Every Night's a Bullfight

by John Gardner

  While The ‘Sunday Times reviewer wrote, The two opening productions at Shireston leave us with no doubt that Shakespeare’s genius is truly concerned with the human condition in all ages. This Othello makes us aware of the thin line upon which each one of us treads, and the ghastly tragedy of mankind’s emotional instability; while the rat-race fanaticism of Shylock’s Venice, coupled with the absurd, almost corrupt, waywardness of the characters in The Merchant of Venice, gives us cause to reflect on how little the world changes, echoing with the Book of Ecclesiastes, ‘there is no new thing under the sun’.

  The bruising on Carol’s face still looked painful, even though she was smiling across Douglas’s desk. He had called her in on the Monday morning, after rehearsal, not allowing himself to defer a confrontation about the true cause of her injuries.

  ‘You look happy enough. How do you really feel?’

  ‘I’m fine, Douglas. Truly.’

  ‘No problems?’

  ‘We’ve all got problems.’

  He paused on the edge of the plunge. Then—

  ‘I think I should tell you that I know you didn’t get those bruises from an accidental fall.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I know who gave them to you, Carol. I don’t know all the details, and before you start telling me that it’s none of my business, I’d like to point out that it’s very much my business. If one leading actress in this company can get herself beaten up by a leading actor, then it can happen again. I can’t have that; I can’t take the risk.’

  She was glum again, looking at the floor. Eventually she asked, ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘Enough. I know that Joe Thomas got very high, and I know he sorted you out.’

  ‘It was my own fault.’ Her voice flat and steady.

  ‘You want to tell me?’

  ‘I’ve behaved...Oh hell, let’s say indiscriminately, since I’ve been here...’

  ‘My fault?’ He did not look at her, his attention focused on his hands clasped in front of him.

  ‘I don’t know. Who can say? A bit of reaction, maybe; trying to show you — you know what I mean?’

  Douglas turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘Christ, every single action we take goes full circle, doesn’t it? We never really know what we’re doing to other people. We can leave hurricane trails without ever being conscious of them.’

  ‘It was only once with Joe.’ She laughed. ‘A lengthy quickie some people would call it. Then I found him drunk out of his mind after the party. I helped him, Douglas, I helped him back to his place. Then he sobered up a bit and demanded. I suppose that’s the worst thing a woman can do, give and then refuse when the guy asks again.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the worst thing, but it’s obviously the most dangerous when the man happens to be Joe Thomas and he’s stoned. But I feel so badly about this.’ He was thinking, knowing that he held the other key to the situation and so had a very good idea why Joe Thomas was so drunk; and in part that also was his responsibility.

  ‘You have no need to feel badly, Doug. Joe’s still in one hell of a state about it; keeps calling me, asking me what he can do to make up.’

  ‘I’ll keep quiet and just watch from the wings.’

  ‘It would be best. How do you feel about Romeo?’ It was not simply an attempt to change the subject.

  ‘I think his Juliet’s superb.’

  ‘No, seriously, how do you think we’re coming?’

  During the past week they had all been so concerned with the first nights of Othello and The Merchant that the other two productions had become eclipsed. Carol’s question brought Douglas down to earth hard. They had just under a month to go before Richard and Romeo had to be in the Season; he was also conscious of the fact that soon after Romeo was in he would have to present his director’s report to the board of trustees. It was a moment when Douglas felt himself poised on the edge of a great chasm; then, suddenly, events took hold of him, forcing him to action.

  The telephone rang and Deborah was telling him that a David Seltzhiem was on the line. It was obvious to Douglas that Deborah did not have the faintest idea who Seltzhiem was, apart from someone undoubtedly in the theatrical stratosphere. Douglas knew well what the name meant: Seltzhiem was perhaps the biggest American theatrical impressario, in recent years even overshadowing the legendary David Merrick in his skill for picking winning London productions and shuttling them to New York, or vice versa. Without a second thought he told his secretary to put Seltzhiem through.

  ‘Douglas Silver?’ The voice gruff, gravel stained with the hint of one who expects obedience.

