by Simon Brett
When he arrived at the rehearsal room on the Friday, Charles found the author in a state of extreme annoyance.
‘What’s up, Malcolm?’
‘Have you seen this?’ He pointed to a printed handout on a table. It read:
THE VARIETY THEATRE
PAUL LEXINGTON PRODUCTIONS
in association with
BOBBY ANSCOMBE
presents
MICHAEL BANKS GEORGE BIRKITT
in
THE HOODED OWL
There was more writing beneath this, but it was printed too small to be legible.
‘I see,’ said Charles.
‘It’s a bit much. My name might just as well not be on it,’ objected the author.
‘Hmm. You see, what’s happened is that this is a big design for a poster. They’ve economised by reducing it for the handout. Your name’d be legible on the big poster.’
‘That’s a fat lot of good. No, I’m really annoyed about this. I think these handouts should be withdrawn. I mean, look at the size of Paul’s name – it’s as big as Michael Banks’s, for God’s sake.’
‘Producer’s perk. He decides what the poster looks like.’
‘Well. I’m furious. Who should I complain to about it?’
‘Under normal circumstances,’ said Charles gently, ‘you’d go to your agent and get him to complain to the management.’
‘Ah,’ said Malcolm Harris, realising, perhaps for the first time, the folly of the contract he had signed with Paul Lexington.
‘Good news about getting Michael Banks, isn’t it?’ said Charles, to cheer up the hangdog author.
It had the desired effect. Malcolm Harris brightened immediately.
‘Yes, it’s wonderful. From the moment I first thought of the play, I thought he’d be ideal for the part. Though, of course, I never dared hope . . .’
The run-through started. Charles could not judge George Birkitt’s performance, he was too close to the part to be objective, but there was no doubt that Michael Banks was going to be very strong as the father. In his first scene he established an unshakeable authority, which, Charles knew, was bound to strengthen the total collapse of the character in the second act. Alex Household had been excellent in the part, but, in retrospect, he seemed to have been giving an actor’s interpretation of a man fifteen years older than himself. Michael Banks actually seemed to be that man.
But, after the first scene, the performance weakened. The power of the acting remained, but its flow was constantly interrupted. The actor just did not know the lines and, though he could manage the exchanges of dialogue quite well, every time he came to a big speech, he would dry.
‘Sorry, old boy. Sorry, loves. Prompt,’ he would say. The Stage Manager would give him the line, he’d be all right for a couple more sentences, then, ‘Sorry, it’s gone again.’
The play tottered on like this for a quarter of an hour. Charles was sitting at the back of the hall with Malcolm Harris, and kept feeling the author tense as another of his speeches was chopped up and destroyed. Eventually, Michael Banks just stopped, looked out at the director, and said, ‘Look, sorry, Peter old boy, I’d better use the book. Not getting anywhere like this.’
‘I did want to do this run without books.’
‘So did I, dear boy, so did I,’ said the star lugubriously, and got a good laugh from the cast. He had managed to endear himself to all of them within the week, and they shared his agony as he groped for the lines.
‘We open in less than a fortnight,’ Peter Hickton continued to argue.
‘Don’t think I don’t know it. But, honestly, I think we’ll just be wasting time if I go on like this.’
‘You’ve got to come off the book sometime.’
‘I will, I will, love. I promise. Look, don’t worry about it. I’m usually pretty good on lines. Once, when I was in rep. I learned lago in three days. So it will come, just hasn’t come yet. So I think for this run I’d better press on with the book.’
Michael Banks’s charm didn’t prevent him from being forceful, and Peter Hickton had to concede defeat. The play continued. With the support of the printed lines, Michael Banks’s performance regained the stature it had shown in the first scene and left no doubt that he was going to add a new excellence to The Hooded Owl. Charles found he was watching much of the play as if seeing it for the first time.
Towards the end of the second act, the door beside him opened and a woman slipped in to the back of the hall. She was in her forties, smartly dressed in white trousers, eau-de-nil silk shirt and long camel-coloured cardigan. Very well-preserved. She flashed a well-crowned smile at Charles.
‘Hi,’ she whispered. ‘I’m Dottie, Micky’s wife.’
‘Charles Paris.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Pretty good.’
She nodded and her alert hazel eyes flickered around the room, taking everyone in. They lingered on Lesley-Jane Decker. ‘Who’s that?’ she hissed.
Charles gave the girl’s name.
‘Micky made a play for her yet?’
He was surprised. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been round much this week.’ Then, curious, ‘Why? Has he got a roving eye?’
‘Haven’t we all?’ she said. Her tone was mocking, but she was fully aware of the sexual nature of her remark.
The play ended. Malcolm Harris started to applaud and some of the others joined in. Michael Banks grinned and went across to have a word with Lesley-Jane. After Dottie’s remark, Charles couldn’t help thinking that the two of them did look rather intimate.
Peter Hickton clapped his hands again. ‘O.K., thank you all very much. We really are getting somewhere. There are a few scenes I’d just like to run through before we break and –’
‘Sorry, love,’ said Michael Banks gently. ‘Got to go. Off for the weekend, as I said, old boy.’ He waved vaguely to Dottie.
