Upstaged

by Jacques Jouet

  Up to this point we’d all been hoping that the Usurper would, if nothing else, continue to follow the script. These hopes were soon dashed, however, as it became clear that the man playing the Republican Théodore Soufissis (the rebellious object of the aforementioned presidential ingratitude) had begun to deviate from the text of Flavy’s play. By his own admission, Marcel Flavy is by no means a revolutionary writer, and does not personally share the radical theses of his character Soufissis, or even those of the other more or less Souffisian figures whom the president encounters during his adventure. Flavy’s general intention was to advocate a certain tolerance without presenting the political theories of this or that individual in any detail. What he wanted to explore were the dramatic possibilities of the encounter between the two main characters — and to play upon the traces of past complicity resting beneath present resentment. Flavy’s text is about a friendship confronted with an ambition that has become too great to share. Complicating Flavy’s undertaking was the people’s image of Théodore Soufissis — held up as he is in our Republic as a hero whose life was rich in accident and adventure, full of a Romanticism remote from any Realpolitik.

  The Usurper, however, did not allow his character to slide down the slippery slope of outraged stoicism, as is called for in Flavy’s play (a development very much in accord with what we know of the historical Soufissis). He kept to his lines, and yet at the same time began to rebel against it. At first this was done almost imperceptibly. Only gradually did his undermining of the text become clear. The Usurper succeeded thereby in slowly unsettling the usually effortless assurance of Jean-François Ernu, and, thereby, of the President. At first it was a discrete clinamen, a slight deviation in the orderly descent of textual atoms — a not absent in one place and slipped in somewhere else. Ernu soon found himself forced to embark on uncertain waters — responding to unexpected objections from his costar with only his own distant memories of Republican history as a guide (happily, he had brushed up a bit in preparation for his role). Despite his immense skill as an actor, it must be noted that Jean-François Ernu has never much liked — nor, indeed, excelled at — improvisation. It’s a part of the profession that’s always cost him enormous effort, and in which he never willingly engaged. The Usurper began to speak a bit more slowly — less, it seemed, to leave Ernu more time for reflection than so that Botsinas would have time to turn the pages of the volume spread on his lap.

  Before long it became obvious that Soufissis (or, rather, the current possessor of the role) had had enough. A ripple of uncertainty went through the troupe when he revealed the true identity of the disguised President a quarter of an hour earlier than was called for. He then let fall a scathingly ironic — and genuinely clever — turn of phrase, leading to a burst of laughter at the expense of the President’s dignity. Remarkably, neither I nor any other member of the company was able to retain or reconstruct its precise phrasing. It was something to the effect that the once-rich cloak of sovereignty had been reduced to bits of moth-eaten something or other, riddled with holes, gnawed by worms…anyway, in bad shape. But said much better, so much better — I assure you. In the concentrated space of an image, he gave a radical critique of a government as craven as it was inept.

  Ernu, in the role of the offended President, hesitated between forced laughter and blind rage. He shot an imploring look in the direction of Sylvestre Pascal-Bram, who was playing his advisor, but who was, if anything, at even more of a loss than him, and thus incapable of offering impromptu counsel. Nevertheless, he did do something. Like the lieutenant who reacts to a dressing down from a captain by laying into a sergeant, Pascal-Bram launched into a vulgar tirade against Annie Soulemenov. Shown the way by his authoritarian finger, she exited through the garden and collapsed in tears onto a pile of old curtains the moment she was out of sight. Her final exit had taken place twenty minutes ahead of schedule, a tragedy for a young actress, augmented by the fact that the turn events had taken deprived her — as she was to repeat later on — of no fewer than four lines (three, by my count, but still).

  Back on stage, Ernu issued a dignified appeal: “Théodore, you have never ceased to be my friend—” But no sooner had he begun than Théodore cut him off. What followed was a truly rousing speech that left a silence of rare intensity in its wake — such as rarely happens in the theater — broken finally by a salvo of applause, which, while impassioned, proved remarkably brief, as if those applauding suddenly felt they’d been too bold and so fell silent.

