Sicken and So Die

by Simon Brett

  ‘But there is also – and most important of all – an uncertainty about sexual identity. This is at the centre of the play: Viola searching for her own sexuality by the experiment of cross-dressing . . .’

  No, no, no, that isn’t at the centre of the play.

  ‘. . . Orsino being brought face to face with his homosexuality through his infatuation with Cesario . . .’

  No.

  ‘. . . Malvolio’s obsession with Olivia, which is fetishistic and can only find expression through bondage in the form of yellow cross-garters. This is what Shakespeare meant us to take from Twelfth Night.’

  No, it isn’t. That’s just what you want to impose on Twelfth Night.

  ‘Right, so bear all this in mind as we work on the play. Sex, sex, sex.’ Alexandru Radulescu looked across to the assistant director. ‘OK, maybe we should start.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’ve just rehearsed Act Two, Scene Three. Would you like us to run through that, and maybe we can see places where, you know . . . the sexual element can be emphasized a bit . . .?’

  ‘What!’ Alexandru Radulescu stared at the young man, appalled. ‘You think I am just going to pick up the left-overs of someone else’s production?’

  ‘Well, it’s all been blocked. The cast know their moves and lines. I mean, we do only have three weeks before we open and –’

  The director drew himself up to his full – not very great – height. ‘Alexandru Radulescu does not collaborate! When Alexandru Radulescu directs a production, he does it his way. And, anyway, Alexandru Radulescu does not just direct, he reinterprets a play.’

  It’ll end in tears, thought Charles Paris. It’ll end in tears.

  ‘It could have meant anything,’ said John B. Murgatroyd. They were sitting over drinks at the end of that day’s rehearsal. John B. had a pint of bitter; Charles was on the large Bell’s. For him beer spelt relaxation, and an afternoon in the company of Alexandru Radulescu had rendered him desperate for whisky.

  “‘I told you it would be all right,”’ John B. quoted again. ‘Vasile probably just meant that Alexandru had cracked the British system – made himself the natural candidate to take over when Gavin got ill.’

  ‘Equally it could have meant that their plan to make Gavin ill had worked.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Charles. You’re the last person I’d have expected to be a conspiracy theorist. What, so you’ve also got proof that Kennedy was assassinated by Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe because he threatened to tell Martin Luther King about their love-child – is that right? You’re being paranoid.’

  ‘Don’t you think this afternoon’s events justify a little paranoia?’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ John B. Murgatroyd took a thoughtful swallow of his beer. ‘It’ll probably be all right. Look, he hasn’t got time to make too many changes. I’m sure he’s mostly talk – that sort always are. What we’ll end up with is a straight telling of Twelfth Night with a couple of trendy flourishes.’

  ‘You have the sound of someone trying very hard to convince himself – and failing. I’ve worked with Directors like this before,’ said Charles darkly.

  Various unpleasant memories bubbled to the surface of his mind. Charles Paris liked the words a playwright wrote to be the mainspring of a production; he couldn’t stand Directors who regarded the text as an obstacle that had to be negotiated on the way to their personal glorification.

  Wincing, he remembered a production of Richard III, in which Richard alone remained handsome and upright, while all the other characters had been played with various disabilities. The Director’s point, that deformity is in the eye of the beholder, might have had some validity in another context, but it sure as hell made nonsense of Shakespeare’s play. Charles rather treasured the notice the Wigan Gazette had given of his one-legged Duke of Clarence (Jesus, he’d been grateful to be killed off so early – the strapping was agony): ‘Charles Paris’s resolute swimming in the malmsey-butt suggests a promising nautical future for him as Long John Silver.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Charles groaned, dragging himself out of this unwelcome recollection, ‘just wait till Alexandru Radulescu starts exploring the homosexual subtext of Sir Toby Belch’s relationship with Sir Andrew Aguecheek.’

  ‘Now, the opening dumb-show . . .’ were the first words with which the new director began the next day’s rehearsal.

