Nikki hands him his white stick and leather satchel. “You dropped these.”
Apart from the stick, my assailant is totally clad and accessorized in black. “Hi, I’m Steve. I’m with the BBC Disabilities Unit.”
“Good for you, Steve,” I say, trying to atone for my earlier faux pas. “Bit of an outing, is it? Pity they couldn’t take you to a decent show.”
“I’m the director,” he says, “we’re doing a piece on the young lad playing Hamlet. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my crew.”
Nikki grabs his arm and steers him towards the door. “Let’s go and find them, shall we? Then maybe you’d like to meet Michael. He’s an amazing guy, you’ll love him. Did you get the press pack by the way?”
“Before you go, Nikki,” I say, not quite able to let it pass. “About what you said earlier, I’m not, OK? Not that it would matter if I was – I mean some of my closest…acquaintances are…you know – but I’m not. I just wanted to make it clear.”
“Not what?” says Nikki.
“Not gay,” I reply.
“Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. What do you think, Steve?”
I want to say “How the hell would he know?” but I manage to stifle it with a strategic coughing fit.
“See you at the party then, Timothy,” says Nikki, leading away her latest victim. “Enjoy the show.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I say, “I intend to.”
♦
Philip Sidney has caused quite a rumpus in student theatre circles by moving away from the traditional Auschwitz setting and placing the whole thing in a maximum-security prison. On the way in, a couple of camp choral scholars in warders’ uniforms frisk us for weapons.
The designer has obviously gone for the minimalist approach. Hanging from the ceiling is a red banner with ‘Denmark’s a Prison’ graffitied on it, and in the middle of the space (naturally we’re talking theatre in the round) are six large building blocks with letters on them. Throughout the evening, the actors playing the gravediggers will rearrange them. At the moment they’re set up for the first scene on the battlements:
As expected, word has got out that this is not to be your conventional all-singing, all-dancing Prince. There are at least two film crews (not including Blind Pugh and his mob), an assortment of radio presenters and journalists, and I’m sure I recognize that heavily coiffured lady with the lapdog. The media vultures were to be expected, of course, but it’s heartening to see that the general populace has not lost its appetite for a freak show. Consequently, it’s standing room only. Even Michael’s tutor, the same tutor who issued a solemn warning against ‘bardolatry’, is sitting in the front row fussing over his trophy PhD student wife.
“Ooh-ooh, Timothy,” sings Valerie Owen, waving her programme at me from the outer circle. “How are you, dear?”
“Fine, thanks, Mrs Owen,” I mumble. “How are you?”
“Couldn’t be better, Timothy, couldn’t be better.” And I’m forced to agree. As Nikki Hardbody pointed out, purple is not necessarily a colour which one associates with cutting-edge fashion, but Valerie wears it well. In fact, she’s almost unrecognizable from the washed-out woman I first met three months ago. Her figure has a pleasing roundness to it, and with her hair swept back like that you get the full effect of her delicate cheekbones and wistful eyes. She’s even wearing make-up. It’s not quite the full ugly duckling, but it’s at least as impressive as one of those horrendous makeover shows.
“We still on for that drink, Valerie?”
“Course we are, dear,” she says, as the lights begin to fade. “You know, I’m really looking forward to this. I’m as proud as punch.”
Just for a moment I feel a twinge of something akin to guilt. Who am I to deny Valerie her moment in the sun? But the desire for self-preservation is stronger, and anyhow it’s too late now, I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.
So, as the actors file on in their green arrowed uniforms, and the strains of ‘Working on the Chain Gang’ fill the Methodist Hall, I pop a fast-acting Flatuleeze lozenge into my mouth and settle down for a treat.
The Quadriplegic
“Who’s there?”
“Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.”
Anna tiptoes up to me, behind the battlements, and kisses the back of my head. “You’re going to be brilliant, babe,” she whispers. “Get out there and knock ‘em dead.” She looks totally amazing in her school uniform. No wonder they wanted all those pictures of her draped over my spaz-chariot like a model at the motor show. “I’ll do my best.”
