Sicken and So Die (16 page)

By this time a new breed had appeared in the Arts world – the professional festival administrator – and it was to one of these that the Great Wensham Festival Society turned in their hour of need. Julian Roxborough-Smith was already running the Barmington Festival with apparent success; inviting him to take over Great Wensham was a logical step.

And so, with Moira Handley at his side to do all the actual work, Julian Roxborough-Smith started his familiar routine of juggling artistes between the two events. Since he also acted as agent for quite a few of the performers involved, he did rather well out of the arrangement.

The Great Wensham Festival continued to happen every summer. But the excitement, the energy, the danger had gone.

The
Twelfth Night
tech run at Chailey Ferrars had been scheduled to start at eleven on the Monday morning. The obvious objection that the effects of the lights could not be judged in daylight was supposed to have been countered by a light-plotting session – without the cast – on the Sunday evening.

Gradations of lighting for an open-air production are always pivotal. During the first half of
Twelfth Night
, scheduled to start in daylight, the levels would be slowly built up, so that when the interval came almost all the illumination was artificial. And by the start of the second half, night would have fallen. All these subtleties of shading were due to be plotted in the Sunday evening session.

The theory was that during the dress rehearsal, scheduled as per performance for seven-fifteen on the Monday, levels could be tweaked, spots repositioned and the lighting plot generally adjusted. Recognising that this might be inadequate provision, the cast, after consultation with their Equity representative, had been asked to hold themselves in readiness for a couple of hours of fine-tuning on the lights after the dress rehearsal ended, which should be around ten-thirty.

The Asphodel production of
Twelfth Night
did not actually run three and a quartet hours. The playing time was just over two and a half, but a forty-five minute interval was mandatory at Great Wensham, so that the locals could enjoy what they all referred to as ‘a Glyndbourne-style picnic'.

Alexandru Radulescu had stamped his little foot a lot when he heard this demand, insisting that ‘my productions are about ensemble work and my cast cannot be expected to keep their concentration with a three-quarters of an hour gap in the middle of the play.'

But to no avail. Going to see the Great Wensham Festival Shakespeare was a social rather than an artistic event for the local audience. In fact, most of them would have preferred to watch a brass band and fireworks, but if they couldn't have that, Shakespeare'd have to do. Whatever the entertainment offered, the demands of their picnics took unquestioned priority.

They made a big deal of the occasion. Some parties would arrive hours before the performance started, weighed down with folding tables, chairs, hampers, linen, cut glass and even, in a few cases, candelabras.

The timing of their actual eating varied from group to group. Some tucked into a three-course dinner immediately on arrival. Others took pre-prandial drinks and maybe their starters before the play began, then ate the bulk of their meal during the interval. Yet others munched and swilled throughout the entire performance.

The three-quarters of an hour interval was incorporated into the proposed schedule of technical and dress rehearsals for
Twelfth Night
‘to give us a bit of a time buffer.' However – and it seems there's always a ‘however' in the theatre where tech runs are concerned – everything got hopelessly behind.

The fault lay not with Asphodel. Their backstage team was compact and highly efficient. The production company knew the pressures of touring and accordingly hired the best staff available. They all arrived at the agreed time on the Sunday afternoon, ready to erect
Twelfth Night
's cunningly minimalist set on to the stage, and to adjust the lights in the towers and gantries which surrounded it.

But when they got to Chailey Ferrars, there was no stage on which to erect the set. The scaffolding towers and gantries were in place. So was the metal load-bearing shell which covered the natural grassy mound; but the acting area, the boarding which should have been fixed on to this structure, was absent.

The problem was one of demarcation. Though the scaffolding was supplied and erected by outside contractors, construction of the staging was the responsibility of the festival volunteers. In previous years this group had been organised and co-ordinated by Moira Handley, whose judicious mix of bullying and flattery had built up a dedicated band of recidivists. Every year when re-approached about helping with the festival, they all began by saying, ‘No way, never again.' Every year they relented, and by the final event had built up a tightly knit community with its own jargon and camaraderie. Many of them, in spite of the mandatory grumbles, took their annual holiday over the festival period and regarded its two weeks as the high-spot of their year.