  Because of its length and complexity, it wasn’t possible for any of us to transcribe this speech. And, although pressing a single button would have sufficed, our sound technician did not record it. This is much to be regretted, but here too there can be no question of assigning blame — he had to be ready to receive orders from Flavy at any moment. Of course, this didn’t prevent us from trying to reconstruct at least a few of the finer phrases from Théodore’s speech. I recall one that hit its mark with particular force, when the President addressed his former friend with excessive familiarity and was rebuffed by Théodore’s declaring that such terms were not appropriate. He was not, after all, speaking to a fellow prison guard.

  “Lowly innocence faced with exalted tyranny—” This play on words — not at all in the style of Marcel Flavy — seemed to energize the Usurper. And it was, in fact, this line that served as a transition into an extended accusation centered around the following riddle: “What poor animal with thousands of heads moves on thousands of legs in the morning, half that many at midday, and on only two in the evening?”

  The trenchant solution — given without leaving Ernu time to offer it up himself (presuming, of course, that he was capable of doing so) — was, “the Republic!” The Republic began its day in Edenic democracy, found itself weakened by division at midday, and spent its evening on the despotic legs of a single individual. Soufissis specified that two legs were woefully insufficient to support the weight of thousands of heads and that they might come crashing down — and soon! — onto their inept porter.

  This, at last, proved too much for Jean-François Ernu. No longer able to find the energy to respond, and as if fulfilling his opponent’s riddling prophecy, he chose, of his own accord, to descend the winding stair of unconsciousness. After acting out a dawning stupefaction dosed with a measure of belatedly realized guilt, he succumbed to the Usurper’s verbal blow. He put his hand on his heart and, without word, complaint, or cry, slid to the floor, KO’d, theatrically dead.

  At this moment, Sylvestre Pascal-Bram, in the role of advisor, threw himself bravely into the breach, improvising a declaration of everlasting fidelity to his fallen master. The Usurper seemed to abandon the rigid mantle of moral superiority and congratulated Pascal-Bram — not without irony — on his fidelity. Nevertheless, the rebel then enjoined the deputy to depart immediately, so as to leave him alone with this “fallen nothing.” Soufissis told the audience that he would now do the only thing one could do with such a President — one who absents himself when most needed. He, Théodore, was going to eat him. Immediately. Preferably without witnesses. Soufissis removed a switchblade from his pocket, which swung open with a sinister click. Leaving his scruples on stage, Sylvestre Pascal-Bram exited.

  Soufissis’s repetition of the phrase, “I’m going to eat him,” spoken while baring his teeth and brandishing his knife, coupled with the inert body lying in front of him, was less ridiculous than frankly unsettling. Strange as it might seem to heads and hearts that have since cooled, many of those present who were able to gauge the liberties already taken now assumed the threat was somehow real. It even occurred to me for a moment that the stranger was perhaps, in real life, the sworn enemy of Jean-François Ernu and had chosen to take advantage of this situation to conclude his dark business.

  Left alone with what remained of the President, Théodore Soufissis cast a long, contemptuous look at the inert body. He showed, however, no immediate intention of acting out his threat. Instead, he launc
hed into a monologue on how Power — with a capital P — infects generosity, comparing it to a particularly inviting but poisonous mushroom. Then, as if suddenly aware of his excessive grandiloquence, he gave his metaphorical mushroom more concrete form, speaking of derisory lycoperdons, also known as puffballs, an image meant to denounce, he said, “power with a little—very little—p.” Here and elsewhere, the Usurper did not shy away from authorial interjections — comments that seemed less appropriate to his character than to some unseen playwright. While the real usurped author didn’t especially care for these digressions, they seemed to find favor with the audience.

  Backstage, our unease had settled a bit. Our inactivity approached stasis. Flavy was too fascinated to give clear orders, I myself was cowed by how enthralled Flavy had become, Boehlmer was unconscious, and Annie Soulemenov had disappeared. The stage manager retained his unflagging cool and customary efficiency, but wouldn’t venture beyond the bounds of his preassigned responsibilities — which, all things considered, was probably for the best, since this, at least, didn’t add to the already very significant disorder. Anxious calls were coming from the control booth, to which Flavy replied, “Nobody panic! Nobody do anything! Just take care of the lighting!”