  ‘But there isn’t an opening dumb-show,’ Sally Luther objected. Charles had been about to make the same point, but the coward in him was relieved she’d got the words in first. No point in antagonising Alexandru unnecessarily. Charles had a gut feeling there would be plenty of other issues over which he’d really need to take issue with the Director.

  ‘The dumb-show,’ said Alexandru patiently, ‘is a very common feature of Elizabethan theatre. Many plays were started with a dumb-show, prefiguring the action to follow. Indeed, the play that Hamlet organises to be performed before King Claudius begins with a dumb-show,’ he concluded as if closing the argument.

  Charles couldn’t let that go by. ‘Yes, but the whole point there was that Shakespeare was deliberately presenting an archaic convention. In the same way that the First Player’s language is dated and overblown, the dumb-show is put there to show how unfashionable this particular troupe of travelling players are. Shakespeare always knew what he was doing. If he’d intended Twelfth Night to begin with a dumb-show, he’d have specified a dumb-show.’

  He didn’t look directly at Alexandru Radulescu until the end of this speech. What he then saw was chilling. The Director’s black eyes were two focused pinpoints of hatred. Up until that moment their relationship had been wary but polite; now Charles felt he had made an enemy for life.

  ‘God, that’s all I need,’ Alexandru spat out the words. ‘Actors who think they’re experts on Shakespeare. Listen, I do the thinking round this production. All that’s required of you is to say the words the way I tell you to.’

  Charles felt as if his face had been slapped. He wanted to come back, fierce and hard, with the fact that he did actually know quite a lot about Shakespeare, that he’d got an Oxford degree in English to prove it, that . . . But he restrained himself. Time enough. No need to go out on a private offensive. Soon the rest of the company were bound to join forces in resistance to Alexandru Radulescu’s fatuous innovations.

  But no other members of the cast made any complaint about the idea of the dumb-show. It was understandable that the youngsters like Benzo Ritter and Talya Northcott might eagerly lap up Alexandru’s suggestions, but the more mature cast members also seemed placidly content to do as they were told.

  Charles often marvelled at the ridiculous hoops actors will go through at the bidding of a forceful personality. Twelfth Night’s assistant director, whose ideas were actually rather good, could not command obedience; while Alexandru Radulescu, whose ideas were clearly crap, could lead the entire company by the nose. Sometimes Charles could empathise with Alfred Hitchcock’s well-known view that ‘actors are cattle’.

  The only objection that did arise was when Alexandru Radulescu announced that for the opening of the play the stage area would be converted into a huge double bed. And the objection came, not from a cast member, but from the Asphodel representative, who had appeared to see how rehearsals were going.

  ‘No,’ he said, quietly but firmly.

  The Romanian whirled furiously round at him. ‘What!’

  ‘No room in the budget for more scenery. You’ve got to work with the sets as built, and with the costumes as already made.’

  ‘But how am I expected to express my vision of the play if I am saddled with unimaginative sets and traditional costumes?’

  The Asphodel accountant shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s your problem. It was made perfectly clear in our agreement that you had to work with the existing sets and costumes. There isn’t the time, apart from there not being the money, for any changes to be made.’

  ‘But this means I will have to compromise my entire artistic p
erception of the play!’

  The accountant shrugged again. ‘Well, there you go,’ he said coolly.

  Charles Paris wished some of the cast had the nerve to take that approach to Alexandru. Because it clearly worked. Faced with a will as strong as his own, the director could only huff and puff petulantly.

  ‘I thought you employed me because I would bring something fresh, something radical to this production. People who employ me do so because they know they will get a play that has the Alexandru Radulescu stamp all over it!’

  ‘I’m not interfering with your stamp,’ the Asphodel man replied without changing his lazy intonation. ‘I’m just saying that that stamp will have to appear with the existing set and costumes. That’s all. I’m not going to interfere with what you do artistically.’

  ‘But for a director like me, the art comes in the total look of a production. It is not just the acting – it is the movement, the music, the setting, the clothes the actors wear!’

  This bluster produced no more than another shrug. ‘You knew the deal when you started, Alex. I’m here to control the budget, and I say you can’t change the sets or the costumes.’

