“What humbugs you all are.”
“Who?” she demanded indignantly.
“All you Anglo-Saxons. You humbug even yourselves. Conceive for the moment the mise-en-scène, the situation, the coincidence, and have you the cheek to tell me again that you came thirteen thousand miles to be an actress and yet do not wish to play this part? Are you a good actress?”
“Don’t,” Martyn said, “don’t. I’ve got a job and I’m in a sort of a trance. It makes everything very simple and I don’t want to come out of it.”
Jacko grinned fiendishly. “Just a little touch of laryngitis?” he suggested.
Martyn got up. “Thank you very much for my nice dinner,” she said. “I ought to be getting on with my job.”
“Little hypocrite. Or perhaps after all you know already you are a very bad actress.”
Without answering she walked out ahead of him, and they returned in silence to the Vulcan.
Timed to begin at seven, the dress rehearsal actually started at ten past eight. They were waiting, it appeared, for the author. Miss Hamilton had no changes in the first act, and told Martyn she might watch from the front. She went out and sat at the back of the stalls near the other dressers. There was a sprinkling of onlookers, two of whom were understudies, in the auditorium. About half-way down the centre-aisle Adam Poole, made up and wearing a dressing-gown, sat between Jacko and a young man whom Martyn supposed to be a secretary. Jacko had told her that Poole’s first entrance came at the end of the act. The atmosphere that hangs over all dress rehearsals seeped out into the auditorium. The delay seemed interminable. Poole turned from time to time and peered up towards the circle. At last a door slammed upstairs, somebody floundered noisily down the circle steps, a seat banged and a voice — Dr. John James Rutherford’s — shouted:
“Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars—
Repeat,”
Dr. Rutherford bawled, leaning over the balustrade, “repeat: bad revolting stars. I’m here, my hearties. Take it away and burn it.”
Martyn saw Poole grin. “You behave yourself, up there,” he said. “Have you got your paper and pencil?”
“I am provided in that kind.”
“Good.”
The lights went up along the fringe of the curtain, Martyn’s flesh began to creep. Poole called “All right,” and lit a cigarette. Throughout the auditorium other little flames sprang up, illuminating from below, like miniature footlights, the faces of the watchers in front. A remote voice said: “O.K. Take it away”; a band of gold appeared below the fringe of the curtain, widened and grew to a lighted stage. Parry Percival spoke the opening line of Dr. Rutherford’s new play.
Martyn liked the first act. It concerned itself with the group of figures Jacko had already described — the old man, his son, his son’s wife, their daughter and her fiancé. They were creatures of convention, the wife alone possessed of some inclination to reach out beyond her enclosed and aimless existence. In his production Adam Poole, with Jacko’s décor to help him, delicately underlined the playwright’s symbolic treatment of his theme. It was, as all first acts should be, anticipatory in character. The group awaited the arrival of the islander, the man from outside. Their behaviour suggested that of caged creatures who were completely resigned to their confinement, and in his arrival already saw a threat to their tranquillity. Again Helena Hamilton, as the wife, alone suggested, and she did so with great artistry, a kind of awareness of their sterility and decadence. Bennington, as her hard-drinking, brilliant and completely defeated husband, was giving an exciting performance, though at times Martyn wondered if he was not playing against his author’s intention. Was he not, with facile bits of business and clever, unexpected inflections, superimposing upon the part a false quality? Wouldn’t the audience, against the tenor of the play, find themselves liking this man, and become increasingly tolerant of the very traits with which the author sought to disgust them? As his father, J. G. Darcey seemed to Martyn to follow adequately the somewhat conventional die-hard the author had intended. As the completely colourless, almost puppet-like juvenile, Parry Percival with his magazine-cover looks was exactly right in what actors call a most ungrateful part. She could understand his dislike of it.
Gay Gainsford’s entry as the daughter was a delayed one, and try as she might not to anticipate it, Martyn felt a sinking in her midriff when at last towards the end of the act Miss Gainsford came on. It was quite a small part but one of immense importance. Of the entire group, the girl represented the third generation, the most completely lost, and in the writing of her part Rutherford displayed the influence of Existentialism. It was clear that with few lines to carry her she must make her mark, and clever production was written over everything she did. Agitated as she was by Jacko’s direct attack, Martyn wondered if she only imagined that there was nothing more than production there, and if Miss Gainsford was really as ill at ease as she herself supposed. A specific gesture had been introduced and was evidently important, a sudden thrust of her fingers through her short hair, and she twice used a phrase—“That was not what I meant” — where in the context it was evidently intended to plant a barb of attention in the minds of the audience. When this moment came, Martyn sensed uneasiness among the actors. She glanced at Poole and saw him make the specific gesture he had given Miss Gainsford, a quick thrust of his fingers through his hair.
At this juncture the voice in the circle ejaculated: “Boo!”
“Quiet!” said Poole.
Miss Gainsford hesitated, looked wretchedly into the auditorium, and lost her words. She was twice prompted before she went on again. Bennington crossed the stage, put his arm about her shoulders and glared into the circle. The prompter once more threw out a line, Miss Gainsford repeated it and they were off again. Poole got up and went back-stage through the pass-door. The secretary leant forward and shakily lit one cigarette from the butt of another. For the life of her, Martyn couldn’t resist glancing at Jacko. He was slumped back in his stall with his arms folded — deliberately imperturbable, she felt — putting on an act. The light from the stage caught his emu-like head and, as if conscious of her attention, he rolled his eyes round at her. She hastily looked back at the stage.
With Gay Gainsford’s exit, Martyn could have sworn a wave of relaxation blessed the actors. The dialogue began to move forward compactly with a firm upward curve towards some well-designed climax. There was an increase in tempo corresponding with the rising suspense. Martyn’s blood tingled and her heart thumped. Through which door would the entrance be made? The players began a complex circling movement accompanied by a sharp crescendo in the dialogue. Up and up it soared. “Now,” she thought, “now!” The action of the play was held in suspense, poised and adjusted, and into the prepared silence, with judgement and precision, at the head of Jacko’s twisted flight of steps, came Adam Poole.
“Is that an entrance,” thought Martyn, pressing her hands together, “or is it an entrance?”
The curtain came down almost immediately. The secretary gathered his notes together and went backstage. Dr. Rutherford shouted: “Hold your horses,” thundered out of the circle, reappeared in the stalls, and plunged through the pass-door to back-stage where he could be heard cruelly apostrophizing the Almighty and the actors. Jacko stretched elaborately and slouched down the centre-aisle, saying into the air as he passed Martyn: “You had better get round for the change.”