Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I

by Lisa Mantchev

  “Lass.” The nudging became more insistent as his other hand joined the first. “There was a notice on th’ Call Board, an’ they’re all gatherin’. Ahoy. Wake up.”

  “Go ’way,” Bertie mumbled in denial. “I set my alarm. It can’t be time yet. Tell the Chorus Girls to bugger off.” She turned over and burrowed deeper into the bedclothes.

  “Ye have t’ get up afore th’ rest arrive.”

  Bertie cracked an eye at the clock, which told her in no uncertain terms that it hadn’t gone off at seven as planned. She went from mostly comatose to completely awake in less than half a second, bolted upright, and leapt out of bed. Nate sidestepped her mad bounce into the land of the living, but Moth and Cobweb slept on with their little bums hiked in the air and faces buried under the pillows. Peaseblossom tumbled down Bertie’s pajama top. Mustardseed landed on the floor with a thump and a sleepy “bwaaah?”

  “Ye know I’d rather hazard an ocean o’ sirens than rouse ye from a slumber, right?” Nate asked.

  “Yes, I know, and it’s a good thing you did. Hairbrush, hairbrush, who moved my hairbrush?”

  Bertie realized they were already in the middle of a scene change. Half her furniture and her clothes, carefully selected to look authoritative and directorial, were already gone. She raked her fingers through the brilliant blue rats’ nest atop her head with a growing sense of futility and spoke down her pajama top. “We overslept. Wake up!”

  Peaseblossom flitted free, instantly alert. “Get up get up get up get up!” She kicked Moth directly in the backside, which only nudged him three inches farther under the pillow.

  Bertie shoved her feet into a pair of slippers, then grabbed for all four fairies and dropped them in the pocket of her plaid flannel sleeping pants mere seconds before her bed disappeared under the stage. “Who authorized this?”

  “That would be me.” The Stage Manager dispensed hot coffee and smiles to the early arrivals crowded together Stage Right.

  “I don’t suppose you know what happened to my alarm.” Bertie shoved her way through them to reach his table.

  “No idea whatsoever,” the Stage Manager said.

  Bertie surveyed the pastries, coffee cakes, and mammoth silver samovar. “This is an impressive spread. Must have taken a while to set up.”

  “A bit of time, yes.”

  “You could have paused during your preparations to wake me up.”

  “I could have.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Obviously.” The Stage Manager held up an insulated cup. “Coffee?”

  Bertie rubbed her thumb over the scrimshaw as she peered at him. Another one wearing a mask, though it’s as ugly as what lurks underneath. He smirked, sending nasty, oily serpents to pluck at her composure, to push, to goad, to tug at the reins of her temper while the Players looked on.

  Bertie let go of the medallion along with her plans to unleash a blistering diatribe that would only make her look ridiculous. Instead, she turned on a smile so sweet the cinnamon rolls were jealous. “Please.”

  Clearly disappointed she’d left the bait dangling on his hook, the Stage Manager filled the cup to the brim and handed it to her. “There you are.”

  Nate joined them at the table as Bertie slurped enough coffee to make room in the cup for a healthy amount of cream and sugar. “Is everythin’ all right?” His hand twitched toward his cutlass.

  “Unspeakably fabulous. I was just getting some breakfast.” She turned out her pocket to dump the fairies on the table. “Eat up, guys. You’ll need your strength today.”

  Mustardseed landed on a jelly-filled doughnut with such precision that raspberry jam shot across the tray and dripped over the edge. “Oops! Did I do that?” Then he jumped on an éclair.

  “Wait for us!” Moth and Cobweb hastened to skate in the mess.

  “Make them stop,” snapped the Stage Manager. “The food is for the Company.”

  “We’re part of the Company!” Peaseblossom said. “We even have lines.”

  “Not a lot of them, but they’re there!” said Mustardseed, discovering the sugar cubes.

  The Stage Manager fixed Bertie with a gimlet gaze. “As the Director, you’re going to need to maintain some semblance of authority.”

