‘Oh, well, if the Ladies’ Guild won’t help out, I suppose it means more hiring of costumes than we usually need to do,’ said poor Ernest Farrow. ‘Still, I suppose, for this production, if it’s going to look like anything at all, we’d have to hire most of the stuff anyway. That’s the worst of a period piece. I’ll have to ask the principals to pay for the hire of their own outfits, as usual, but I’m worried about the sale of tickets. The Ladies’ Guild are usually good for fifty or sixty of the best seats, although they do expect them for the Saturday night performance when we could probably sell them anyway. Then, of course, those Young People have been no end useful in getting rid of those tickets which always hang fire, especially for the second night. We shall sadly miss them.’
‘Oh, well, it can’t be helped,’ said Hamilton Haynings, ‘not but what I felt, from the beginning, that it was a mistake to leave choice of piece and all the casting to Denbigh. We must all do our best to make the thing a success, that’s all.’
‘Success depends on the size of the audience,’ said Ernest. ‘Everybody plays better when the hall is full. Nothing is more daunting than playing to rows of empty seats, so do pressurise people into buying tickets, all of you. Don’t stand any nonsense from people who say they’ll “think about it”. Oh, and do have plenty of change about you, then there is no excuse for people who tell you they have “nothing smaller than a five-pound note”. I’m giving everybody twenty top-price tickets to get rid of, and please,’ he added pathetically, ‘if you can’t get anybody else to buy them, I do beg of you to sub up for them yourselves and give them away. We’ve got to have the money and we’ve got to have an audience. I’m sure you all appreciate that.’
‘It’s all very well for the principals,’ said Stella, ‘but what about the rest of us? I can’t afford to buy twenty seats, and nobody I know is going to pay fifty p. to see me in a more or less walking-on part.’
‘Well, do what you can,’ urged Ernest. ‘Time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, eh?’
‘And what about the College yobbos? Will they each sell twenty tickets?’ demanded Geoffrey Channing, who had been given the part, as had his friend Robert Eames, of a member of Macheath’s gang of footpads. As the rest of the gang was to consist entirely of Denbigh’s students, there was a point to his question and he was supported shrilly by Stella, since most of the ladies of the town were also from the college choir.
‘You bet they won’t,’ she said.
‘Oh, Denbigh will see to all that. No doubt their parents will come,’ said Ernest, making an optimistic statement which he himself did not believe.
‘Well, I think it’s all very unfair,’ said Stella mutinously, ‘and, anyway, I think a committee should have decided who ought to have the parts. That’s what we’ve always done and it’s much the best way.’
‘It also wastes a great deal of time,’ said Sybil. ‘It was far better to leave it to just one person, especially as he’s being so useful to us.’
‘Helpful to you, perhaps,’ said Marigold Tench. ‘Personally, I think there should have been proper auditions. As it was, the whole cast was settled in a matter of minutes, without any proper preliminaries at all. Of course, if you’re all content to let the latest-joined member ride rough-shod over you, I’ve nothing more to say.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Melanie, turning her tragic eyes upwards.
‘In any case, Marigold,’ said Cyril, ‘you’ve nothing to beef about if you haven’t been given a part. You chose to walk yourself off and wash your hands of the production, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, if she wants a part she can have mine,’ said Melanie. ‘I’m sure I’m sick to death of these sob-stuff rôles. I wish I could swop with Laura. I’d love to do a bit of low comedy for a change.’
‘Just as you like,’ said Laura, ‘if the producer doesn’t object.’
‘I object!’ said James Hunty. ‘Either I play Act One opposite Laura, or I don’t play it at all.’
‘There’s been enough kissing goes by favour in this production already,’ said the bearded Rodney Crashaw. He looked accusingly and spitefully at Cyril Wincott, who grinned infuriatingly at him and whistled Denbigh’s setting of Over the hills and far away.
‘In any case,’ said Hamilton Haynings, ‘we can’t start chopping and changing now, and there’s no sense in picking out the parts we’d like to play. I confess I’m not exactly in love with the part of Lockit, but we have to be reasonable and back up Denbigh’s mistakes (if he’s made any) as best we can. We gave him carte blanche and we can’t go back on it.’
