by Parnell Hall
I was unprepared for such rudeness. I blinked. “I wanted to see the set.”
“Well, you’ll see it tomorrow in the dress and the tech. Right now we have work to do.”
“I understand,” I said. “It’s just that I’m taking over the part on very short notice—”
“Exactly,” he said. “And if you expect to be any good tomorrow, you should either be sleeping or learning your lines.”
He still had hold of my shoulder. Now he yanked me out on the stage. “Joe,” he said to the tech director. “If you could just hold up a minute, I’d like you to meet someone. Now, I know you got three sets to light and sixteen apprentices who aren’t going to get any sleep until you’re done, but I got an actor here who’d like to see the stage.”
That was too much for me. I said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt anyone. I was just taking a peek from the wings.”
The tech director laughed, held up his hand. “Hey, don’t mind Goobie. He’s a nasty bastard, but he’s got a heart of gold.” He came over and shook my hand. “Joe Warden. I’m the tech director. I heard about you. You’re fillin’ in on one day’s notice, of course you want to see the set.” He turned and gestured. “Now, this here’s Act Two. You in Act Two?”
“Not really,” I said. “I come in at the very end, I don’t really do much. I’m mostly in Acts One and Three.”
He frowned. “Aha. Well, I can’t really put those in now. Not till I finish lighting this. It’ll take a little time. Plus I sent my crew up to the shop for more masking flats. I could call up there and bring ’em back, but—”
I held up my hand. “Hey, I’ll see ’em tomorrow. That’s soon enough.”
“Exactly.”
It was Goobie Wheatly who said that. I turned to find him, head cocked, looking at me with a superior smirk. In the stage light he looked a little less scary, but still an imposing figure of a man. Remarkable, when you considered how old he actually was.
I looked from him back to the tech director. What a contrast, both in physical type and in attitude. But it occurred to me, for all the difference between Goobie Wheatly’s smirk and Joe Warden’s affable smile, both men sincerely wished me gone.
By that point I was ready to oblige. I nodded to them, walked down to the front of the stage, hopped down into the audience and with barely a thought to Ridley overhead, walked up the aisle and out.
When I got outside, fatigue really hit me. That and the paranoid flash that I really hadn’t paid that much attention to where the house I was staying was. It took me a moment or two to get my bearings before I started off in the most likely direction from which I’d come.
Which turned out to be right. Praise the lord. Just as I had visions of being picked up by a cruising patrol car for stumbling around a residential neighborhood at four in the morning, I reached a house that looked promising. I couldn’t swear it was my own, but it was close enough to give it a try I have to tell you, by that time I was so spaced out it wasn’t until I got upstairs and found my suitcase that I was really sure.
I heaved a sigh of relief and proceeded to get ready for bed. Which isn’t that big a deal in my case, since I sleep in a T-shirt and my underwear. Anyway, I took off my shoes, socks and pants, only to remember I had no place to hang them, since I hadn’t a closet, and found my toothbrush and toothpaste, only to remember I didn’t have a bathroom.
I didn’t have a bathrobe, either since I hadn’t expected to be using a bathroom down the hall. And, as I said, I was just in my underpants and T-shirt. But after all, this was summer stock and four in the morning, and what the hell? I pushed the door open and padded down the hall.
The lights in the rooms were still on. At four in the morning that seemed excessive, even by actors’ standards. And where the hell were they? From what I’d seen, the town was totally dead. It was none of my business, of course. I had my own problems.
I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. It was on my way back to my room that something caught my eye.
It was a view through one of the open doors. Before, I hadn’t really noticed anything other than the fact the rooms were empty and the lights were on. No reason why I should. But this particular sight caught me in mid-stride.
It was a plastic bag. Not altogether unfamiliar to a child of the sixties. Plus I used to sell plastic bags in one of my job-jobs.
But I sold ’em empty.
This plastic bag had something in it, and something lying next to it.
