by Bruce Barber
Part of his pre-performance routine was to make faces – “working the phiz,” he called it.
He was leering hideously in the middle of these facial gymnastics when the door to his dressing room opened behind him. A head was thrust round the edge of the doorway, the exquisite head of Alan Wales. Wales never bothered to get into any character other than his own personality. Nor did he dress or make up until the very last minute.
“Break a leg, Seamus,” Wales said. “I mean that.”
O’Reilly whirled in his chair and grabbed at something to throw.
“Bugger off!” he thundered, and a projectile flashed across the little room. It was a full pound jar of cleansing cream which had been launched with both power and accuracy from O’Reilly’s mighty arm. It struck the door post. The impact shattered the heavy jar, and it would have shattered the face of Alan Wales, had that face not vanished in the nick of time.
(2:3) The dressing room of Alessandra EdeI
Sandra’s dressing room was as chaotic as her borrowed apartment. There were boxes and bags and indiscriminate heaps everywhere. Her dressing table was a No Man’s Land of weird bottles, tubes, and packets. Her wardrobe stood open and spilled its rainbow-coloured guts into the room. All the drawers in her bureau yawned gaudily; on top was a jumble of purses, sunglasses, handkerchiefs, lipsticks, small change and other money – dollars of two nations, francs of two more, pounds, lire, marks and pesos.
Sandra was studying herself in the mirror above the dressing table. Heavy with the regalia of queenliness, weighed down by barbaric jewels, she was as elaborately and artificially beautiful as a saint in a Byzantine painting.
“It’s the eyes,” she said sombrely to the image in the mirror. “It’s the eyes that always go first.”
She raised a slightly trembling hand and with her fingertips adjusted the crow’s wing of fake eyelash that hovered over the iris of her right eye. “The poor eyes...”
There was a knock at her dressing room door.
“Entrez,” she said without looking away from the mirror. When she saw who it was who had entered, however, she rose immediately and turned to meet him.
“Alan!” she said. The smile on her richly painted face was large enough to endanger her entire brittle façade. Her smile gleamed for a moment, then vanished as quickly as it had come. “But you aren’t dressed yet.”
“I’m on my way now,” Wales said, sweeping his dark hair away from his brow with a long-fingered hand, “but I couldn’t go past your door without looking in.”
Sandra was pleased. “You are naughty.”
Wales approached her, his eyes heavy with sultry invitation. His lips parted to make a small smile, the smile of a lustful faun. He tried the smile on everyone he met.
“Don’t even think about it, darling,” Sandra said, still with undisguised pleasure. “I’ll smudge.”
Wales moved even closer and put his hand inside the heavily boned and wired confection that supported Sandra’s queenly bosom.
“No, Alan,” she sighed, “please... you must go get dressed.”
Wales withdrew the hand roughly.
“What a bore you are sometimes,” he snarled.
“Please, darling...”
“I know, I know. Get dressed,” Wales said petulantly. “I hate my stupid costume.”
“Don’t be angry,” Sandra said anxiously, as if she were already far too aware of what Alan Wales was like when angry. “Come round to my place after the show. We’ll have a glass of wine and there’ll be no rush. But not now, darling. There’s no time...”
Wales pouted.
“Please...”
“All right, Sandra, I’m on my way.”
“Come to me tonight.”
“Maybe, I don’t know,” Wales mumbled.
He moved toward the door, then stopped again. “Can you lend me a quarter? I forgot to call Maury about that audition.”
“You can’t call now. There’s no time.”
“Will you lend me the quarter or not?”
“Of course, but..” She gestured toward the chest-of-drawers.
Wales rummaged quickly through the litter on top of the bureau until he found the coin he required.
“Thanks,” he said briefly on his way out.
“Will I see you... later...?”
“Maybe,” he called over his shoulder as he shut the door behind him. Out in the corridor he pocketed the quarter. He also pocketed the twenty-dollar bill he had palmed while hunting for the coin.
(2:4) A corridor
Wales was whistling as he swaggered down the corridor. He did not see Grace Lockhardt squeezed in a corner near Sandra’s dressing room. She was bringing a small silver necklace to Sandra, a part of Lady Macbeth’s costume which had mysteriously migrated across the theatre underworld to someone else’s dressing room.