“Not nervous are you, babe?”
“Me? Course not.” But you know something? Just for a nanosecond, I have this horrible feeling that I’m actually starting to care. A layer of moisture appears on my forehead, and considering I’m supposed to be paralysed, that churning in my stomach feels suspiciously like butterflies. “Could you get me a glass of water, please?”
“Course I can, babe, I’ll be right back.”
I’ve never felt under pressure to be entertaining before. Most people expect a guy like me to be pissed off 24⁄7, which is why when I do make a joke they act like they’re the studio audience for a crap American sitcom. I know they’re going to come out with all the usual ‘remarkable courage’ bullshit, but I happen to think I can be good at this. Not Special Olympics, halfway-for-ladies, well-done-for-trying good; but totally fucking awesome, Premier League, at-last-I-know-what-Shakespeare-was-getting-at brilliant.
“But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.”
Shit, shit, SHIT. What’s my first line? And where’s Anna with that water? As I prepare for my entrance, I find myself attempting something I haven’t tried since I stopped believing in Father Christmas. It’s not always as effective as it’s cracked up to be – as anyone who’s ever died of an incurable disease will tell you – but right now, words are all I’ve got: “Oh, God, please let me get through this. Please make me good tonight. Amen.”
The Actor
The audience treats the battlement scenes like a warm-up band. It’s obvious what they’ve come to see. Is there such a thing as ‘car crash’ theatre? The only person who appears to be paying any attention is the Hammer Horror refugee in the front row. Philip sits entranced, ostentatiously scribbling notes and probably wishing that he had an enormous hat with ‘I am the director’ on it. It’s a shame because Piers has really improved: having such an undeniably camp Horatio gives the production a subtext that Shakespeare probably never intended, but he has stopped emphasizing every word and he doesn’t shuffle his feet any more.
Projecting the ghost onto the battlements sounded like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately it looks like a tacky wedding video, and the satellite dishes in the background are quite at odds with the fifties setting.
“Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know Where we shall find him most convenient.”’ Pandemonium breaks loose when the court arrives, and in their midst a polo-necked Hamlet who glides on regally and plants himself centre stage. Despite the pre-show announcement, the Methodist Hall erupts in an orgy of flash photography. Somewhere above the hubbub I catch the director of the BBC disabilities unit enquiring, “What does he look like, what does he look like?” in an anguished stage whisper. Finally, an expectant hush descends as everybody in the theatre focuses on the boy in the wheelchair and waits for him to speak. The moment he opens his mouth, “A little more than kin and less than kind,” the audience lets out a collective gasp. The high-pitched timbre, coupled with the somewhat crude amplification, gives Michael a vocal quality the like of which you have never heard.
He takes the first soliloquy slowly and carefully. I’ve heard him deliver it better, but the meaning is crystal clear, and within minutes he’s got the punters in the palm of his hand. Philip Sidney closes his eyes as if in prayer, and I reflect that if I didn’t know what was going to happen next, tonight could have turned out to be
a bloody tragedy.
The Quadriplegic
I’m totally loving this. I still think Shakespeare is one seriously overrated dude, but you’ve got to admit he had a way with words. The soliloquies are best; just me and the audience. For the first time in my life, I feel as if I’m in control. I’m the matador for once, not the bloody bull; it’s me leading them, not some idiot in a white coat sticking tubes into me or Pastor Reg telling me how grateful I should feel. OK, they might have all come here for a good laugh, but just you watch how I send them away crying. “To be or not to be, that is the question…” Yeah, I’ve thought about it, suicide, I mean. Who hasn’t? In fact, there’s probably a good few concerned citizens out there who’d volunteer to do the deed for me. Some nights I think it might be best all round if I went to sleep and never woke up again.