‘But I really think we should –’ the director began.
‘Sorry. No can do.’
‘Are you sure you can’t just stay for –’
Michael Banks shook his head charmingly. ‘Sorry, love.’
‘Oh. Oh, well . . . You will have a look at the lines over the weekend, won’t you? I mean, the performance is coming fine, but the lines are . . .’
‘Course I will, old boy, course I will. Scout’s honour. Cross my heart.’
‘Oh, and I have got a note on –’
‘Got to go.’ Michael Banks went across to get his coat and brief-case.
‘Lines a problem?’ Dottie whispered to Charles.
‘Seem to be.’
She nodded knowingly.
‘He starts all right,’ said Charles, ‘but he can’t keep it up.’
‘You can say that again.’
Once again, there was no doubt of the sexual overtone in Dottie Banks’s words.
CHAPTER SIX
THE WEEKEND with chums in Chichester did not seem, on the Monday’s showing, to have left Micky Banks much time to look at his lines. If anything, he was worse after the break; even the words he had remembered the week before were now coming out jumbled and confused.
‘Don’t worry,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t worry, Peter old boy. They will come. Just out of practice learning, you know. That’s the trouble with doing all these films and tellies – you just have to remember a little bit for a short take. Forget what it’s like learning a long part. But don’t worry – be all right on the night. I once got up lago in three days when I was in rep. If we just press on with the rehearsal, it’ll come.’
But it didn’t. And indeed it was very difficult to press on with the rehearsal. In every production there comes an awkward jerky stage when the cast abandon their books for the first time, but for The Hooded Owl it seemed to be going on longer than usual.
And it had a knock-on effect. George Birkitt got lazy about learning his lines too. Charles remembered from working on The Strutters with him that George had always had an approximate approach to the te
xt, relying, as did so many television actors, on a sort of paraphrase of the speeches which homed in on the right cue. Strong direction could make him more disciplined and accurate, but Peter Hickton was not well placed to bully George Birkitt. The latter could always turn round – and indeed did turn round-and say, ‘Sorry, love, I don’t mind working on them, but there doesn’t seem a lot of point in my giving up my free evenings when the star is unwilling to do the same.’
He couldn’t resist putting a sneer into the words. In spite of the success of Fly-Buttons, George Birkitt was not yet a star – and quite possibly never would be. He lacked the necessary effortless dominance of character. Deep down he was aware of this fact, and it hurt.
Charles hoped that George’s assumption was right, that Michael Banks’s difficulty in retaining the lines was just the product of laziness. If that were the case, then atavistic professional instincts and the terrifying imminence of the first night would ensure that he knew the part by the time they opened. But Charles had a nagging fear that it wasn’t that, that Michael Banks really was trying, that he did go through the lines time after time in the evenings, but that his mind could no longer retain them. If that was the situation, it was very serious. And through the star’s casual bonhomie at rehearsals, Charles thought he could detect a growing panic as the awful realisation dawned.
They were making so little progress on the Monday that Peter Hickton took the sensible decision and dismissed most of the cast at lunchtime; he would sit down with Michael Banks and George Birkitt all afternoon and just go through the lines. It was a ploy that often worked. Apart from the shame of being kept in like a naughty schoolboy, the constant automatic repetition of the lines taken out of the context of the play could often lodge them in the leakiest actor’s mind.
And on the Tuesday morning it was seen to have had some effect. George Birkitt, whose main problem with the lines had been an unwillingness to look at them, showed a marked improvement. Michael Banks, too, started with renewed confidence and got further into the text than he ever had before without error. Relief settled on the rehearsal room. When he was flowing in the part, the company could feel his great presence and their confidence in the whole enterprise blossomed.
The first breakdown came about twenty minutes into the play. Needless to say, it was in a big speech. As ever, the start was confident. And, as ever, about three sentences in, Michael Banks faltered. The entire cast held their breath, as if watching a tightrope-walker stumble, and all let out a sigh of relief when he managed to right himself and make it through to the end of the speech.
But it was a symptom of things to come. In the next big speech, Michael Banks again stumbled. Again he extricated himself, but this time at some cost to the text. What he said was a vague approximation of what Malcolm Harris had written, and he didn’t even give the right cue to George Birkitt, who spoke next.
This threw George, and he got his lines wrong. Being George, he didn’t try to cover the fluff and press on; instead he said, ‘Sorry, love, but I can’t be expected to get my lines right if I get the wrong feed, can I?’
The scene lurched forward again, but its momentum was gone. Michael Banks’s eyes were lit with the panic of a man about to dry. And sure enough, he did. Peter Hickton tried another approach and threw one of his little tantrums. This didn’t help at all. It just soured the atmosphere of the rehearsal, and left Michael Banks looking pained, like some huge animal, beaten for a transgression he does not understand.
For a show due to open for its first public preview in a week’s time The Hooded Owl was in far from promising shape.
There was a run on the Tuesday afternoon for the producers. Paul Lexington and Bobby Anscombe sat through the whole play in silence.
