Sweet Sorrow(41)
‘… both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our—’
They were sitting on bentwood chairs in a large circle, and all turned to face me now as I stood, arms out to my sides, clothes plastered to my body, dripping onto the terracotta tiles.
‘He made it!’ said Ivor. ‘Big round of applause!’ A few claps against the drumming of the rain. ‘No rush, Charlie. Let’s regroup and start again. Take a few minutes, everyone just stay in your seats.’ I kicked my way through a field of overturned umbrellas towards a spare seat between Lucy and the bespectacled boy called George, reached into the rucksack at my feet and tore the cover free from the wad of papier maché that had once been my script. Somewhere in the circle, someone laughed.
‘Here – take this,’ said Alina, and a fresh copy was passed around the circle. I glimpsed Fran, her wet hair slicked back brilliantly like the synth player in an eighties band. I’d have loved to take in the spectacle of this, but now Helen was touching Fran’s elbow and holding out her hand as if expecting payment. Fran leant back, squeezed her fingers into her pocket, passed her a coin …
‘Charlie, a word?’ Ivor and Alina were kneeling at my side, Ivor’s hand on my wet knee. ‘Listen, we’ve got a problem,’ said Ivor in a low voice.
‘Okay.’
‘The girl we cast as Benvolio? She’s dropped out.’
‘Okay.’
‘We wondered, Charlie,’ said Alina, ‘if you would step into the breach and cover for her.’
‘Okay?’
‘At the read-through at least,’ said Ivor, ‘then we’ll see.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re up for it?’
‘Yes. No. I mean, I can’t really …’
‘You know the play, yes?’
‘Yeah! Yeah, yeah, course, yeah!’
‘Don’t worry about showing off,’ said Alina. ‘We have zero expectations of you really.’
‘By which, we mean, Simon—’
‘Charlie.’
‘—Charlie, that we’re expecting a very great deal of you, but not today. No Oscar bids today, okay? Just … get through it.’
‘You still want me to read—?’
‘Sampson, yes; do a different voice or – my God!’
‘What?’
‘Charlie, stand up!’
‘Um – why?’
‘Look, everyone, look.’ Ivor took both my hands and pulled me to my feet, holding me at arm’s length as if we might start to waltz. ‘Look! You’re steaming!’
And sure enough, a swampy mist was rising along the length of my arms, from all over me as the rain-drenched clothes warmed against my body, and while everyone laughed and cooed and clapped, I stood and steamed like a vampire in sunlight.
‘You know what this is, everyone?’ bellowed Ivor. ‘This is commitment.’
Performance Anxiety
‘I am Miles and I am playing Romeo!’
‘… and I’m Polly, and I’ll be the Nurse!’
‘I’m Bernard, I’ll be reading the Prologue and the Prince.’
‘Hello, I’m Ivor, I’m the director and I’ll be playing Lord Capulet.’
‘I’m Alina, I’m the co-director and choreographer and I will be Lady Capulet.’
‘Fran, Juliet.’
‘Alex, Mercutio.’
‘I’m Helen, designing and playing Gregory until we find an actor.’
‘Morning all! I’m Keith and I will be giving my Friar Laurence and various others.’
‘My name is Colin and I’ll be playing Peter and the Apothecary!’
‘I’m George, I’m playing Paris.’
‘Hello, I’m Charlie. I’ll be reading, um, Sampson and just for today Benvolio.’
‘I’m Lucy, I’ll be playing Tybalt.’
And now all eyes turned to two new arrivals, a dark, sleek, middle-aged couple, rather suave, like a husband-and-wife team of spies.
‘Hello, everyone! We’re John—’
‘—and Lesley.’
‘We’re friends of Keith,’ said John, ‘from the world-famous Lakeside Players!’
‘And we’ve been drafted in to take on the more mature roles of Lord and Lady Montague.’
‘I’m Lady Montague!’ said John, to great gales of laughter. ‘I’m kidding! Not really! Not really!’
‘Great! Terrific. Okay, let’s start again and remember – I can’t emphasise this enough – just reading, no acting allowed!’
‘Yeah, they always say that,’ said George. ‘Watch, everyone’s going to act their arses off.’
‘Bernard, when you’re ready?’ said Ivor. Bernard cleared his throat, settled his reading glasses on the very tip of his nose as if reading a shopping list, and we began.
‘Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona where we lay our scene …’
The Prologue, which had once seemed so slow and dense, was now hurtling past, my own lines ahead like a brick wall, and all the while my one thought was who the hell is Benvolio? Flicking quickly through the pages, I saw that his first speech began at exactly the point where I’d stopped reading. Benvolio was the reason I’d given up. His first exchange was with Sampson, played by me, and I wondered, should I put on a voice to distinguish between the two, an accent, show my range?