“The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…”
But tonight’s not one of them. I squint out into a sea of faces, and there at the back I pick out my mum’s. See that smile? No wonder Jesus wants her for a sunbeam. Forget the quadriplegic; what’s the best present you can get for the quadriplegic’s mum? You know what, this is probably it: public recognition that she was right all along, and her beloved son really is special – not spacky-cretin special either, the real deal. Well, they say the audience never lies. Look at that lot; even De Niro can’t keep his eyes off me.
“Soft you now, the fair Ophelia…”
The scenes with Ophelia are a real kick in the face. When Anna steps out from behind the blocks she looks so beautiful I think I’m going to cry. Hamlet must be a total headcase to dump a bird like that.
“Are you honest?”
“My lord.”
“Are you fair?”
When we’re on stage, it feels so real – the boyfriend ⁄ girlfriend stuff. I mean, I believe in us as a couple, you know? That’s why it does my head in, because, when we’re in my rooms listening to fucking Mozart and saying how much we love each other every twenty-five seconds, I have my doubts. I want to believe in it, I really do, but like that all-loving, all-powerful God who was supposed to make me walk again, sometimes it all seems too good to be true. “Get thee to a nunnery… ”
♦
Thank Christ we’re coming to the interval at last. Philip’s ‘master stroke’ of doing the whole play within a play as a Punch and Judy show was a crap idea in the first place, and having the gravediggers dressed as life-sized marionettes was just plain fucking stupid. When Polonius finally wanders offstage, there are only twelve lines of blank verse between me and the sanctuary of the dressing room: “By and by is easily said. Leave me, friends.”
Wait a minute. Something’s wrong here. I puff into my controller so that I can move into the spotlight for my final soliloquy, and nothing happens. Shit. What’s wrong with this thing? I suck and blow like the star of a porno movie, but my spaz-chariot stays rooted to the spot.
Two hundred and fifty thrill seekers hold their breath and fix their eyes on the asthmatic Prince as I struggle to find my light. I stare back at them. Not for the first time in my life, I am well and truly paralysed.
It’s De Niro who brings me to my senses. By the look of that twisted smile I’d say he’s enjoying himself. It’s exactly what I need to get me focused again: “Tis now the very witching time of night. .”
But just as I’m thinking that things can’t get any worse, they do. The microphone is dead too, and my voice comes out as a girlie whisper. From where I’m sitting, ‘not to be’ is by far the most attractive option.
The Actor
Oh, dearie me. I fear we have a technical problem. Hamlet, it seems, is in urgent need of the theatrical RAC. No, forget ‘seems’, he’s well and truly up a gum tree without a paddle.
What a bummer. Though he puffs and blows like a woman in labour, his chair remains obstinately stationary. And did I mention that his microphone has cut out too? That’s the trouble with all this new-fangled technology; there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned voice projection. He continues with the soliloquy – old trooper that he is – but all you can hear is a distant squeak and the unmistakable whiff of desperation.
I’m no boffin, but I’d hazard a guess that someone has neglected to recharge his wheelchair battery properly. I suppose this sort of thing happens from time to time. But for it to happen at such an inopportune moment – what are the chances of that?
With admirable presence of mind, Philip Sidney jumps from his seat and cries, “Lights, lights ho.” He grabs the Prince’s wheelchair, and for the first time in four hundred years, Hamlet makes his exit performing a wheelie. There’s an embarrassing pause in which the audience starts to whisper, before stage management finally take the hint and bring up the house lights. All in all, I can’t remember a more satisfying evening in the theatre.
The Quadriplegic
Back in the dressing room, Philip looks in urgent need of the first available virgin for a blood transfusion. “What happened out there?”
The rest of the cast has gathered in the corridor. Even though I shout, I can’t compete with the anxious whispering and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s girlish laughter. “It’s my chair; someone’s been pissing around with it.”
“But you’re in that thing 24⁄7, surely you would have noticed.”
“What else could it be?”