However – another ‘however' – during the run-up to the current festival, Julian Roxborough-Smith had piled yet another duty he should have undertaken himself on to the long-suffering shoulders of Moira Handley. He asked her to organise the guest list for one of the final festival events, the all-important Sponsors Dinner and Chamber Concert, and Moira, in a rare moment of complaint, had objected that she really had far too much on her plate to take on anything else.

In a fit of pique at this unexpected resistance, Julian Roxborough-Smith had responded, ‘What've you got on your plate then?'

‘Organising the festival volunteers, for a start.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, Moira. You do make heavy weather of everything.' Which was possibly the most unjust criticism ever levelled.

‘Julian, you've no idea how much time it takes – how many phone calls, chatting them all up, keeping them sweet, working out their rotas. You should try it some time.'

Stung by her tone, the festival director had responded, ‘All right, I will. I will organise the volunteers this year. Then we'll see what you're making so much fuss about.'

And indeed they did see what she was making so much fuss about. Within a week Julian Roxborough-Smith had alienated the local roofing contractor who co-ordinated all the heavy-work volunteers. Then, by an injudicious display of temper, he'd reduced to tears the little old lady from the tobacconist who masterminded the box office. Incapable of admitting he was in the wrong, he reported to Moira that both of these essential supports to the festival had resigned in fits of temperament.

He'd then issued invitations to virtually everyone he met to take over various festival functions which already had incumbents jealous of their precious little areas of responsibility. So more noses were put out of joint.

Finally, as the festival approached, he produced a volunteers' rota so inflexible that it made Masonic ritual look impromptu. And, all the time, whenever Moira enquired about how the volunteer organisation was going, Julian Roxborough-Smith brushed her off with a dismissive, ‘Oh, for heaven's sake, woman, it's all in hand.'

As a result, it was only the weekend before the festival opened that Moira realised exactly how out of hand the whole organisation was. The lack of staging at Chailey Ferrars was symptomatic of total chaos at all the festival venues.

With superhuman energy – and at a time when all the other bubbling crises of the festival were reaching boiling point – Moira threw herself into rebuilding the volunteer network. Some would never be reclaimed. The roofing contractor and the little old lady from the tobacconist had been alienated for good. Other reliable standbys, when not asked to participate, had either used up all their outstanding leave entitlement or had actually gone away on holiday over the festival period.

But Moira's skills of persuasion were exceptional and by the Monday morning, the day before the opening of the whole event, she had in place a workable infrastructure of volunteers.

Typically, Julian Roxborough-Smith did not thank her. In fact, if the subject of the chaos came up, he implied that it had been an error in Moira's organisation rather than his own.

The result of all this for the Asphodel
Twelfth Night
was that by the time the stage was in place, it was late Monday afternoon. With no time available for preparatory work on the lighting plot, the tech run began at six forty-five.

And it had been raining in Great Wensham since the Saturday morning.

‘What's a drunken man like, fool?' Olivia demanded.

‘Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman,' the Clown replied. ‘One draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.'

‘Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o' my coz, for he's in the third degree of drink – he's drowned.'

Olivia's words could not have been more apt. The ‘coz' in question, Sir Toby Belch, was drowned indeed. He would have given anything to be ‘in the third degree of drink' too, but Charles Paris hadn't touched a drop all day.

The rain had by now soaked through the thick charcoal velvet on his shoulders and was trickling down his back, between his stomach and its padding, everywhere. His tights felt as though they had been recently painted on to his legs. Water still dripped incessantly off the brim of Sir Toby Belch's hat, from which the light-grey feather dangled like a dead fledgling.