  “Authority, yes, but I’m not the boss of them.” Bertie spoke around a mouthful of doughnut, old-fashioned cake with glaze, because she was a girl with simple tastes and because the cancan dancers had snaked all the ones with sprinkles, the hussies.

  “Yeah, she’s not the boss of us!” Moth and Cobweb stopped painting each other with jam war paint long enough to stick their tongues out at the Stage Manager.

  “Yes, she most certainly is,” he said.

  “For argument’s sake, let’s say that I am,” said Bertie. “I therefore direct them to make a lovely, lovely mess on your table.”

  “Nyah!” the boys jeered, and did just that.

  And Peaseblossom—decorous, proper Peaseblossom—dropped her trousers to waggle her naked, pale bottom at the Stage Manager. Bertie laughed involuntarily, choked on her coffee, and nearly died as it came out her nose, but it was worth the searing pain in her nostrils to see the look on the Stage Manager’s face. He spun away from the table and disappeared into the wings, presumably to retrieve his headset and his dignity.

  “Wow,” Bertie said. “Add Peaseblossom’s rump to the list of things I never thought I’d see.”

  “Aye,” agreed Nate. “That were truly appallin’.”

  Peaseblossom did up her pants and straightened her tunic. “I don’t have to be perfect all the time, you know. Being the responsible one gets tiring.”

  “Tell me about it.” Bertie grabbed another doughnut and headed for the front of the stage. The realization dawned that there were too many Players milling about, sitting in the auditorium, gathering in the balconies. She turned to Nate. “What are Othello and Desdemona doing here? And Rosalind and Viola and—”

  “Ye called fer everyone,” said Nate.

  Bertie shook her head in vehement denial. “No, no, I just needed the Hamlet cast.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Peaseblossom.

  Bertie pivoted in time to see the fairy slap herself on the forehead. Both of them winced.

  “You didn’t!” Bertie said, not holding out any hope.

  “I did!” the fairy wailed. “I posted the call for everyone!”

  A few of the Players peered at them with great curiosity, so Bertie tried to look resilient and indefatigable despite the pajamas and crazy bedhead. If she left to change her clothes now, the Stage Manager would spread rumors and misinformation the entire time she was gone, doing his best to make it look like a retreat.

  “It’s all right,” she said, trying to believe it. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  Peaseblossom peeked at Bertie through her fingers. “It’s not?”

  “I might as well make the announcement to the entire Company. They don’t need to get it secondhand though the rumor mill.”

  “That’s th’ spirit,” Nate said. “Now go an’… er … do whatever ’tis ye plan t’ do.”

  “Thanks, Nate. Truly inspirational.” Bertie tossed him the rest of her doughnut and absconded with the wooden crate from under the refreshment table.

  Situations like this require as much stature as possible.

  “Beatrice Shakespeare Smith!” Gertrude bellowed as she made her entrance, very late and hardly sorry.

  “Thank you so much for joining us,” Bertie said to the queen, dragging the crate to the front of the stage.

  “What are you doing at the front of this assemblage?” Gertrude demanded.

  It was the sort of question that didn’t have any right answer, like “does this pannier make my royal butt look big?” Bertie sorted through her options, but not quick enough for Gertrude. The queen reached out to rap Bertie’s pate with her ruby-ringed knuckle.

  “I require your assistance. My silk overskirt must be mended before the next performance
, my son is off sulking… .” She paused and assessed Bertie’s pajamas. “Your attire is most inappropriate, even for this early hour.”

  Bertie shook her head at the errant royalty. “Never mind my clothes—”

  Gertrude snorted with enough force to set the velvet curtains flapping. “I’ll have none of your excuses, miss. The moon shall find me dancing, or I’ll know why.” She turned away to take full advantage of the refreshment table.

  “Please do help yourself to coffee before joining the rest of the Company.” Bertie climbed onto the crate and cupped a hand next to her mouth. “Excuse me, everyone!”

  Trying to capture their attention was like throwing pennies into a restless ocean; the words sank, unnoticed, into the churning waves of morning gossip.