Now my eyesight may not be quite as good as it was when I was twenty, but it’s still pretty sharp, and I had a pretty good idea what this was. I pushed the door open to take a better look.
Sure enough, sitting on the end table by the rumpled bed was an ounce of marijuana with a pack of rolling papers.
Okay, call me nosy if you like, but I was under real pressure on this job, and if I had to work with a bunch of stoned-out actors I wanted to know it now. Which is why I invaded that pothead’s privacy and entered the room.
It was stark like mine, and I have to admit I was glad to note it. I’m only human, and if the other actors were being given better accommodations it would piss me off. But no, their digs were just as drab as mine.
Except for a poster on the wall, which on inspection proved to be for the rock group New Kids on the Block.
I looked at it and blinked. Good Christ. I could understand the actor wanting to brighten the room up, but New Kids on the Block? It occurred to me the acting troop must be even younger than I thought.
There seemed to be nothing else of note, so I gave it up and started out.
That’s when I spotted the Walkman by the bed. The blanket was hanging down partly covering it, which was why I’d missed it before. I bent down, pushed the blanket aside and picked it up. Not that I expected to find anything. Except, perhaps, the latest New Kids on the Block cassette. But no, there was a piece of adhesive tape stuck on the back. Doubtless the owner had labeled the Walkman with his name.
I turned it over, looked at the adhesive tape.
It was indeed a name tag.
I blinked, and I have to admit it was a few moments before it hit me. No wonder the lights were on and there was no one here.
The tag said Ridley.
I was in the apprentice house.
6.
“BLUNTSCHLI IS A VERY GOOD part.”
That remark alone, though said with a smile and offered in the spirit of benevolent encouragement, was quite sufficient for me to form an unfavorable opinion of Avery Allington.
I guess you have to understand the context.
It was the next morning. Or the same morning, if you’re keeping score, actually only a few hours later, around 10:00 A.M. The cast was assembled in the greenroom, waiting for the tech crew to clear the stage so we could go up there and finish blocking Act Three. So far I’d only worked with Margie-poo, but in Act Three I had to interact with most of the other actors.
These included Major Petkoff, Raina’s father, portrayed in this production by a man way too young for the part, an actor who couldn’t have been more than thirty, tops, and whose only qualifications for playing older men seemed to be the fact that he was roly-poly fat and wouldn’t have done for juvenile leads. I was told his name but missed it, as is my fashion. Indeed, I was introduced to all the actors and actresses, and out of all of them the only name that stuck was Avery Allington.
Naturally.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I started out describing the other actors and only got through one before I got back to Allington. That ought to tell you something.
Anyway, for the rest there was Catherine, Raina’s mother, played by an actress old enough to be Raina’s mother. Which made for an odd couple when teamed up with Raina’s father, whom she also looked old enough to be the mother of. She was not plump, by the way, but a rather handsome figure of an older woman. Her name, of course, I could not tell you.
Nor could I recall the name of the other woman in the piece, the one
I’d been told I was sharing a dressing room with. Whatever her name was, she was playing the part of Louka, the Petkoffs’ maid. She was a perky young thing, so young in fact she made Margie-poo seem positively mature. She wore shorts and a T-shirt that only needed a letter on it to make her look like a high school cheerleader. Indeed, she was so young it occurred to me she might actually be an apprentice.
The other servant, Nicola, was played by a rather bland-looking man who looked as if he’d stumbled into the rehearsal by mistake.
Is that all of them? Can I get back to Avery now?
Avery Allington was around thirty. He had carefully groomed hair and sideburns. In fact, he looked as if he’d just stepped out of a barbershop. The hair was brown and wavy It framed a solid, square-jawed face, with clean-cut features and a striking profile, which I got to see a lot, since Avery always seemed to be posing. He also always seemed to be acting, and everything he said was as if he were delivering a line. Delivering it center stage with everyone’s attention naturally on him.