  Though the director huffed and puffed a little more, it was only token resistance. He knew he couldn’t beat the money men. But his defeat seemed to make him determined to put his cast through more irrelevant hoops of artifice.

  ‘Right, the dumb-show,’ he announced again, once he’d given up grumbling as a bad job. ‘As I said yesterday, Twelfth Night is a play about sex, and I want the opening mime to reinforce this message. So it will take the form of a ritualised orgy.’

  Charles Paris shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘In this way we will show the different cross-currents of love and lust between the characters, as they come together in different combinations.’

  ‘How do you mean “come together”?’ He hadn’t wanted to ask the question, but couldn’t help himself.

  ‘I mean, obviously, Charles, come together as in acts of sexual congress.’

  ‘Simulated sex?’

  ‘Exactly.’ With the word, Alexandru Radulescu turned a withering look on Charles. What was more worrying was that most of the cast also directed withering looks at him. Good God, they actually seemed prepared to go along with this madman’s ideas.

  ‘And,’ the director continued, intrigued by a new thought, ‘if we can’t afford new costumes, then maybe we do without costumes . . . Yes!’

  Charles’s mouth dropped. ‘Are you suggesting we do all this simulated sex without any clothes on?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No.’ Once again the authoritative monosyllable came from the Asphodel representative.

  ‘You said you would not interfere with the artistic content of my production!’

  ‘This is not artistic, this is financial. A Twelfth Night that opens with a naked orgy will be death at the box office – particularly at Great Wensham. Sorry, you can’t do it.’

  This second rejection produced only minimal remonstrance from Alexandru. He knew when he was beaten. If things started to get really out of hand, Charles comforted himself, the Asphodel man would be the person to talk to.

  The Director, accepting his defeat, moved on. ‘So, we will think which characters have lusts towards which others, yes?’ He looked ingenuously at his cast. ‘Please, you tell me. I don’t want to impose my ideas on you. I want you all to contribute to this production. I am a director who believes very much in ensemble thinking.’

  That was patent nonsense; the man was clearly an unhinged autocrat. But once again none of the cast drew attention to his hypocrisy. They seemed happy, even flattered, to be part of this illusory consultation process. A lot of them sat forward eagerly as they tried to think of potential sexual connections within Twelfth Night. Benzo Bitter and Talya Northcott were particularly enthused. This was what they had gone into the theatre for – the creative white heat of workshopping in the rehearsal room.

  ‘Well, there are the obvious sexual attractions you’ve already mentioned, Alex,’ said Vasile Bogdan. His readiness to come forward suggested it was not the first time he had played this game. Vasile seemed very familiar with Alexandru’s methods. Charles would have to check out whether the two Romanians had worked together before. There was something going on between them.

  And he couldn’t forget the words that he had overheard. In spite of John B. Murgatroyd’s scorn for the idea, Charles still wondered whether Gavin Scholes’ accident had been engineered. He’d have to investigate further.

  ‘Sebastian and Olivia,’ Vasile went on. ‘Viola’s lust for Orsino. Orsino’s lust for Cesario. Toby’s for Maria. Malvolio’s kinky obsession with Olivia.’

  ‘And of course Orsino’s obsession for Olivia at the beginning of the play,’ Benzo Ritter contributed. ‘I mean, he’s totally gone on her, can’t think about anything else. Waking, sleeping, his thoughts, his dreams are full of nothing else – just Olivia.’

  ‘This is good.’ Alexandru Radulescu nodded enthusiastically. ‘And then, when he sees Viola/Cesario, it all vanishes. One obsession is instantly replaced by another. This is showing us, I think, the fickleness of obsessive love, infatuation, whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s saying all obsessive love is fickle. I mean, there are passions which endure and are rather magnificent in their –’

  But Alexandru seemed unwilling to listen to more of Benzo’s theories – presumably because they didn’t coincide exactly with his own. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ His eyes darted round the company. ‘What else have we got in the play? What other couples, what other sexual cross-currents, eh?’

  Vasile Bogdan picked up the cue again. ‘Well, we have Antonio’s gay thing for Sebastian.’