  “You need a bullhorn,” said Moth.

  “Or an air raid siren,” said Mustardseed.

  “You need a commanding presence and an air of authority,” said Peaseblossom.

  “Thank you, fairy godmother, I’ll get right on that.” Bertie signaled to Nate. “Will you gainsay me a whistle?”

  “Not this time.” Nate reached for the small, copper bosun’s pipe that hung around his neck. “Which do ye want?”

  “ ‘All Hands on Deck,’ just in case we have Players missing, followed by ‘Word to Be Passed,’ if you please.”

  Nate obliged with the high-pitched signals used to gather the crew and command silence for an order to follow. The noise was meant to carry from ship to ship; as such, it would have driven a dog under the bed, if there had been a dog, and if the bed hadn’t already disappeared below the stage. The Players as yet unaware of Bertie’s presence winced and looked around. Hero upset her coffee down her front, and Claudio tried to mop it up, doing more harm than good where her dress was concerned.

  Bertie tried to ignore the suspicious looks now aimed at her. “Thank you all for coming this morning. I appreciate your punctuality and graciousness at such an early hour.”

  The Players complained to their neighbors in rumbling undertones. Though she couldn’t see the Stage Manager, Bertie caught his muttered whispers of “whippersnapper” and “troublesome little baggage” in the slosh of conversation. When Nate crossed his considerably muscled arms, the crowd fell into a grudging silence.

  “You know that I’ve been asked to leave the Théâtre.” There was another rumble, this time with varying degrees of sympathy. Heartened that they did not cheer and throw half-eaten pastry at her, Bertie continued. “Now I have to prove to the Theater Manager that I belong here. That I can contribute something unique and valuable. So I’m going to become a Director.”

  The Players looked around in confusion. Bertie heard several voices overlapping as they spoke the same question. “What does that mean?”

  Bertie rushed to answer. “I want to direct Hamlet.”

  A resurgence of protests, in large part from the characters not involved with that production. Lady Macbeth, in particular, was livid.

  “I don’t see why that play should take precedence over the classics!”

  “You would think that,” Gertrude said with a sniff. “Just because you’ve performed for the queen—”

  “I am the queen!” bellowed Lady Macbeth.

  “No, I’m the queen. You merely have aspirations for him.” Gertrude pointed at Macbeth, who was holding up a cruller and muttering, “Is this a doughnut I see before me?” Then he noticed the raspberry jam on everything and started to shriek. With a glare at the fairies, the Stage Manager bundled him off into the wings.

  “If I’m not to be involved in this production, why was I roused at this unearthly hour and forced to put in an appearance?” Lady Macbeth demanded. Others—the lovers from Midsummer, all the Henrys, and, of course, the Shrew—echoed the complaint.

  “Hamlet doesn’t even need a director,” Katerina said. As others shouted in agreement, Bertie feared she was losing her grip on the situation.

  Unexpected aid came when Ophelia appeared at Bertie’s elbow. “You mustn’t let them drown you out. Lead on, though it seems nobody marks you.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks.” Bertie focused her attention back on the milling throng, her gaze skimming over the Company. Nearly everyone was there, including a shadow that mingled with the Chorus members at the back: an apparition in smoke-gray just behind the cutthroats.

  Ariel.

  But Bertie could only address one problem at a time. “I know Hamlet isn’t new, but we’re going to restage it.”

  Even more confusion. “Restage?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’re going to have to make a few adjustments,” Bertie said, raising her voice.

  “Adjustments?”

  “What kind of adjustments?!”

  Bertie almost had to shout to be heard now. “The production will be transposed in both time period and setting. I was thinking about Ancient Egypt—”

  The clamor! Bertie lost her tenuous grasp on the situation.

  “Impossible!” the Players cried.

  “She must have gone quite mad!” someone pronounced in a voice that was silk-wrapped daggers.

  Bertie was certain that undermining whisper came from Ariel. “I have not gone mad. The changes are possible.”

  The air elemental stepped free of the crowd. “Perhaps a demonstration?”

