Audition for Murder

by P. M. Carlson

  “Okay, let’s do that again,” said Brian. “David, clarity. This is Shakespeare. Okay, from the top.”

  Lisette, in jeans and sweater, hair braided into a no-nonsense plait down her back, joined David and one of the bit players in the imagined wings. Judy read out the cue: “Foul deeds will rise,/Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes. Lights.”

  The bit player, struggling with imagined bundles, crossed the stage, David and Lisette following to center stage. “My necessaries are embarked. Farewell,” read David, book in hand, and turned to Lisette. They looked like brother and sister, thought Ellen, his gentle good looks a lithe brown masculine version of her feminine perfection. He began to warn her not to take Hamlet’s advances too seriously. David was working hard on pronunciation, and Ellen thought he sounded better than he had the first time through. What interested her, though, was Lisette; with only two lines, Lisette had to establish the character through her reactions to Laertes’ long speech, and Ellen was fascinated to see an intelligent, ambitious young woman with a questing mind emerge from the unpromising interaction. At last Chester Morgan, a proud, pleasant father, came on and gave Laertes his too-lengthy parting advice, then suggested that Ophelia should test Hamlet by refusing further communication. Ellen was again impressed by the fresh, lively intellect of this Ophelia; her agreement was not submission, it was informed consent. The scene ended and Brian said, “Great! We’re getting there. Chester, hit the part about honor a bit more. The fatherly love is fine. Good-looking family, don’t you think, people?”

  “Right,” said Rob fervently, and others agreed.

  “One thing, Chester. Remember that Ophelia’s political value is in her reputation. You’re really telling her the same thing you told Laertes. Telling her how to gain power and respect in the world.”

  “Okay,” said Chester. “Am I concerned with her happiness?”

  “Well, yes…” Brian frowned.

  “Happiness would automatically come from honor, wouldn’t it?” said Lisette. “Happiness and reputation wouldn’t really be separate questions for him.”

  “That’s right,” said Brian. “Ophelia, you’re projecting that. You like Hamlet’s company and you encouraged him, believing in his honorable intentions. Now Laertes and your father give you second thoughts. You’re going to run a little test now, to see if he really is as honorable as you thought.”

  “Yes,” said Lisette. “On some level she probably wants very much to pop into bed with Hamlet, but at this point she simply wouldn’t consider it.”

  “God, I would,” muttered one of the staging crew girls at Ellen’s feet. Ellen kicked her. The girl, turning to protest, saw how near Rob was behind her and turned away again, ears reddening.

  “Any more questions on that scene?” asked Brian. “By the way, David, it’s sounding much better, but we can’t do much more until the language is automatic.”

  “I know. I’ll work on it.”

  “Fine. On to the nunnery, people.”

  Rob and Nick joined Chester Morgan and Lisette in the taped stage area. Ellen stood up to stretch and look around. Maggie was leaning against the wall near the door now, and flapped an angular hand in greeting across the crowded room.

  “Ellen,” said Nick, puzzled, “I’m lost. Which line is the curtain we hide behind?”

  Ellen stepped over the seated stagehands into the stage area. “Okay. In this scene you’ll be behind the right curtain, just in front of the platform edge. This blue tape marks the edge.” She indicated one of the lines in the maze of tape on the floor.

  “Okey-doke,” said Chester. He and Nick took their positions.

  “Start with Ophelia’s entrance,” said Brian.

  Ellen sat down again. Lisette waited upstage, behind the imagined back platform. Rob ran a hand through his blond hair and moved to a position downstage left. He looked tired today, thought Ellen. Maggie had said he had gone to New York Saturday night, after the French dinner. Actors’ lives were hectic. She was well rid of Jim. She really was.

  “To be or not to be, blah blah blah,” said Rob. “With this regard their currents turn awry,/And lose the name of action.” And, as Lisette came around the pretended barrier, “Soft you now! The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons /Be all my sins remembered.”

