Sicken and So Die

by Simon Brett

  When the Duke, upstage of the identical pair who faced him, said in wonderment:

  ‘One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!

  A natural perspective, that is and is not’, few of the company would have disagreed with him. The director had created another moment of theatrical magic.

  Even Charles Paris, who thought this new twist only served to push Shakespeare’s play further out of true, could not help but be impressed.

  Given the opportunity, Russ Lavery demonstrated what an exceptional actor he was. After the popular success of Air-Sea Rescue, in which he played an amiable but two-dimensional character, there had been a tendency in the profession to dismiss him as ‘very limited – plays the one part fine, but that’s it.’ Russ Lavery’s work on Twelfth Night that day refuted any such criticism.

  As he had begun to in the experiments during rehearsal, he created two totally different characters for Sebastian and Viola. The physical likeness was obviously there; there were vocal similarities – though Viola’s voice was lighter and more feminine; but he differentiated the two so subtly that throughout the play there was never any question which of the twins had just come on stage.

  In most productions of Twelfth Night, much effort is expended to make two people of different sex – frequently also of different height, bulk and colouring – look alike. In Russ Lavery’s performance – or performances – the likeness could be taken for granted, and so he was able to emphasise the differences between the two characters.

  For anyone who knew anything about the theatre, the development was fascinating to watch. Russ Lavery’s performance as Viola had come on so much from the sketchy outline he had revealed in previous rehearsal exercises.

  It was almost as if he had prepared for this moment, as if he had known he would be playing the part.

  The inhospitable nature of the Chailey Ferrars Trustees for once proved a benefit. During the day of rehearsal they kept the estate firmly shut, so that the horde of tabloid journalists, drawn to Great Wensham by Sally Luther’s name and the whiff of potential scandal, was unable to get near the Twelfth Night company.

  In fact, the only way they could get into Chailey Ferrars was by buying tickets for the evening’s performance. This was good news for the box office, and also had the beneficial side-effect of introducing to Shakespeare people whose only previous contact with English literature had been ‘GOTCHA!’, ‘PULPIT POOFTAHS!’ and ‘QUEEN: IT’S BEEN A BUM YEAR!’

  Because of the intense rehearsal pressure, the grounds were not to be opened to the public until six-thirty, three-quarters of an hour before the performance. This caused a great deal of disgruntled harrumphing from hamper-laden regulars, who could not understand why something as minor as getting the performance right should be allowed to abbreviate the time they spent setting up their picnic tables.

  The change in the weather had been maintained. The weekend’s downpours had left the Chailey Ferrars lawns glowing with health; the surface moisture had dried off and the worst of the mud crusted hard. The audience seating was in place, chairs joined together in the requisite manner and passed as safe by the fire officer. The Saniserve lavatories were fixed and plumbed, ready for the worst the bladders and bowels of Great Wensham could throw at them. Volunteers were in position behind the bars of the refreshment tent, from which the spicy aroma of mulled wine fought for dominance with onion soup. Outside, under an awning, charcoal glowed beneath the grills which would soon be busy cooking hamburgers.

  In the Patrons’ and Sponsors’ marquees (behind which were special Patrons’ and Sponsors’ superloos that played music and sprayed perfume), uniformed waitresses waited to dispense food and alcohol – the Sponsors’ only tangible reward for putting money into the Arts. By the entrance gates, programme-sellers and usherettes, wearing sashes with the appalling ‘GWF’ logo on them, massed in readiness. Men in Mutual Reliable anoraks criss-crossed the auditorium, talking importantly into two-way radios.

  Six-thirty arrived. Incredibly, the Asphodel company had just completed a full run of Twelfth Night. The new moves and business in Act Five had worked without a hitch. Alexandru Radulescu gave very few notes, thanked the cast for all their hard work and instructed them to ‘fuck the bastards rigid!’

  The great and the good of Great Wensham, at that moment admitted through the gates of the car-park into the Chailey Ferrars grounds, were unaware of this exhortation – which was probably just as well, because they were a very strait-laced bunch.