Avery was, of course, Major Sergius Saranoff, my rival in the play for Raina’s hand.
Which brings us to the line, “Captain Bluntschli is a very good part.”
What was I supposed to say—“Yes, it is, Avery, it happens to be the lead in the fucking play, you twit?” Does that sound overly hostile? I guess it does. You still can’t see the context. The pretensions and the implications. Let me give you the rest of the scene. Not the scene in the play, I mean the scene in the greenroom.
As I said, we were waiting for the tech crew to finish, and every now and then we could hear a crash overhead to tell us that the loyal, dedicated and fumble-fingered pothead Ridley was still on the job and we would have to wait a little longer. It was while this was going on, and Herbie was introducing me to the other actors in the greenroom, feeding me a host of names that even if I’d had any sleep I wouldn’t have been able to remember, that the following conversation ensued.
Avery began it.
Naturally.
After all the introductions, he said, “So, you’ve played Bluntschli before?”
“It was a while back, but yes, I have.”
“Have you ever played Sergius?”
“No. That was the only production of the play I’ve ever been in.”
“Well, don’t fret. You might still get a crack at it.”
“What?”
“You don’t really look your age, you know.”
I blinked. “I beg your pardon.”
“Well, Bluntschli you can get away with. But Sergius is a much younger man.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose he is.”
“Of course he is. And I can understand you wanting to do it if you could pass. After all, it’s a much showier part.”
As I say, I’d not had much sleep and I was obsessed with trying to do my part and a lot of this was going right over my head, but even to a dense fool like me, this was too blatant to be missed.
Not that I could fathom any response. “What?” I said.
Avery smiled. “Of course it is. When Brando did the play on Broadway, he naturally played Sergius.”
“Brando?”
“Marlon Brando. He played Sergius of course. It’s a showier role. It allows you to posture, clown, play the bravado, the swagger, the dashing romantic fool. I quite understand your wanting to play it.”
I wasn’t about to protest that I’d never said anything about wanting to play Sergius, but I felt some response was called for. “I’m quite happy playing Bluntschli,” I said.
Avery cocked his head so he could favor me with his profile while giving me a condescending smile, and delivered the line. “Bluntschli’s a very good part.”
See what I mean? A wholly gratuitous and egocentric diatribe for the sole purpose of defining our relative positions in the show.
I wondered why it mattered to him so much. Why he would take such pains to attempt to impress his importance on a stranger, who was not on equal footing to begin with, who was only there making an effort—and if I may say so, a heroic effort—to save the show and allow it to go on. It was the circumstances more than anything else that made his posturing a little much. Not that it wouldn’t have seemed excessive under the best of circumstances. Even near brain-dead, with no sleep and line-and-blocking overload, I could tell that the man was way off base.
But no one else seemed to. As I looked around, none of the other actors looked at Avery as if to say, “Get a load of this.” From what I could see, they all appeared to be taking his statements at face value. Either that, or he was a known quantity to which they no longer paid attention. But that couldn’t really fly with a stranger in their midst. I mean, how were they going to relate to me?
It was at that moment that Herbie jumped in and suggested we run lines while we were waiting.
That didn’t really suit me. You will recall, I’d done Act Three on the book, intending to learn the lines with the blocking, and I wasn’t really up on the lines. There was no point running the lines with me on the book, so my only recourse was to take a stab at it. Which I didn’t really want to do, knowing so few lines to begin with. I mean, this was the actors’ first impression of me, and I didn’t want it to be so bad. Which was not really vanity as much as insecurity. I mean, here I was with my first real part in twenty years, and all those people would be watching me, wondering if I could do it. Counting on me to do it. Because if I stunk, the show would go right in the toilet. And them with it. So I would have liked their first impression of me to be learning the blocking, script in hand, saying the correct lines, not sputtering my way painfully through a line rehearsal.