  “Good my lord/How does your honor for this many a day?” She was cautious, testing. And Rob, love and doubt warring in his transparent face, took a hopeful step toward her.

  “I humbly thank you; well, well, well.”

  Ophelia took courage; he was not the wild creature who had visited her in her sewing room. She said, “My lord, I have remembrances of yours /That I have longed long to redeliver./I pray you, now receive them.”

  “No, not I!” Hurt, unhappy, Hamlet turned his back to her. “I never gave you aught.”

  “My honored lord, you know right well you did,” said Ophelia, delighted with the effect her little test was having. This must be love after all. “Take these again; for to the noble mind /Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.” She thrust the rich gifts, played by Brian’s car keys, at Hamlet’s hand. Looking back at her sorrowfully over his shoulder, he saw Chester move behind the imagined curtain.

  “Ha, ha!” he exclaimed, enlightened, letting the keys fall to the ground as he stepped toward the curtain, then, checking himself, back to Ophelia. “Are you honest?” he demanded.

  And suddenly, the dynamic had changed. With Hamlet’s discovery of the hidden listeners, Rob was now playing his speeches on two levels—the lover attempting to probe his beloved’s true feelings, interpreting her words in the light of the eavesdroppers, and now also trying to fake madness for the hidden listeners. “I loved you not,” he concluded.

  “I was the more deceived.” Dignified sorrow; she looked so beautiful. Hamlet responded, a quickly checked movement toward her, followed by frustration—if she loved him, why did she consent to this charade?

  He shouted, “Get thee to a nunnery!” But his vehemence frightened her, and seeing it, he brought himself under control and continued gently, “I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.” It was a confession, skating near the edge of sane speech despite the listeners. Young, yearning, Hamlet was trying to communicate with the woman he loved, trying to reach her despite his knowledge that she was involved in this trick, trying to use words she would understand and the listeners would not. But she was upset; fright was stronger than love. She stepped back instinctively toward the two hiding behind the curtain. Despairing again, almost tearful, Hamlet made a last desperate appeal, glancing at the curtain and back to her. “We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?”

  The question hung, electric, between them. Ophelia’s last chance.

  The coughs and shuffles in the room had stopped, and people waited, breathless, for her answer, as though they did not know it. Hamlet, immensely vulnerable, the yearning gaze more eloquent than the words he had had to edit so carefully, pulled her one way. The weight of her own upbringing and ambitions, and the knowledge of the two men hiding behind her, pulled her the other way. The slim body leaned fractionally toward Hamlet; then the eyes fell and the reluctant decision was taken. She faltered, unconvincingly, “At home, my lord,” and backed away from him.

  Defeated. He started away in despair, his free hand moving in reflex to his dagger. Already repentant, Ophelia clasped her hands. “O help him, you sweet heavens!”

  And Hamlet, doubly betrayed at this demonstration of her real feeling for him, whirled, cursing her, and threw her to her knees. “I say, we will have no more marriages! Those that are married already—all but one—shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go!” He ran off.

  “Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” Mourning, on her knees still, Ophelia spoke her speech despondently; the intelligent, loving Ophelia, caught by forces she could n
ot understand, knowing only that something of evil and great power had come between her and the love she knew Hamlet still felt.

  The King and Polonius came out. “Love? His affections do not that way tend,” said the King brusquely, and then explained his plan to send Hamlet to England. “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go,” concluded Nick; and the scene was over.

  There was spontaneous applause, and Ellen joined in. Laura, she saw, looked sullen, but Judy, tears sliding silently down her cheek, was applauding too. Ellen felt very sad for them. Lisette had won. There was no longer any doubt that Brian had judged correctly. Lisette was unquestionably the Ophelia for this production—the right sister for this Laertes, the right beloved for this Hamlet, the right young woman for this Court of Denmark. Even Cheyenne was gazing at her with an odd half-smile of cynical admiration.

