mount the spiral staircase at the beginning of his penultimate speech, Soft you; a word or two before you go. He would move along the gallery and, towards the end of the speech, get his feet firmly into the rope nooses. At the last lines of the speech he would stab himself, releasing blood capsules sewn into his shirt.
At this point, Othello traditionally falls across Desdemona’s body speaking the final lines: I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee: no way but this. Douglas’s idea was that Joe should drop his dagger and, as he spoke the final line, stretch out his arms to Desdemona lying on the bed downstage, then pitch forward off the gallery. The nooses would take hold and the last seconds of the play would leave Othello hanging head downwards, blood dripping from his belly.
It was an ideal situation for Joe Thomas, and Douglas had purposely remained close about it so that they could gauge the shock effect in rehearsal. It called for accurate timing, nerve, and Thomas’s confidence in the strength of the apparatus; the director had, therefore, insisted that Tony, with Archie Swimmer and his boys, should set up the staircase and gallery in the rehearsal hall on the Monday evening so that Joe could spend some time in private rehearsing the moves. He had, in fact, started working on Monday evening as soon as the prop was in position, going down late with Ronnie Gregor, first testing his weight on the ropes, dropping off the structure and holding the nooses in his hands, then fitting them to his feet
and rolling gently from the gallery, building up to the complete routine.
Joe spent a great deal of his spare time down in the hall, and by Thursday, when they were starting to walk through the scene, he could just about manage the fall properly.
When the moment came, the shock effect on the Othello cast was indeed spectacular, at least two of the girls screamed, and a handful of the men came running across the room to his aid.
‘Get away,’ shouted Thomas, grinning, making himself look even more bizarre as he swung, head down, from the ropes. ‘There’s going to be a lot of blood dripping from here. I told you them mixed marriages wouldn’t work, Douglas Silver.’
On the Friday of rehearsals, the Shireston Gazette carried both the story of the company’s assembly at Shireston House, and the Joe Thomas drugs case, which had occurred too late for the previous week’s issue.
TOP NAMES ARRIVE FOR NEW LOOK FESTIVAL screeched the front page banner headline; underneath was the cutting subheading: TV PERSONALITY PREDICTS ORGIES AT SHIRESTON HOUSE.
Between them, Janet Ridley and her editor, Hedley Moir, had performed a neat piece of journalistic butchery. The lead story was careful to stick to facts, yet it was written with a painful bias. Miss Ridley had taken numerous quotes out of context and made reference to things like long haired actors mingled with short haired actresses, and towards the end of the evening there was wild dancing, led by famous coloured entertainer Joe Thomas, who recently appeared on a drugs charge before Uxbridge magistrates. (See story on this page.)