But what was I to do, say, “No, I don’t think I’d like to do that? What a great first impression that would be: Prima donna refuses to run lines at special rehearsal called for his benefit; actors and actresses, giving up morning off in order to help replacement actor learn part, gawk in amazement as boorish clod spurns aid and sulks in greenroom while waiting for tech crew to finish.
So I didn’t reject Herbie’s suggestion. I just said, “That would be fine, but I have to tell you, I don’t really know Act Three yet.”
“I’ll get a prompter,” Herbie said. He looked up, spotted Goobie Wheatly with an apprentice boy just coming down the stairs. “Goobie,” he said, “could I borrow Jack a moment?”
The stage manager put his arm around the boy’s shoulder almost protectively “Jack’s doing props,” he said. “What do you need?”
“We’re doing a line-through of Act Three, I need a prompter for Stanley.”
Goobie gave me a look that spoke volumes— of course, I should have known, the trouble-making intruder from last night strikes again.
He turned back to Herbie. “That would be Kirk. Jack’s on props. Kirk is the prompter. I’ll send him down.”
“Is he here?” Herbie said. “Because we’re going to start right away.”
“Excuse me,” Goobie said witheringly “I certainly wouldn’t want to hold anybody up. Jack, start without me. I’ll be right with you.”
“But I don’t know what to do,” Jack protested.
“I know that, but there are priorities. Right now I have to summon Captain Kirk.” Goobie waved his hand. “Go, go.”
Jack walked off in the direction of the prop room.
“Is Kirk here?” Herbie asked.
Goobie, who had turned to go, reacted as if stung by a bee. “Yes, he’s here. He’s in the audience, and I believe he’s asleep. I will rouse him and send him down.”
I knew Goobie was only doing his best to make us feel bad, but in my case it was working. I didn’t want some teenaged boy who’d been up all night working woken from a sound sleep just to prompt me on my lines. But before I could protest, Goobie had turned and, with amazing dexterity for a man his age, tripped lightly up the stairs.
He was back minutes later, ushering a short, chubby, bespectacled boy, who gave every indication of having indeed been woken from a sound sleep. He k
ept inserting his fingers under his glasses and rubbing his eyes. The fingers were chubby, the lenses were thick, and the action kept raising the glasses off the nose to forehead height, and once knocked them off the head. They fell to the floor did not break, and the lad retrieved them and put them back on.
“Gentlemen,” Goobie said, clapping him on the shoulder. “May I present Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, your commander and prompter. If you wouldn’t mind briefing him on this mission, I have other work to do.”
With a curt nod of his head, Goobie stalked off after Jack and we began the line-through.
Which was terrible.
Just terrible.
As I said, I didn’t know the lines. Which in itself wouldn’t have been so bad, if Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise had had any idea how to prompt.
If you’re not in the theater, you may not realize that while prompting may seem simple, it’s not, it’s a real art. I know, because I did it myself when I was an apprentice in summer stock, many, many years ago. It’s a delicate thing and it takes getting used to. It’s not just giving the actor the line. It’s knowing when he needs it and feeding it to him at just the right moment.
There are two absolute no-nos in prompting—prompting too late or prompting too soon. For one thing, an actor should never have to say “line.” If an actor says “line,” it means the prompter fell asleep and didn’t do his job. The prompter should be able to tell when an actor’s in trouble and give him the line before he has to ask for it.
But you gotta be careful, because an even greater sin is prompting too soon. Because there’s nothing that trips an actor up quite so badly as knowing the line and having the prompter throw it at him anyway during a dramatic pause. So, in prompting, timing is the key.
Still another art in prompting is giving just enough. If an actor is in trouble, the prompter doesn’t have to read the whole line. Because in theory the actor knows the line, and all he needs is a reminder, not the line itself. For instance, if an actor has forgotten “Four score and seven years ago,” the prompter need not intone “Four score and seven years ago,” to put him on track. A good prompter will hiss the words “four score,” and the actor, reminded, will instantly jump into the speech.