  Bertie would have cursed him, except it was a valid point. She’d convinced Management that it was possible… .

  But is it? Really?

  “Of course.” Bertie beckoned to the fairies and lowered her voice to the barest of whispers. “I need you guys to do a scene for me.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any one. But you have to change it. Significantly.”

  Moth scratched his head. “Well, it’s not as if we’ve never mucked around on stage before.”

  Mustardseed peered into the flies. “I hope we don’t get smited by some theater god.”

  “How’s this for smited?” Peaseblossom kicked him in the shins. “Which play do you want us to do, Bertie?”

  “And what’s my motivation?” Cobweb asked.

  “Your motivation is to avoid death by strangulation,” Bertie said. “Just do a scene from Hamlet and really shake things up. Dance the tango if you have to.”

  But before anyone could ask for a rose to put between their teeth, Ophelia drifted past the refreshment table and strode to Center Stage.

  “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. That’s for thoughts.” The words were not altered, but she spoke them simply, without any trace of the madness the speech suggested. What’s more, she addressed the entire thing to an oven-mitt puppet she’d fitted over her hand.

  The puppet answered her in a falsetto that mimicked her brother, Laertes. “A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.”

  Ophelia nodded to the pot holder. “There’s fennel for you, and columbines.” Only, instead of flowers, she scattered doughnut sprinkles over the stage. “There’s rue for you; and here’s some for me. Rue, rue, rue. Oh, yes! I rue the way things ended.”

  Bertie stared at her, torn between fascination and horror. “That’s not the line. We’re not changing the lines… .”

  Ophelia faltered and looked uncertain for the first time. She wiped the improvised puppet’s mouth with a napkin. “There’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my lover departed.”

  That time, everyone noticed the misquote. “It’s supposed to be her father—”

  “After he died.”

  “I seem to have forgotten what comes next.” Ophelia held the puppet overhead to squawk, “Line!”

  “How can she forget her own part?” Moth wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” Peaseblossom said. “Maybe talking to a pot holder muddled things up.”

  “If that throws her off, what’s going to happen when she’s standing in front of the pyramids wearing gold silk gauze?” Bertie though
t of all the alterations she wanted to make to the costumes and the sets. “What if they all forget their lines?”

  Ariel’s voice, smooth and silky with conviction, cut through the crowd. “Perhaps they need rehearsing to accustom themselves to the changes.”

  “She expects us to rehearse?” someone cried.

  “I know my part. I’ll not be bullied in such a fashion!”

  “Please, if you’ll only listen,” Bertie started to say, but the Merry Wives of Windsor were already arguing with the Two Gentlemen of Verona.

  Ariel flickered through the Players like a silver needle through cloth; one second he was next to the Ladies’ Chorus, the next he’d moved on to mingle with the Tricksters.

  A troublesome spirit, indeed.

  Onstage, Julius Caesar and Marc Antony now jabbed at each other with their daggers while a gang war broke out in the orchestra pit between the Capulets and Montagues.

  “Nate?” Bertie called.

  The pirate moved forward. “What would ye have me do, lass? Cut their throats?”

  She shook her head, much as she would have liked to see punishments liberally administered. “There’s too many of them, besides which I need them intact.”

  “They came prepared fer a fight,” Nate observed. “Goin’ so far as t’ bring blood packs an’ false limbs.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Bertie said, wishing she could hit someone. “How are we going to restage a play if we can’t even get through the announcement without bloodshed?”

  “Better to give up the idea. They’ll never agree to it.” The Stage Manager pushed his mop through the mêlée, moving from one sticky pool of red corn syrup to another and looking smug.

  Bertie wondered if he was right as the Chorus Girls alternated between screams of dismay over the red flecks on their skirts and calls of encouragement to the brawlers.

  “They need a good coolin’ off,” said Nate.

  It took a moment to process the suggestion, but then Bertie smiled and signaled to the fairies. They stopped tormenting Oberon and Titania long enough to hear her whispered request. Hooting with laughter, they departed in the direction of the Properties Department.