  “Fine. Really fine,” enthused Brian. “A lot of rough spots, but the general direction is excellent.”

  “I have a problem,” said Lisette, still kneeling in her place on the floor.

  “Okay.”

  “Well, Rob is too sweet.” She smiled at him across the stage. “I just think Ophelia would find him irresistible. She’d be ready to betray her father.”

  “I thought you would for a minute there too,” said Brian. “But that’s good. It’s exciting.”

  “But I need a reason to change my mind.”

  Rob said, “Zetty, he’s right. I thought you were going to holler ‘Look out, Dad’s behind the curtain!’ and we’d live happily ever after.” Brian chuckled, and Rob continued, “There was another place I didn’t quite believe you, in your last speech. That stuff about my noble and most sovereign reason being jangled. Do you really think I’m mad?”

  “No,” said Lisette, reflecting. “I know you. I think I’m bright enough to realize that you’re onto the eavesdroppers.”

  Brian said, “It would solve the immediate problem if you believed he was mad.”

  Lisette frowned. “But I don’t think she would. Not completely. Hamlet’s behavior upsets her, yes, but I think she senses that bigger things are going on. Outside the rules she knows.”

  “Right,” said Brian. “I don’t want to change your reading of ‘Where ‘s your father?’ ‘At home, my lord.’ But if you could be uncertain, have a doubt cross your mind, it might help. Or what if we have Hamlet get impatient and get angry a little earlier?”

  “But I’m not angry earlier, I’m devastated,” objected Rob.

  Lisette smiled. “I’ll try the passing doubt. You can stay devastated.”

  “Many thanks,” said Rob. “Something else. I also didn’t believe Nick when he came out and told Polonius that Hamlet wasn’t in love with Ophelia.”

  “Good,” said Nick.

  “Good?” asked Brian. “I mean, Rob’s right. I believed that you wanted to send him to England, but not that Hamlet had tricked you into thinking he didn’t love Ophelia.”

  “Well, we haven’t talked about this yet. But I think Claudius is perfectly aware of what went on. Any ninny could see that Hamlet loves her. Claudius also sees that Hamlet is only pretending to be mad, and that it’s dangerous to his own skin.”

  “I see.”

  “So Claudius rejects Polonius’s theory that the madness could be cured by marriage to Ophelia, because he needs an excuse to send Hamlet away.”

  “God,” said Rob, “the O’Connors play such intelligent characters. This will be the highest-IQ Hamlet ever done.”

  “It’s in the lines,” said Nick.

  “Yeah, but so are a lot of stupid Claudiuses. My poor little Hamlet won’t have a chance.”

  “You were expecting to win this time?”

  Brian laughed. “Okay. Any other problems?”

  There was a brief silence, then Ellen said, “Excuse me for bringing up these mundane nonintellectual matters, but Hamlet and Ophelia dropped Hamlet’s gifts downstage left, and nobody ever picked them up.”

  “Oh, hell.” Brian glared at the offending car keys.

  “I could pick them up on my way out,” offered Chester. “Polonius would be interested in the gifts.”

  “Yes,” said Brian, “but somehow I feel that Ophelia, as we’re playing her here, ought to take them back. A concrete reminder that she was not imagining things.”

  “That’s right,” said Lisette. “She would do that.”

  Nick said, “How about the line in your last speech, about the ‘honey of his music vows’?”

  “Yes. If I were closer, I could pick them up then.”

  Brian frowned. “You’re stage left then, but too far back.”

  “Why don’t I just throw her further downstage?” suggested Rob. “While I’m cursing her.”

  “Hamlet, sadist of Denmark,” said Lisette, smiling at him angelically. He gave her a sour look.

  “Let’s try that,” said Brian. “We don’t have time to run it again now, but next time we’ll see if it works. It might even improve the picture at the end, with Ophelia on her knees mourning downstage left, and the two politicians plotting upstage right.” He looked at his actors with satisfaction. “It’s really coming along well, people. Keep it up.”