‘By the way,’ said Laura to James Hunty, ‘what’s all this about Melanie wanting to play a comic part? I was under the impression that she saw herself as the Duse of this day and age.’
‘She’s become that creep Crashaw’s leading lady. Didn’t you know? I think she’s a prize fool, but it isn’t my business to tell her so.’
‘Our platinum blonde isn’t going to be pleased.’
‘Too true. A ménage à trois is hardly likely to be her cup of tea!’
‘Is it serious? – Crashaw and Melanie, I mean.’
‘She’s crazy about him. She told my wife so.’
‘Oh, well, she’ll live and learn, I suppose.’
‘She must be full of the joys of spring if she wants to play comedy. Anyway, don’t you dare give way to her, Mistress Peachum.’
CHAPTER 15
« ^ »
Simple ignorance can be cured by simple truth
Spoken with sincerity.
Between them, Laura with goodhumour and commonsense, Hamilton Haynings by the exercise of his authority, gradually got the better of the saboteurs, so the last half-dozen rehearsals, leading up to what might be called the sub-dress rehearsal, saw The Beggar’s Opera beginning to take shape.
By the time Denbigh was informed that the company had cut its teeth and was ready for him, the warring factions had not only given up the struggle for power but were as anxious as anybody else that the production should be a success. As history has shown, there is nothing so powerful as a common enemy to bring private vendettas to an end, and this unifying force was provided by Clarice Blaine.
She had spoken at public meetings, she had written letters to the local press, she had asked questions at the sessions of the Chardle District Council, she had repeated those questions at meetings of the local rate-payers’ association and she had lobbied the local church dignitories.
The results were that the literary, dramatic and operatic society closed ranks and that the general public bought tickets for all three performances of the opera in the lively anticipation that they were going to attend something in the nature of a cross between the Folies Bergères, a strip-show of unusual daring, a Babylonian orgy and the less presentable aspects of a witches’ sabbath.
‘The tickets have never gone so well as early as this,’ said an exultant Ernest Farrow, as members clustered round him to ask for more to sell.
‘Clarice Blaine ought to go in for advertising,’ said Laura to Dame Beatrice. ‘However, I’ve managed to snaffle a couple of dockets in the front row for the third night. If nobody needs prompting during the Thursday and Friday performances, I’ve told Denbigh I shall sit in front with you on the Saturday when my part is over.’
‘William Caxton came here while you were at this evening’s rehearsal,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and asked where he should take the posters he has printed.’
‘I suppose Denbigh had better have them. If Caxton has made as good a job of them as he did of the tickets, Denbigh will be glad to have them stuck up outside the town hall.’
‘Mrs Blaine has written briefly but politely to thank me for the pageant posters. I gather that we are unlikely, however, to have her company at the town hall.’
‘We certainly shan’t. She’s been gunning for weeks to get the opera boycotted if not actually outlawed. The result is that we look like being booked solid for all three performances. In f
act, I believe we could run for a week if we liked. Sweet are the uses of the English resolve to see smut where none is intended or, for the matter of that, provided. Our Beggar’s Opera is as chaste as ice, but, fortunately, the prospective audience doesn’t know that.’
‘And the music?’
‘Denbigh has borrowed freely from Frederic Austin, he says, and the result is a lively, tuneful romp. I don’t think whatever the audience expects, that anybody will be disappointed with the songs.’
The disappointment, when it came, was to Cyril Wincott. The school of which this handsome Macheath was such an ornament had acquired a trampoline and two or three of the younger members of staff were agog to try it out. Unfortunately, after school closed on the evening of the third rehearsal at the College, at which the full college orchestra and chorus, as well as the principals, were to be present, Cyril, taking a bet that he would soar higher in the air than the others, won his bet, but landed on the edge of the trampoline, fell awkwardly and broke his right leg.
Denbigh, at the College rehearsal, received the news with resignation. He was not unduly distressed. At this stage of the rehearsals everybody knew all the dialogue and all the songs, and he thought that to replace Cyril with one of the others would be far from impossible.