It was excruciating. Consciousness of the audience made Michael Banks nervous, and nervousness scrambled the lines in his head even further. George Birkitt got through with only one prompt, but his performance was spoiled by the smug smile he wore throughout at the star’s expense.
Eventually, half-way through the second act, as the play’s climax approached, Michael Banks could stand it no longer. He snatched the prompt copy from the Stage Manager and read the rest of his part. The strength of the performance, as ever, increased, but it was worrying.
The play finished and there was silence. The actors drifted away from the centre of the room to the safety of the walls, where they picked up crosswords, fiddled with knitting, lit cigarettes and gave generally unconvincing impressions of people who weren’t worried about what was about to happen.
Paul Lexington and Bobby Anscombe were sitting at a table in the middle of the room, engaged in a fiercely whispered conversation. The cast couldn’t help hearing odd words. Bobby Anscombe seemed to be doing most of the talking. ‘Bloody terrible . . . amateur . . . when I put my money into something I don’t expect . . . can’t put that sort of thing into a professional theatre . . . These fag-ends did not augur well for any public announcement that might be made.
And when it came, the announcement lived up to their worst fears. With a gesture of annoyance at something Paul Lexington had just said, Bobby Anscombe stood up and banged his hand down on the table.
‘This is bloody awful. I’ve backed more shows than you lot have had hot dinners and I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you realise, a week on Thursday you’re going to play this show to all the West End critics? At the moment none of them’s going to sit through to the end. If I don’t see a marked improvement by the end of the week, I am going to take my money out!’
Shock registered on every face in the room. Even Paul Lexington’s boyish mask was shattered.
Bobby Anscombe had intended his ultimatum as an exit line, but he was stopped by Michael Banks, who had worked with him in the past and knew his volatile temper. He stepped forward, diplomatically.
‘Bobby, old boy, take your point. The show does look pretty shitty at the moment. Also take the blame myself. I just haven’t got the hang of the lines yet. But don’t worry. Give us a couple of days and you won’t recognise it.’
‘I’d better not. There is nothing in it at the moment that I would want my name associated with.’
‘Now come on, Bobby. It’s only me letting the side down,’ Michael Banks volunteered nobly. ‘I don’t know my lines and I’m dragging down the rest of the cast.’
‘And why don’t you know your lines?’ Bobby Anscombe snapped. ‘Listen. You know how much money we’re paying you. It’s a bloody big investment. And when I invest that much, I reckon to get value for my money.’ He thumped the table with his fist. ‘I’m paying for a star actor who can do the job of acting, not some old has-been whose memory’s gone.’
It was as if every person in the room had been slapped in the face. They all flinched. Michael Banks’s charm had worked on every one of them, and they hated this savage attack on him.
The star himself took it with dignity. ‘Fair comment. I agree, I should know the lines by now. And I will. Don’t worry, once in rep. I learned all of lago in three days.’
‘I’m not interested in what you’ve done in the past. My money is invested in what you can do now.’
Once again, Bobby Anscombe intended this as a parting shot, but again he was stopped. This time the interruption came from an unexpected source, as Lesley-Jane Decker leapt to the defence of her idol.
‘It’s all very well you saying that, but do you realise that Micky only saw the script ten days ago? It’s a huge amount to learn in that time.’
Bobby Anscombe looked at her contemptuously. ‘I am not concerned about actors’ problems. I don’t give a toss how long he’s had to learn the part or how difficult it’s been. All I know is he’s signed a contract to play the part properly, and at the moment he’s not doing it. I am not getting my money’s worth. I’m a business man with a reputation to think of. I’ve backed this show and I intend to make money out of it. The only way that’s going to happen is if it looks like a professional West End production.
At the moment it looks like amateur night. The only way for it to look any different is for Michael to learn the bloody lines. Unless,’ he added with unpleasant irony, ‘anyone has any other ideas for picking it out of the shit . . .?’
‘You could revert to the original casting.’
It was Alex Household who had spoken. He hadn’t intended to. He looked as shocked as everyone else at his words. They had just come out. The build-up of frustration he had felt ever since he lost the part would not allow him to be silent. When given such a cue, the reply had to emerge.
The investor wheeled on him. ‘What, and put your name above the title? How many people do you think that’ll bring in? At least, with Micky there, we can fill a few weeks of punters coming in to watch him dry. But who’s going to come out to see a non-entity like you? I’ll tell you – bloody no one!’
Alex may have had some response ready, but he got no chance to voice it, as Bobby Anscombe turned his fury on Paul Lexington.
‘Not that anyone’s going to come anyway at the moment. Where’s the publicity? I haven’t seen a single poster for this bloody show. I haven’t heard anything on the radio, seen nothing in the press, nothing on the box. How are the punters meant to know there’s a show on? Bloody E.S.P.?’
Paul Lexington looked subdued. ‘Publicity is being handled by Show-Off Enterprises.’
‘Never heard of them.’
‘They’re part of Lanthorn Productions. Denis Thornton recommended them.’
‘Oh, did he? Well, you shouldn’t trust him further than you can throw him. Are they doing the publicity for his new musical at the King’s?’