  But the lighting was not enough.

  Ultimately, it was Pauline who saved the day. The extraordinary manner in which she did so, however, requires some explanation. And a few supplementary details. When first trying on her costume, she had voiced strong reservations concerning the dress created for her by Sylvie Plumkett, and which — she felt — failed to take sufficient account, and advantage, of her legs. She was heard to remark that a costume designer could not dress all her actresses as though they shared the designer’s own figure — a remark that Ms. Plumkett, as you might imagine, did not take at all well. In particular, Pauline objected to two elements that she claimed sapped her character’s strength — her black stockings, and the excessive length of her skirt (which was, I should say, not all that long). On this evening, however, thanks to the fact that nothing else was going according to plan, and with a decisiveness that suggested premeditation, Pauline removed her stockings and hitched up her skirt a good eight inches (from the waist, that is: rolling the skirt and fixing it with paperclips). The result was that her diminutive backside was significantly more present — although still, strictly speaking, covered — and her long legs were, as even Flavy conceded, considerably leggier.

  Having effected these modifications, Pauline marched onto the stage without further ado, interrupting the Usurper’s monologue and perhaps even believing that she was saving Ernu from being devoured. A wave of emotion went through the theater. Pauline was stunning. Flavy, however, had one reservation. He felt that, because of the excessive pallor of her legs, Pauline was the only thing one could see on stage. “She needed something. Makeup. Or a tan. They looked like ivory, right off an elephant, in that light. Like ice!” he was to blurt out later.

  Coldness, however, wasn’t the impression made on the stranger, who didn’t have to be asked twice to attend to the newly arrived streetwalker. What happened next was exceptional, extraordinary, having nothing — and I do mean nothing — to do with Flavy’s play. Théodore — or the Usurper, since at this point we really were in no position to say where one stopped and the other started — put his hand into his pocket and produced a handful of bills (large denominations). He then slid them, with a passion bordering on violence, into the waistband of the prostitute — or Pauline, we were now just as much at sea with her as with him. She found herself doubly surprised: first by his impulsive gesture, and then by the fact it didn’t bother her.

  The bills proved genuine, as did the mutual attraction. The audience responded with another silence of the sort that actors don’t soon forget. With the scene on stage growing more intimate by the minute, Flavy got on the line with the control booth and told them to get ready for a blackout with dropped curtain. Théodore took Pauline into his arms for an embrace that, if it wasn’t actually charged with intense eroticism, certainly showed great skill in its imitation. Darkness came and the curtain fell as the Usurper lowered the black garter he had just compared, elegantly, to a violin bow. Though indeed unprecedented, the end of the act didn’t come across as especially abrupt, and was met with a long round of applause.

  This was not, however, a moment for congratulations. Flavy cried out, “Meeting! Meeting! Everybody backstage!” We had two minutes.

  “Where is he? He has to go back on! There’s no other way!”

  We looked everywhere for the Usurper, but he was gone. He had disappeared into the darkness. In an old-fashioned theater of that size there are more hiding places than you can count. Besides which, he could even have escaped out into the audience, for all we knew, and sat down without being seen by the ushers, since they’d all left to man the coat check. One (totally insufficient) minute was spent in a wild search for the Usurper, with each of us authorized to offer him a complete amnesty on the condition that he finish the play — whatever the price to be paid by Flavy’s text. If pressed, we were told to offer him monetary compensation and even a contract for a role in Flavy’s next play, which he was already working on.

  The Usurper, however, was nowhere to be found. What’s more, he wasn’t the only one. Like him — and, perhaps, with him — Pauline had disappeared too, though this was of comparatively minor importance given that she wasn’t in the final act. It was then that Boehlmer — having recently regained consciousness, if not costume — appeared in underwear and socks, rubbing his head with the red, white, and blue gag that was still in his hand. At his request, the doctor administered a stimulant under the pretext that it was imperative he continue — or, more accurately, begin—to act. He had, however, nothing to wear. Things weren’t getting any easier, and the clock was ticking.