  They hurried in, outpacing each other with their tables and hampers, desperate to secure the best pitches on the grassy slopes behind the seating. And they settled down to enjoy their picnics and . . . ‘Which one is it this year . . .? Oh yes, Twelfth Night.’

  The British notoriously love underdogs, they love stories of plucky little Britishers triumphing against overwhelming odds, so the first performance of the Asphodel Twelfth Night started on a wave of goodwill. The Great Wensham audience might not know a great deal about Shakespeare, but they were good on television drama and sitcoms, so the news of Sally Luther’s death had shocked them all. The fact that the person stepping into the breach – as they were informed by a printed slip handed out with their programmes – was none other than Russ Lavery, who played Dr Mick Hobson in Air-Sea Rescue, ensured the production a sympathetically partisan reception.

  But it wasn’t just a softened-up audience that made the show go so well that night. And it wasn’t just the communal spirit-of-the-blitz, let’s-do-a-good-one-for-poor-old-Sally spirit that lifted the company to new heights. Alexandru Radulescu’s production actually worked.

  All the apparent perversities of his interpretation were ironed out in actual performance. The seemingly unconnected sequence of theatrical moments developed their own rhythm and momentum, as if they were part of some meticulously prepared master-plan. It still wasn’t Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but it was a fascinating theatrical experience.

  What made it perfect for Great Wensham was that the production was experimental without being impenetrable. Somehow the outline of the story remained intact, so the audience’s attention was held throughout. The show manifested a kind of licensed enfant terriblisme, which would enable the great and good of Great Wensham to say at drinks parties, ‘Oh, I’m not against experimental theatre, you know. I mean, we saw that very radical reinterpretation of Twelfth Night at the festival, and we enjoyed that a lot, didn’t we, darling?’

  Even the company member most opposed to Alexandru Radulescu’s innovations, Charles Paris, was forced to concede that the evening worked as a piece of theatre. To his annoyance, he even found himself caught up in the impetus of the production. His performance as Sir Toby Belch shifted away from the traditional – in his view, ‘right’ – way of playing the part towards the style Alexandru Radulescu had been trying to impose on him. A more than friendly relationship with Sir Andrew Aguecheek emerged – though it stopped short of the mooted homosexual kiss. And under his doublet Charles Paris did wear his Guns ‘n’ Roses T-shirt.

  But the show’s real triumph belonged undoubtedly to Russ Lavery. The improvement shown in the day’s rehearsals was maintained through the evening. He must have been utterly exhausted, but an adrenaline high spurred him to ever greater achievement. The rest of the company were infinitely supportive to him and when, at the end of the performance, he came forward to take his solo bow, they joined in the audience’s ecstatic ovation.

  Russ Lavery, glowing with realised ambition, bowed and bowed again. He’d ‘gone back to his theatrical roots’ and grown from the experience. After his fourth solo bow, since the applause showed no signs of abating, he stretched out a hand into the wings and gestured the director to join him.

  The tiny figure of Alexandru Radulescu bounced on-stage and took Russ Lavery’s hand. They bowed together, incandescent in their mutual triumph.

  Then the actor stepped forward and, managing eventually to still the audience, announced, ‘Thank you very much, lad
ies and gentlemen. I’d just like to say, on behalf of the entire company and crew, that we dedicate tonight’s performance to the memory of a great actress and a very dear friend – Sally Luther. We love you, Sally – and we did it for you!’ As Russ stepped modestly back, the audience erupted into an even more vigorous ovation. For them the evening had had everything: a sensational news story, a star familiar from television, an ‘understudy triumphs’ backstage drama – all overlaid with the righteous, self-justifying glow of having ‘seen some Shakespeare.’

  All of the company were invited by Julian Roxborough-Smith to have a post-performance drink in the Patrons’ marquee. After the traumas and hard work of the previous thirty-six hours, they had earned it.