  Cheyenne had pulled a rehearsal table to the middle of the room and put the model of the set on it. Brian said, “Gather round, now. Here’s how it works.”

  Cheyenne’s design consisted of a permanent platform running across the back of the stage and some movable wagon platforms that could be pushed in at an angle from the sides. All three platforms were to be fitted with sets of rods so that curtains could be run either behind the platforms, allowing use of the platform level, or in front of the platforms, reducing the size of the playing area. The result was a wide visual variety. The most restricted scene, in the Queen’s chamber, had both side wagons pushed in and the front curtains closed on all units, making a cozy tapestried room; the most open scene, a field, had only the bare arches of the back unit silhouetted against the great expanse of the sky cyclorama. The other scenes, including the ones they had just rehearsed, were made up of different arrangements of the platforms and curtains.

  The only other unit was an immense castle wall on a wagon that rolled out across the front of the stage for the rampart scenes at the beginning. “How are we going to move that monster?” asked Ellen.

  “Three or four guys can do it,” said Cheyenne curtly. He seemed even less sociable than usual tonight.

  “God, do I have to act up on that thing?” asked Jason, dismayed. “I’ll freeze in terror and forget my lines.”

  “Ellen, here’s your chance!” said Maggie. “Put on the flying harness and prompt him from up there.” Ellen made a face at her.

  “Anyway, you’ve got it easy,” Rob informed Jason. “You just stalk around majestically. Jim and I have to come running and jumping after you up there.”

  “You won’t be wearing armor,” muttered Jason darkly. “Hey, Maggie!” He caught her hand. “You like heights. Want to be my stuntman? All you have to do is walk around in armor on rolling planks thousands of feet above terra firma.”

  “Jase, you have the soul of an insurance agent,” said Maggie fondly.

  He grinned at her. “Yeah. Well, wait and see the headlines. ‘Unfortunate Grad Tumbles to Death! Another First for Hargate! Ghost Played by Actual Ghost!’”

  Brian, grinning too, said, “Shut up, Jase, or we’ll fly you in like the Blithe Spirit ghosts. Ellen, could you and Paul run through the scenes so we’ll have an idea of how it’s going to look?”

  They began, pushing the wagons in and out, and adding and subtracting the curtains and steps needed for each scene. Paul explained, “The curtains are plain in the model, just showing the basic color. The real ones will be painted to look like tapestries.”

  “Great!” said Rob approvingly.

  Paul grinned. “That’s easy for you to say. You won’t have to paint them.”

  It was fascinating to see, in miniature, the changes in the space. Even Brian, who ha
d spent hours with Cheyenne working out details, stared intently as the little scenes changed. Finally Ellen and Paul pushed the wagons into place for the final scene in the great hall, back curtains closed and front ones opened so that the platforms could be used as acting areas.

  Nick said, “Question on this scene. The costume sketches show reds for Claudius and his men, blue for Fortinbras. But the curtains here are still red. Is there any way we could change that, or at least tone it down by the time Fortinbras comes?”

  “Mmm,” said Brian. “I see what you mean. The new order shouldn’t look just like the old. The red curtains make a stronger statement than I envisioned. Could we dim the lights on them?”

  “You’ve got the King and Queen both dying up on that level,” said Maggie. “It’ll be hard to light them adequately without some spill on the curtains. See, we have to throw from a front angle, or we get shadows from the arches.”

  “Yeah, we do need light for those death scenes.”

  “I could fade it down after they die. But, I don’t know, I like the idea of light on Claudius all the way to the end.”

  “Nick won’t object to that,” said Rob.

  Brian was using a pencil to estimate the direction of a beam of light from various positions. “How about from here?” he asked. “High on the side, in front?”

  “That pipe is pretty crowded already,” said Maggie. “Cheyenne, could we go any higher there?”

  Cheyenne shook his head. “Fire detectors.”