It was not surprising that Grace was invisible to Alan Wales; she did not have the sort of looks he would condescend to notice (nor any important connections to make up for her absence of glamour). To him, her face was too bony, her nose overly pointed, her marble pallor unforgivable in this age of tanning salons. Grace’s eyes were an ordinary brown with perhaps a bit too much warmth in them, and her thin lips at the moment were pressed so tightly together that they seemed no more than a line hastily drawn by a hurried artist.
And certainly, Wales would have had no patience whatsoever with the barely perceptible rise of her breasts, or with legs which, while uncommonly shapely, were far too short for the uses to which Alan Wales liked to put legs.
Grace twisted the small necklace in her tiny, fragile hands as she struggled to hold back tears while muttering to herself:
“Why do you let yourself be treated that way? You’re too wonderful, too beautiful for him... he doesn’t know you, he doesn’t appreciate you... Sandra – he doesn’t love you...”
She said something else to herself about love, but not aloud; she whispered it deep inside her soul, where no one but she would ever hear. Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and took a deep and steadying breath before going in to complete her mistress’ perfection.
(2:5) By a window
Keyes had managed to wangle his way backstage to extend handshakes, good wishes, and even kisses to those company members and crew with whom he had kept in contact over the years. He had a slight twinge of nostalgia for the hurly-burly of his former profession, but this passed quickly. It was much less stressful and much more fun to be audience, especially with his insider’s knowledge of how it all worked. For Keyes the magic had never been spoiled or damaged by his intimate understanding of how lights and trapdoors and set-painting contributed to the transformation of the mundane into the marvellous.
As a harried assistant stage manager shooed him out to join the rest of the paying customers, Keyes heard her mumble, “Where the hell is Wales...?” before she went rushing off to don her headset, to become, in essence, Second Master of the Revels.
Keyes decided he had just enough time for a brief cigarette before curtain time, and finally found an area marked SMOKING where there was also a window for him to gaze through.
He saw a curious thing.
Just outside of the rear of the theatre, near one of the several bolthole doors provided for actors like O’Reilly to escape their adoring public, he saw Alan Wales, in full costume, in what looked like earnest conversation with someone. The girl seemed quire exotic. She looked very young, with waist-length black hair of a hue that lent itself to purple highlights in the right circumstances, and an impressive shapeliness not suggested but stated outright by a short red
dress that also said “go to hell,” and spike-heeled shoes that supplied directions. The dress was covered in sequins which added a dash of déclassé glamour to the dim dusk outside.
Although Keyes could hear nothing of their conversation, the gestures the couple used indicated a disagreement of some kind; for a moment, Keyes thought the girl was about to strike Wales across his
handsome face, but then her hand dropped to her side, fiddling nervously with what there was of her hemline. Wales suddenly grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her with what Keyes thought was cold and careless brutality. Then Wales turned his back on her, and disappeared inside the theatre.
The girl stared after Wales for a moment, then she too turned and strode away, with a calculated walk that made Keyes feel underage.
The fanfare sounded, as if ending the tableau. Keyes extinguished his cigarette and found his way to his seat, eager to immerse himself in the blood and madness of the first act of the Scottish Play.
(2:6) The Festival Theatre, grounds
Now the environs of the Festival Theatre became oddly desolate. Only moments before, the lawns and gardens the sidewalks and streets round about had teemed with people. Gossiping aimlessly, laughing, flirting, and boasting, they strolled here and there waiting for the play to start, or more precisely, waiting for the fanfare to sound. When it did, when the trumpets began to bray and blast, the crowd was suddenly transformed. The people in the throng lost their individuality and moved as one. Every head turned toward the entrance to the great house; every foot edged or hopped or shuffled in that direction. Like autumn leaves caught in a flash flood, the audience swirled about then quickly disappeared into the theatre, as if down a mighty drain, leaving no one outside – no one at all.
There were, of course, relics of this multitude that had so abruptly vanished. Paper cups and cigarette burns had been tossed too carelessly at the containers