  ‘What can I do for you Mr. Seltzhiem?’

  ‘I want to know the availability of your Othello. The Joe Thomas Othello.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d seen it; when were you down?’

  ‘I slipped in on Wednesday last week. Quietly, I knew you’d be having a tough time so I came incognito as it were.’

  The thought of Seltzhiem going anywhere incognito baffled Douglas, the man was over six feet tall and very well built into the bargain: you could pick him out of a crowd at five hundred yards. It struck the director that his staff had slipped badly in not spotting the man, or reporting his presence.

  ‘You’ve got something with that Othello,’ continued the impressario.

  ‘Well, thank you, but I can’t help much about its availability,’ Douglas tried to sound diffident. ‘You see we have our actors only under seasonal contract. What were you thinking about?’

  ‘I can give it two weeks in Boston and a minimum of six in New York. With Thomas it could run for ever, but we can’t expect that.’

  ‘I’d have to take it up with the board of trustees, after that it would be a case of negotiation with the individuals. I should imagine Joe Thomas would be tough.’

  ‘He can have a percentage of the take. So can you. It should be a sizeable sellout.’

  ‘Can I talk to the chairman of our board and then come back to you?’

  ‘Sure. Make it quick though.’

  ‘I can’t promise anything very fast.’

  Another problem, but the kind which Douglas enjoyed; the thought of taking a Shireston production to the States was a matter of prestige; for him, money was not at stake here, though it would be with Joe Thomas.

  He talked on the telephone with Sir Basil that evening, and the chairman told him this was a matter for the director’s discretion alone. It would mean talking first with the leading members of the Othello cast, and then with the company as a whole.

  He called Seltzhiem on the following day, saying that he could not take the matter much further until his other two productions were in, but would try to get it on to some firm basis before May twenty-first: in this way he might just have another weapon when he made the director’s report.

  On the next Friday, the Shireston Gazette came out with an even more cutting, vituperative and biased review of The Merchant of Venice, together with a selection of reader’s letters wholly in agreement with the Othello review. All the letters were from members of the Shireston Festival Society, undoubtedly doing their best to prove themselves the most active bigots in the business.

  Adrian Rolfe once more had to quieten Douglas.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told his director. ‘I’ll sort them out once and for all. Moir will have no review tickets for the first nights of Richard and Romeo; and I’ll see that he is refused admission to the theatre, he’s bound to get tickets from somewhere.’

  ‘Can we do that?’

  ‘Douglas, look on the back of your own theatre tickets, man. The management reserves the right of admission. From now on we reserve the right of admission to Mr. Hedley Moir.’

  ‘And we test it on the first night of Richard?’

  ‘On the first night of Richard.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Conrad, like many actors, preferred to have at least one personal prop about him when rehearsing. He sat now on the wooden throne (downstage Oppos
ite Prompt) dressed in jeans and a roll-neck sweater, the jewelled cross he would wear as Richard III dangling from a heavy gold chain around his neck.

  ‘ Ay , what’s o’clock?’ Low key, the hand impatient with the religious bauble which he now swung like a pendulum.

  Edward Crispin as Buckingham glanced off stage.

  ‘I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind

  Of what you promis’ d me.’

  Conrad, his thoughts completely preoccupied by the cross.

  ‘Well, but what’s o’clock?’

  Edward, impatient to the point of irritation.

  ‘Upon the stroke of ten.’

  ‘Well, let it strike.’

  ‘Why let it strike?’

  Conrad gave a distracted look, like an animal, suddenly roused, peering about him—

  ‘Because that, like a jack. thou keep’ st the stroke

  Betwixt thy begging and my meditation’

  Holding the cross in front of his face, arm outstretched, like someone staving off a vampire. Then the arm down, a sly, effete smile before, softly—

  ‘I am not in the giving vein today.’

  They really did not need him, Douglas thought. Who was it? Max Reinhardt? ‘The director is, for the bulk of the time, only an audience: he is there to listen and watch, a sounding board for actors.’ Something like that. It was not altogether true nowadays, but certainly valid as far as this production went.