  Charles Paris, who hadn’t touched a drop since the wine he’d shared with Moira Handley in her Portakabin, eagerly seized a glass of red from the tray of a passing waitress.

  ‘It’s refreshing to see a production which conceptualises from an alternative learning base and challenges the diktats of traditional authoritors, isn’t it?’

  If he hadn’t recognised her face, Charles would have known instantly that the granny-spectacled woman speaking to him was Carole Whittaker of HAN.

  ‘Erm . . . well . . . yes,’ he hazarded.

  ‘Radulescu has an almost post-modernist attitude to the text qua text, synergising a kind of input to Shakespeare whose outreach goes beyond the microcosm of received and conformable educational data – don’t you agree?’

  ‘You’re not wrong.’

  ‘So his extrapolations from the atavistically protected corpus of words known conveniently as Twelfth Night come to represent a parallel but diverse textual statement.’

  Charles Paris thought he almost understood that bit. ‘You mean he’s created a Twelfth Night that is different from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night?’

  ‘At the most primitive level, yes. But at the same time a process of inter-textualising is at work, so that not only the verbalisation is transformed, but the received definition of the media-related categorisation in which the opus partakes is also challenged.’

  ‘Hm. Too right.’ Charles nodded. ‘Erm . . . Will you excuse me . . .?’

  Carole Whittaker seemed unworried by his abrupt departure and moved to share her thoughts with Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Charles would always treasure the image of growing puzzlement that spread across Chad Pearson’s genial features.

  Alexandru Radulescu was moving round the room, gathering plaudits and spreading congratulations. He came face to face with Charles, and grinned. ‘Coming better, yes . . .? I was right about how Sir Toby should be played – no?’

  ‘Well . . .’ To have agreed would have been total hypocrisy. In performance Charles might have come closer to Alexandru’s views, but he still didn’t believe the director was ‘right’. He salved his conscience by avoiding the direct question and making a general comment. ‘Thought the whole thing went wonderfully well – congratulations.’

  The conversation might have continued, had Alexandru Radulescu not been swept away by Julian Roxborough-Smith to meet Great Wensham’s mayor, ‘who is also a past president of the Great Wensham Rotary Club.’

  Charles found himself face to face with Moira Handley. She grinned, but he noticed the tight lines of tiredness around her eyes. ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘I gather it went very well.’

  He experienced the little pang all actors feel at such moments. ‘You mean you didn’t see it?’

  ‘Saw the first ten minutes and most of the last act. We have got other performances on, you know. I had to put in an appearance at a Bach piano recital and a one-man show about W. B. Yeats.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Then tomorrow it’s Palestrina in St Michael’s Church, a lecture on stained glass at the community centre, literary lunch at the Marlborough Hotel, bagpipes in the town square, Mozart in the Corn Exchange, the Amateur Operatics’ Brigadoon . . . A few other events I’ve forgotten, finishing with alternative stand-up in the big top.’

  ‘Busy schedule.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Well, if you have time in that busy schedule for a quick drink at some point?’

  Moira Handley shook her head ruefully. ‘Don’t see it, Charles.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I think we had a moment, you know, but I think it’s probably passed.’

  ‘Mm. Probably.’

  He might have been left standing there pathetic and awkward if Pauline Monkton hadn’t bustled up. She was bubbling with enthusiasm and self-confidence.

  ‘Well, talk about press coverage, eh?’

  Moira turned her quizzical gaze on the press officer, but said nothing.

  ‘Couldn’t have been better. All the nationals here. I think the secret with publicity . . .’ Pauline Monkton confided knowingly, ‘. . . is not to bother about the RSVPs. Oh yes, put them on the invitations, by all means, but if nobody replies, don’t worry about it. Doesn’t mean they’re not coming. Oh no, publicity is about targeting the right individuals. Get the right press list, distribute invitations to the right people, and they’ll come, no problem. Even spread it among their fellow journalists. Do you know,’ her voice dropped to an awed tone, ‘there are press here tonight who I didn’t even invite.’ She nodded complacently. ‘Shows they got the message this was a first night that just shouldn’t be missed.’