“Jesus Christ,” says Philip, leaning back against the wall and slowly descending to the floor, “I’ve got a guy from the RSC out there. What the fuck are we going to do?” He takes his head in his hands, rocks rhythmically like a Rabbi and repeats his mantra: “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”
The door bursts open, but unfortunately for Philip, it’s not the first available virgin. “What’s going on?” says Nikki. “You didn’t do that at the dress rehearsal.”
“It’s his fucking wheelchair,” groans Philip. “It’s fucked.”
“Then what are you going to do about it?” says Nikki. “The show must go on, of course.”
(Hamlet without the Prince? Yeah, right.)
“How can it?” says Philip. “Without that chair, he’s a complete waste of space.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” says Nikki. “What is the matter with you people?”
The door opens again, and a salad-dodging slaphead, with an ear-to-ear smile, emerges. “Do we have a problem, Houston?”
“Leave it out, Timothy,” says Philip, climbing to his feet at last. “Look, you’re his fucking carer; what are we going to do?”
“Well,” grins De Niro, “I suppose you’ll just have to get out there and apologize to your public. I know I only went to a red-brick university, but I did warn you there could be problems.”
Philip kicks the costume rail; the gravediggers’ clown outfits fall onto the floor. “Bastard!”
“Little poser for you, Philip,” continues De Niro. “Can you tell me the last time a production of Hamlet had to be abandoned midstream?”
Philip stares at him in disbelief. “What?”
“Actually, it’s happened several times over the years. There was a power cut on Shaftesbury Avenue during the winter of discontent. Then of course there was that famous occasion in Stratford when Michael Pennington had to – ”
“Shut the fuck up, you idiot,” screams Nikki. “We’ve got a crisis on our hands. If we can’t get him back on that stage, I’m going to lose the best climax to a documentary since Father Keith turned out to be a paedophile.”
Piers skips into the dressing room, followed by Anna who lets out a yelp of pain the moment she sees me. “Are you all right, babe?” She kisses me repeatedly on the head. “I was so worried about you. Do you want a drink or something? Does your bag need changing?”
“Do you mind?” says Philip. “We’re really in the shit here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’d just listen,” says Piers. “I think I may have solved the problem.”
As a man we turn towards him and ejaculate:
“How?”
Piers seems to find this very gratifying. “After the warm-up, I ran into an old chum of mine from Christ Church. I know you said we should stay in character, Philip, but we were actually very close once, and you know how nervous I get. Anyway, it turns out Gavin’s on the May Ball committee. Did you know they’d booked George Melly this year?”
Philip is chomping at his knuckles. “For fuck’s sake, Piers, get to the point.”
“Don’t you dare talk to him like that,” says Anna, stepping between them and hitching up her gymslip. “At least he’s trying to do something. Carry on, Piers, we’re all listening.”
“Yes, all right,” says Piers, looking slightly wounded. “Well, Gavin happened to mention that they’d invested in a spanking new sound system. I’ve asked him to toddle back to the House for a radio mike so that we can rig him up for the second half.”
“Piers, I could kiss you,” says Nikki, bearing down on him like a demented groupie.
“It was all Gavin’s idea,” says Piers, hastily. “He’s DJ-ing at the party, so you can thank him yourself.”
“That’s fine as far as it goes,” says Philip, “but how’s Michael going to move around? Don’t forget we’ve got the swordfight coming up. He says his chair’s completely fucked.”
“I’ve thought of that too,” says Piers, beginning to sound a little smug. “All you need is someone who knows the play to push him around. They can be a sort of personal attendant – like Seyton in the Scottish Play.”
Philip has worked his way up to his fingernails. “Well, I can’t do it. I’ve got notes to make.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” says Piers. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? There’s only one person who could do it. He’s been to most of the rehearsals, he knows what it’s like to tread the boards, and most important of all, he’s got a great relationship with Michael.”
The Opposite Bastard Page 17