  Douglas sat back, listened and began to flick through his notes. Right at the beginning of the notebook, on the very first page, were the words WORKPOINTS FOR RICHARD III.

  From the stage, Conrad Catellier heaped villainy upon viler lainy.

  ‘The son of Clarence have I pent up close;

  His daughter meanly have I match’ d in marriage;

  The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom,

  And Anne my wife hath bid the world goodnight.

  Now, for I know the Breton Richmond aims

  At young Elizabeth, my brother’s daughter,

  And, by that knot, looks proudly at the crown,

  To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer’

  Such relish in the doing of it, in the creation. Douglas shook his head; he always felt a great wonder when he saw and heard actors of Conrad’s class doing incredible things with words.

  He glanced down at the page in front of him again, a jumble of typewritten notes—

  ‘When thou dids’t crown his warlike brows with paper.’

  Tillyard. ‘Richard III inevitably suffers as a detached unit. Indeed it is a confused affair without the memory of Clarence’s perjury to Warwick before Coventry, of Queen Margaret’s crowning York with a paper crown before stabbing him at Wakefield, and the triple murder of Prince Edward at Tewkesbury.’

  ‘Richard is dominant — from the first cynical and sinister soliloquy to his last exit crying for a horse.’

  Sir Winston Churchill. ‘Richard then rode with his power to Stony Stratford, arrested the commanders of the two thousand horse, forced his way to the young King, and told him that he had discovered a design on the part of Lord Rivers and others to seize the Government and oppress the old nobility. On hearing this declaration Edward V took the only positive action recorded of his reign. He wept. Well he might.’

  lames Agate. ‘Mr. Wolfit’s Richard — conceived in the back-of-the-pit, Saturday night vein demanded by this roaring melodrama.’

  ‘Wolfit does more than frighten the actors — he terrifies the play-goers’

  ‘The play stands or falls by Richard.’

  Douglas nodded; this production certainly stood by its Richard. When Conrad Catellier got hold of a leading role, the director might as well go and do something else; the whole thing had become totally Conrad from first to last.

  In some ways it was a relief for Douglas, giving him an extra fragment of time to manoeuvre his Romeo: and time was by this point at a high premium. He had soon found that it was not easy to fob off a man like Seltzhiem with a simple promise that he would get things together; Seltzheim was a great wheeler-dealer in his own right and refused to let matters stand, dragging Douglas to London for talks which ate up two precious days. They did come to a decision in principle, and having reached that point, the impresario was determined to settle everything, talk to agents, draw up contracts. He had already done a deal with Jennifer’s agent and was at present fighting things out with Tommy Carr. Joe Thomas was, himself, overjoyed at the thought of doing Othello in New York, but was proving himself a handful now that the production was an un-qualified success. Douglas was conscious that Tommy Carr was pressurizing the man most of the time, trying to arrange recording dates, even concerts, generally putting him under strain, and Joe, possibly in reaction, had become his old self: the bouncing, energetic, extrovert, chock full of ego. Douglas found this infuriating, causing him to think more aggressively about the black singer’s near seduction of Jennifer; twice he had been forced to hold himself very seriously in check during Romeo rehearsals (Thomas now seemed to find it difficult and irksome taking a back seat to play Capulet, Juliet’s father) when he had almost hit the man.

  Nobody else was causing any particular temperamental tantrums: Maurice Kapstein was too busy, his Shylock well in stride and doing weekly day stints in London recording a new series of The Game Game; both Art and Ronnie reported to Douglas that Morrie was spending any spare time he had with the little walk-on, Eve Lester.

  ‘Wedding bells, already,’ commented Douglas.

  ‘He wouldn’t hear them for a wilderness of monkeys,’ chuckled Art.

  Each night, and upon Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, the coaches, buses and cars arrived and the lawns became thronged with people; the restaurant bulged and a steady stream wandered through the exhibition. You could set your watch by the plays; the houselights dimming at the tick of seven-thirty (also two-thirty on matinee days). Dovetailed into this tight scheme, the company worked on at Richard III and Romeo and Juliet.