  Charles and Moira exchanged looks, and he could tell they shared the same thought. The press presence at Great Wensham that evening had nothing to do with Pauline Monkton’s strategy – with or without RSVPs. It was prompted entirely by the news of Sally Luther’s death. But neither of them would be so cruel as to tell the press officer that.

  Moira was summoned away to sort out some other cock-up over the volunteers, another task which Julian Roxborough-Smith had assured her he had ‘completely in hand’. Charles, left on his own, scooped up a second glass of wine from a waitress’s tray, and looked around the scene.

  It was really remarkable how little Sally Luther’s death had impacted on the Twelfth Night company. Sure, at that moment they were all caught up in the communal euphoria of having got the show on against the odds, but he’d have expected a little more introspection. Instead, it seemed as though Russ Lavery’s formal acknowledgement of the death had closed the subject. Sally Luther need never be thought about again.

  The only person who still seemed affected by her absence was Benzo Ritter. The boy’s face looked stressed, but even he was perking up. A few more drinks and he too would be able to forget his infatuation – at least for a little while.

  Charles Paris wondered whether Sally Luther’s murderer was in the marquee at that moment. If his theory was right, if her death had been one in a sequence of poisonings, then that was likely.

  The perpetrator must have been present at the Chailey Ferrars press conference after which Gavin Scholes had become ill, in the Indian restaurant which did for John B. Murgatroyd, and around the stage during the Twelfth Night tech the previous evening.

  The only people who qualified were Talya Northcott, Tottie Roundwood and Vasile Bogdan. Talya had not come to the Sponsors’ marquee for a drink; she had been taken away by Mummy to have her wounded pride soothed with assurances that she would have made a much better Viola than Russ Lavery.

  But Charles noticed his other two suspects were in the marquee talking together, and he edged through the crowd in their direction. Standing with his back to them, pretending interest in a poster-size festival programme, he listened to what they were saying.

  ‘A triumph,’ Tottie Roundwood enthused. ‘He’s got exactly what he wanted.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Vasile Bogdan agreed. ‘And I think we can confidently state that he wouldn’t have got it without our help, don’t you?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ONE NAME dominated the news pages of the next day’s tabloids: Sally Luther. The death of a pretty actress – prettier in the archive photographs they reprinted from her sitcom heyday – was a good po
pular story.

  Her career was recapitulated and analysed. The days when her face was a fixture on the nation’s television screens were recalled, together with tales of the fervour she inspired in her fans. At her peak she was the recipient of a massive postbag, including the usual creepy, obsessive letters that beautiful public faces inspire.

  She’d even had the ultimate showbiz accolade of a stalker, who followed her around for some months. Unusually, she had been pursued and spied on by a woman rather than a man. Though this made her feel less threatened, it was still unnerving. Eventually she had called in the police, and her action had the right effect; the pestering instantly ceased.

  As well as recalling her career, the papers were lavish with tributes to Sally Luther from other showbiz names. The television executives who’d turned their backs during the eclipse of her popularity all came forward to say what a fine actress and delightful person she had been, how much they’d loved working with her, and how disappointed they’d be not to work with her again.

  The circumstances of her death were described, but few details were known beyond the facts that she’d been taken ill on stage during rehearsal and had died in hospital. One of the papers tried kite-flying the expression ‘mystery illness’, but if they hoped that would give rise to speculation about AIDS, they had reckoned without the affection in which Sally Luther had been held. For the great British public – particularly after her death – she represented the squeaky-clean girl next door; they would never dream of associating her with something as squalid as AIDS.

  But if Sally Luther had colonised the front of the papers, the Arts pages were dominated by two names – Alexandru Radulescu and Russ Lavery.

  The Asphodel production of Twelfth Night got an astonishing amount of coverage. Neither Pauline Monkton’s cunning ‘targeting of the right individuals’, nor the additional interest given by Sally Luther’s death was sufficient to explain the number of national critics who had been at the first night.