There was no lack of claimants for the part. Denbigh, anxious to show no bias, asked these to sing a duet with Sybil, the Polly Peachum. Privately he was determined not to move James Hunty, who was shaping up well in the part of Polly’s father, and he was equally determined not to allow Hamilton Haynings’s foghorn voice (well enough in the part of the jailor Lockit) to ruin Macheath’s solos or the duets with Sybil.
Having given these two and the youthful Geoffrey Channing and Robert Eames their chance and having even tried out the diffident Ernest Farrow in the part, he shook his head regretfully and said, ‘I don’t quite think so, you know. I really think I had better let my top music student, who has had some experience, conduct the orchestra and I’ll take the part myself.’
At this the silence which had fallen on the disappointed contestants was broken by Rodney Crashaw. He had heard of Cyril’s accident and had decided to present himself at the rehearsal openly instead of in the clandestine manner he had previously employed. He came up to the front of the platform and said, with carefully simulated diffidence:
‘I think the players, if not the orchestra, would be less than happy were you not to wield the conductor’s bâton, Dr Denbigh. I wonder whether, before you come to a final decision, you would allow me to try a duet with Miss Gartner.’
‘So long as the duet is confined to the stage and no private rehearsals are permitted,’ muttered Sybil to Laura, as they waited in the wings.
‘Would you mind trying over Were I laid on Greenland’s coast, Miss Gartner?’ asked Denbigh.
‘Righto,’ Sybil replied. ‘Anything to oblige.’ But at the conclusion of the duet she said, ‘I’d be quite happy with that.’
‘So would I,’ said Denbigh. ‘Right. Let’s have the Beggar and the Player on stage and try a complete run-through.’
The college orchestra was already tuning up and the college ‘extras’ in the persons of Macheath’s gang, the ladies of the town and the other minor rôles which the students were to fill, were ready and waiting when there were ‘noises off’ and, to everybody’s astonishment, Mrs Blaine turned up with Caxton in tow and seated herself, with him beside her, near the back of the room.
‘I want to be sure that the dialogue is audible,’ she said. ‘Some of my friends told me, after our last production, that they had difficulty in hearing some of the characters. I shall call out at once if I fail to catch what anybody utters.’
‘Pardon me, Mrs Blaine,’ said Denbigh crisply, ‘but I can allow no interference with my rehearsal. You are welcome to sit and listen, of course, but the only interruptions will come from me, if you please. I am sure you understand. Beginners ready?’
The Beggar and the Player took the stage, the Player called upon the orchestra to ‘play away the overture’ and the rehearsal, with James Hunty, Laura, young Tom Blaine (whose voice had broken to a light, immature, but rather attractive tenor), Sybil as Polly and the saturnine bearded Crashaw as Macheath, got off to a flourishing start.
Philip Denbigh allowed the whole act to run its course, praised the players, took them all through it again, including the overture, and this time called for frequent stops while he made his comments and asked for repetition of lines, parts of solos and stage business. The clock crept from seven to eight and from eight to nine before he called for Act Two.
This went better than Laura, who was prompting, had expected. She had very little to do. This time Denbigh, who must have rehearsed his choral students very carefully, did not ask Macheath’s gang or the ladies of the town to repeat any part of their performance, but began his criticism and advice only after the entrance of Peachum with the constables who had come to arrest Macheath.
At eleven o’clock he declared the rehearsal over and added that next time they would begin with Act Three. He hoped he had not kept them too late and congratulated them upon their efforts. Mrs Blaine had long ago taken young Tom home in his father’s car, but Caxton had stayed on and at the end of the rehearsal he approached Laura and begged for a lift back to his cottage.
‘Thought you’d brought your motor-bike,’ she said, not at all anxious to be taken so far out of her way so late at night.
‘I’ve run out of petrol,’ he said.
‘Well, there’s an all-night garage in the town not a quarter of a mile from here,’ said Hamilton Haynings, joining them.
‘Oh, all right, then. Thanks,’ said Caxton, walking away.