The canvas awning under which he stood offered no protection; it was as porous as a sieve. The allocated wing space was very cramped and suddenly pitch-black after the brightness of the lights on-stage. The trees surrounding the stage area were thought more important by the Chailey Ferrars Trustees than the comfort of mere actors, whose entrances and exits had to be fitted around them. A kind of hessian tunnel led off from the stage towards the caravans which served as dressing rooms. Because of the trees and limited sight-lines, the tunnel was very narrow and actors had to press themselves against the walls to get off stage. Needless to say, the hessian was also wet.

On-stage it was even wetter. Olivia blinked to keep the water out of her eyes. It dribbled off the ends of her straggled hair, sending little rivulets into her ample
décolletage.
The bell-tipped horns of the sitar-playing Feste's head-dress drooped limply down around his ears.

Still, Charles had actually exited. Unless there was a sudden summons back, he would be free to go off and find some shelter. And a drink. He'd been very good all day, but now, hell, he needed one for medicinal purposes if nothing else.

‘Hold it there for a moment, can we?' Alexandru Radulescu immediately dashed his hopes. The Director's voice came out of the darkness, beyond the lights which illuminated the crosshatching of rain as it fell relentlessly on to the stage.

Charles peered out into the auditorium – though ‘field' might have been a better word to describe what he was looking at. Julian Roxborough-Smith's cock-up over the volunteers meant that the raked audience seating had not yet been delivered. The Director, assistant director and lighting designer huddled round a camping table in the middle of a space which would have served well as a location for a movie set in World War One trenches. A single sheet of polythene covered the three of them.

‘Can we just go back to before Toby's exit . . .'

Shit.

‘Positions for “Lechery! I defy lechery . . .”' Charles shambled soggily back on-stage. ‘And can you just hold that tableau while we adjust a couple of the parcans . . .?' Alexandru's voice continued.

Oh God. Moving the lights took forever. Someone would have to climb up one of the scaffolding towers and fiddle about with the angle of the beam until the lighting designer was satisfied. And unfortunately Asphodel's lighting designer was a perfectionist.

Charles, desperately willing the guy would settle for second – or even third – best, held his position. Damp was now creeping down his tights into his boots.

He sneaked a look at the watch he should by rights have taken off – and must remember to take off the following night. Alexandru Radulescu would probably applaud the anachronism, but Charles was determined not to give him the opportunity. He'd already secretly decided to ditch the Guns ‘n' Roses T-shirt for the first night. He knew he'd get stick from the director afterwards, but had promised himself he'd give at least one performance of Sir Toby Belch as Shakespeare had intended the part to be played.

The watch revealed it was nearly quarter past nine. God, and they'd only reached Act One, Scene Five. Charles wished he'd gone straight off and got lost after his exit. By now he could be sitting somewhere dry with a large Bell's in his hand. But he knew his professionalism wouldn't let him do that; he'd be letting down the rest of the company. He only had to wait a few minutes and then Sir Toby was off till Act Two, Scene Three.

The few minutes while the parcan was adjusted seemed more like hours, but eventually even the lighting designer was happy with the new setting. ‘OK.' Alexandru Radulescu's voice came through the rain. ‘Take it from after Sir Toby's exit.'

‘That mean I can go to the dressing room?' asked Charles.

‘Yeah, yeah, sure. We're moving on.'

The alacrity with which Sir Toby Belch moved to get offstage was ill-judged. Losing his footing on the wet boards, he skidded and fell hard on his bottom, prompting a trickle of uncharitable and disembodied laughter.

It was as he hurried off, pressed against the clammy walls of the hessian tunnel, that Charles remembered he hadn't got anything to drink in his dressing room. Oh shit, shit and again shit.

He had had one of his misplaced attacks of righteousness that morning. Deciding that the booze had been at least a contributory cause of his cool parting from Frances, he had made yet another vow to cut down. He shouldn't be drinking on a rehearsal day, anyway.