  Alexandru nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, let’s keep going on this gay thing. There are other characters in the play, I am certain, who are attracted to their own sex. Who do you think? Come on, it is obvious – no?’ Alexandru Radulescu looked round the faces, exasperated by their slowness in reaching the obvious.

  ‘Well,’ said Sally Luther. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that Olivia’s attraction to Cesario means that deep down she’s a lesbian?’

  ‘Why do you hope I am not suggesting this?’

  ‘Because it’s a ridiculous idea. It makes nonsense of the play’s resolution when Olivia marries Sebastian.’

  Good for you, Sally, thought Charles. Thank God somebody’s not going along with all this garbage.

  The director looked piqued. ‘No, it does not, Sally. It makes sense of this. Both Olivia and Sebastian are bisexual, you understand. The two heterosexual halves of them match together and make the play’s resolution, but the other halves of them are still ambiguous, unresolved. It is those sexual ambiguities which Shakespeare would have explored had he written a sequel to this play.’

  ‘What – a sort of Thirteenth Night?’ John B. Murgatroyd suggested.

  A couple of the cast snorted at this, but the expression on Alexandru Radulescu’s face showed that there weren’t going to be many giggles round the production now he was in charge. Benzo Ritter and Talya Northcott also turned reproving stares on John B. Murgatroyd; so far as they were concerned, he was being inappropriately trivial in the presence of genius.

  ‘Please, don’t let’s waste our time in silliness,’ the director said primly.

  You’re a fine one to talk, thought Charles.

  ‘So that is one gay element we have isolated, right. But there is another, very obvious one we haven’t mentioned yet.’ Again Alexandru looked round the semicircle of faces. ‘Come on, very obvious indeed.’

  It was Tottie Roundwood who spoke finally. As she did so, she looked at the director with a respect that verged on devotion. ‘Could you possibly mean . . . Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek . . .?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alexandru Radulescu. ‘Exactly.’

  I don’t believe this is happening, thought Charles Pari
s.

  Chapter Seven

  ALEXANDRU Radulescu’s mind made a butterfly’s look like a model of consistency. He behaved like a child playing in a toyshop of ideas; and perhaps, after the artistic restrictions he’d experienced in his native Romania, that was how he felt. He came into rehearsal every morning brimful of new thoughts, derived from anything he’d happened to have observed, or heard, or seen. He was into everything just deep enough to get the soles of his shoes wet.

  For instance, he saw a mime artist busking in Covent Garden and was so impressed that he brought the guy in to advise the cast on movement. Then in an Indian restaurant, by chance, he heard some Eastern muzak which he decided had an authentic ‘dying fall’. He immediately engaged a sitar player to do the Twelfth Night music. Worse than that, he got the musician to reset Feste’s songs in some approximation to raga style. Chad Pearson gamely tried to ride the unfamiliar rhythms. He succeeded pretty well, but at the expense of audibility. The atmospheric, melancholy words of the songs were lost.

  In a way it was all very exciting – so long as you didn’t care about Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Charles Paris did, and he found the rehearsal process agonising. Every few minutes, it seemed, some other felicity of the play was sacrificed or obscured for a theatrical effect.

  Even Charles had to admit, though, that most of the effects were very striking. Alexandru Radulescu had an inspired visual sense. He created patterns of movement which were mesmerising and dramatic.

  But it was all independent of the text. He would have made as interesting a spectacle of the Yellow Pages as he was making of Twelfth Night. And Charles Paris would have much preferred them to be doing the Yellow Pages than a text he had cherished since his schooldays.

  The production’s opening moments were typical of the Radulescu approach. The dumb-show had survived and refined into something far less crude than first envisaged. All of the play’s characters took up positions in the blackout; then, to intricate Indian rhythms, moved like blank-faced automata into a variety of physical combinations. Their bodies had become inhuman, like components of some intricate metal puzzle. The mime, though it still had copulatory overtones, had taken on a universal and emblematic quality. But the precision of their ensemble movement could not fail to arrest an audience’s attention.