‘Thank you,’ said Laura to Haynings. ‘The last thing I wanted was to drive into the depths of the Forest at this time of night.’
‘He had a damned cheek to ask a woman to go,’ said James Hunty. ‘Why couldn’t he have asked one of the chaps? What was he doing here, anyway? He doesn’t belong to our lot.’
‘Mrs Blaine brought him. She wants him to speak a little piece at our show to boost her pageant.’
‘She would!’ He accompanied Laura to her car. ‘Damned cheek!’ he said again; but whether he was referring to Clarice Blaine or to Caxton, she did not know and did not ask him.
‘Very decent of Haynings to chip in,’ she said to Dame Beatrice when she got back to the Stone House. ‘Saved me quite an embarrassing moment, although I’m not sure I want him as a father-figure. Anyway, I certainly wasn’t prepared to take Caxton home, but one doesn’t really like refusing. Had he been one of the cast it might have been different, but actually he had no right to be at the rehearsal at all, and I’m surprised Philip Denbigh let him stay.’
‘You say he came with Mrs Blaine?’
‘Even so, she had no right to bring him. I suppose she’s so pleased to have got him for her pageant that she’s determined to keep her hooks on him. And she wouldn’t have got him but for your noble action in paying for all that printing. I must say he’s made a good job of it.’
‘Yes, indeed, and at a far from extortionate price.’
The next rehearsal began, as Denbigh had promised, with Act Three. Laura handled the prompt-script and was surprised by the high standard of performance reached by Sybil and Melanie as Macheath’s rival wives. They had always been adequate in these rôles, but, playing opposite Crashaw, they had improved their performance a hundred per cent and had electrified the rest of the cast.
‘Well, now,’ said Denbigh, when Macheath had been reprieved and the last chorus had been sung, ‘I think, under the circumstances, we had better have a complete run-through just to make sure Mr Crashaw is not going to muddle the rest of you in the first two acts. We’ll leave out the solos and just take the spoken words and the stage “business”, and then I think we ought to have one more complete rehearsal, this time at the town hall, before the dress rehearsal. Is there anybody who can’t manage Saturday afternoon? The dress rehearsal pr
oper is on Monday, and I shall need you all to be punctual. Six-thirty sharp, please, for a curtain-up at seven-thirty, and you had better arrange to be prepared to stay until midnight. Dress rehearsals always take about twice as long as anybody thinks they are going to, and I believe a photographer is expected, so that means more delay. And do, please, look after yourselves. It will be a disaster if anybody else falls down and breaks an arm or a leg.’
‘So there it is,’ said Laura, on the Saturday morning. ‘I’m very sorry indeed for young Wincott. He was very keen on his part and it’s rotten luck on him having to spend weeks in hospital. On the other hand, we’re getting a much better singer and actor in this heel Crashaw. His voice is quite decent. He’s had a show down with Denbigh, though.’
‘Oh, really? I thought you had just reported that he was good in the part.’
‘It isn’t that. It’s his beard. Denbigh wanted him to shave it off, but he won’t.’
‘A beard would be quite in keeping with the part, would it not?’
‘Denbigh doesn’t like beards. However, Crashaw claims that he grew his to cover up a very unsightly scar. I don’t believe it; I think he’s just simply attached to the beastly thing.’
‘And is to remain attached to it?’
‘Yes. Denbigh gave in. Under the circumstances he could hardly do anything else, I suppose. By the way, expect me home in the small hours of tomorrow morning. We’re going to do a preliminary dress rehearsal at the town hall this evening so that the wardrobe mistress can vet us.’
‘Who is this talented woman?’
‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? She is Mabelle van Pieter, our cataclysmic blonde. She’s also one of the ladies of the town and, if you ask me, I’d say that against Stella Walker and the damsels from the College of Education, she’ll stick out like a peony in a bunch of snowdrops. There are rumours going around that she lives with our bearded Macheath, but nobody seems to know how true they are. The couple avoid each other at rehearsals, so the story is probably right.’
‘Does Mrs Blaine still attend rehearsals?’
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