  The month sped past, and before anyone could realize the schedule became bowstring tight, the pre-production tension descending once more, and they were at the week-end immediately before the two first nights.

  Amazingly, Asher Grey showed no signs of the strain which he could not avoid, playing every night, either Cassio or Lorenzo, working exceptionally hard on Romeo and, Douglas noted, sitting in on every single Richard rehearsal, watching Conrad like a bird of prey as if almost catching every action and nuance, allowing them to seep into his memory bank.

  The stopping dress for Richard, on the Sunday, over-ran, not because of terrible complications, but caused by the fact that the company was determined to pull off another explosive success; the sense in everyone that each tiny fragment of the production had to be right. Douglas got back to the apartment, with Jen, in the early hours and cat-napped, leaving his wife in bed: Lady Anne was a comparatively small role, but Jennifer now tired quickly, feeling the first strains of the season, later her body and mind would adjust to the routine pattern and life would once more be easier.

  Douglas was up, showered and shaved, early, going over to the theatre to collect some of his notes inadvertently left in the auditorium.

  The stress of constant work, the fact of two productions already in the repertoire, and two near to their peak of preparation, combined with the constant flow of administration business, which ranged from trivia like signing check lists for people such as Wilfred Brownhill who, apparently, could not order a dozen electric light bulbs without Douglas’s signature on the invoice, to the giant problems of the deal with Seltzhiem: all these things gave the director a warped picture, a sense that he alone carried the full weight (which, in the final score, he did) and that it was he alone who did any work. It came as something of a surprise when he entered the auditorium at around seven-thirty in the morning, to find Asher Grey with Laurence Pern, hard at it, Ronnie Gregor leaping around them, the distinctive clash of rapiers and daggers, blades meeting and circling (like a fly was
hing its legs, Douglas thought) working on the Tybalt-Romeo duel. Ronnie was directing all the fights.

  At ten o’clock they started the Richard dress, smooth as honey, an illustration of how a company should operate at full stretch with the stage staff, the individuals blending to the action, Conrad never better, pushing out the charm disguising the villainy then giving it full power, a creation of immense talent supported splendidly by the company.

  They came down at twelve-forty-five and Douglas completed his notes by one o’clock, following Conrad to his dressing room and sitting with the actor while he removed his make-up.

  ‘I’ve no need to tell you how much I thank heaven you invited me to play Richard.’ The actor concentrating on his mirror, removing the dark wig and setting it neatly on its stand.

  ‘You’re giving exactly what I envisaged, and more. I feel I’ve contributed little.’

  Conrad laughed vigorously. ‘Contributed little? The fact you asked me, got me involved with these people,’ he turned, the line of make-up showing where he had removed the wig. ‘In some ways you’ve made a new man of me. Douglas, I know I’m a difficult devil, introspective, with my own problems — close mew’d up, as Richard himself would say. This is just what I needed at this particular point in my career. I want you to know that.’

  Though he recognized that Richard III was not really his production, but a corporate effort, dominated by Conrad Catellier, Douglas felt more tranquil than he had at either of the Season’s earlier first nights. Back stage there was more than a feeling of confidence: it radiated, a tangible thing, the first night excitement doused by something more solid, a positive trust between the separate members of the company.

  Conrad seemed a little distracted when the director saw him in his dressing room before the performance; not nervous, but a small tension which had not been there before. Douglas did not dwell on it, you could not be certain about actors’ behaviour before first performances. He wished Catellier good luck and reached the foyer, in company with Art Drays, just in time to witness the extrusion of Hedley Moir.

  As they pushed through the bubble and tightly packed foyer heading for the most convenient stalls’ entrance, Art suddenly caught hold of Douglas’s sleeve. The director looked towards his productions’ manager who inclined his head forwards. Directly in front of them, Hedley Moir was making for the same entrance, and, out of the corner of his eye, Douglas could see Adrian Rolfe trying to head him off, at the same time making signs to the usher who stood at the entrance.