  As the stagehands had no instructions to the contrary, they proceeded as though nothing were amiss and during the brief intermission moved the palace décor familiar from Act One back on stage. The real problem was that Boehlmer’s role — that of Théodore Soufissis — was not at an end. During a reception at the Presidential palace commemorating the reconciliation of the two main characters, he was meant to take his own life in the presence of his former friend. Though Boehlmer had now managed to revive the fury that had preceded the blow to his head, Jean-François Ernu’s energy level, in the wake of his simulated faint, had now plummeted in the opposite direction. He did not wish to continue — not under any circumstances — and was easily persuaded by Boehlmer to cede the role of the President. Certain that the Usurper would reappear in Act Three to complete his dramatic pronunciamento, Boehlmer intended to avenge himself.

  At that moment, Annie Soulemenov, with no tears left to shed, had been making her way back to the dressing rooms; en route, she had discovered the costume of Boehlmer-Soufissis, which she now carried back to her colleagues as though it were the Shroud of Turin.

  “What the fuck do you want me to do with that?” asked Flavy, before coming to his senses and thanking her.

  “This could end badly,” muttered Jean-Pierre Capelier.

  If Boehlmer was going to put on Ernu’s costume and insist with such tenacity on playing the President, Pascal-Bram said he wanted no part of it. Fixated on Botsinas and the fact that the crowd had reacted so well to the preceding act, Flavy saw matters in a different light: “The show must go on,” he said. “The show must go on! An actor’s calling is sacred! So long as there’s an audience, we act! There’s an audience out there, isn’t there? So we’re going to act!”

  Jean-Pierre Capelier and myself, having been dispatched to find the Usurper, were now returning to the fold empty-handed. Looking to teach by example, Flavy took the Soufissis costume and quickly put it on. Capelier then called the control booth, where, alas, they misinterpreted this call as the signal to lift the curtain. And suddenly there was light. On an empty stage.

  Boehlmer strode out as the President still disguised as a ma
n of the people (we had forgotten about the character’s between-act costume change), with the red, white, and blue handkerchief now stuffed into his coat pocket. He was followed by a Sylvestre Pascal-Bram who moved as though mounting a scaffold. The audience showed no sign of recognizing that a change in cast had occurred. Clothes make the man. At least some of the time.

  Act Three picked up largely as it was written. Boehlmer knew the role of the President — one he had always secretly longed to play — more or less by heart. The reconciliation between the President and Soufissis was announced. Considering the far more radical role Soufissis had played in the preceding act — for most of which Boehlmer had been unconscious — it fell to Pascal-Bram, as the President’s advisor, to express his reservations concerning a reconciliation on live television. But Boehlmer, hungry as he was for vengeance, held firm and gave the order to summon the cameraman (played by myself). I entered with my video camera and began discretely preparing my establishing shots.

  At the precise moment when Flavy made his entrance as Théodore, a tiny black undergarment drifted down from the rafters. I distinctly saw Flavy turn pale — from jealousy? It wasn’t difficult to deduce that the lovebirds must have reached the loft via a narrow ladder that the Usurper had doubtless planned on employing for his escape, but which Pauline, in her high heels, wasn’t likely to have had an easy time with. It was, however, too late to act on this realization. For her part, Pauline later maintained that she’d never been up in the rafters, and had long since taken refuge in her dressing room. Alone. Did we believe her? No. Why not? Pauline’s testimony wasn’t especially rich in detail, and each time I went back to her for clarifications she responded with nothing more than an immense sadness. I never had the heart to push very hard. In any event, whether or not anything scandalous was going on in those dim upper reaches, we had to keep our eyes on the stage. There were a few laughs in response to the fall of the garment, though from where the audience was sitting they couldn’t possibly have seen that what had drifted down was lingerie.