‘And now the bad news…’ For this line he dropped into a cod German accent which suited him even less. ‘We were up quite a lot of the night with Desmond Porton going through the script and there are quite a lot of changes that we’re going to have to make. Now you probably all realise that over the past few weeks the show has been getting longer and longer. Our actual playing time is now three hours and eight minutes. Add two intervals at fifteen minutes each and that’s well over three and a half.’
A derisive clap greeted this earnestly presented calculation. David Meldrum appeared not to hear it and went on. ‘So that means cuts, quite a lot of cuts. We can reduce the intervals to one, which would give us a bit of time, and the King’s Theatre management won’t mind that because it saves on bar staff. But we’ve still got half an hour to come out of the show. Now some of it we can lose by just shortening a few of the numbers, cutting a verse and chorus here and there. We can probably pick up ten minutes that way. But otherwise we’re going to have to lose whole numbers and take considerable cuts in some of the dialogue scenes.
‘Now I’m sorry. I know you’ve all put a lot of work into this show and I know whatever cuts we make are going to mean big disappointments for individuals among you. But Amulet Productions are footing most of the wage bill and so, as I say, we have to listen carefully to their views. And after all, we have a common aim. All of us here, and Amulet, we all just want the show to be a success, don’t we?’
The conclusion of the speech was delivered like Henry V’s ‘Cry God for Harry, England and St George!’ but was not greeted with the shouts of enthusiasm which follow Shakespeare’s line in every production. There was an apathetic silence punctuated by small coughs until one of the dancers drawled, ‘All right, tell us what’s left, dear.’
David Meldrum reached round for his script, opened it and was about to speak when Christopher Milton rose and said, ‘There was another point that Desmond made, and that was that a lot of the show lacked animation. Not enough action, not enough laughs. So as well as these cuts, there will be a certain amount of rewriting of the script, which Wally Wilson will be doing. It’s all too sedate at the moment, like some bloody eighteenth-century play.’
‘But it is a bloody eighteenth-century play.’ Charles kept the thought to himself and nobody else murmured. They were all resigned — indeed, when they thought about it, amazed that the major reshaping of the show hadn’t come earlier. They sat in silence and waited to hear the worst.
David Meldrum went through the cuts slowly and deliberately. They were predictable. Oliver Goldsmith, whose revolutions in his grave must by this time have been violent enough to put him into orbit, was left with almost nothing of his original play. The trouble with most musicals based on other works is that the songs are not used to advance the action. A musical number is merely a break in the continuity and, when it’s over, you’re four minutes further into the show and only two lines further into the plot. Carl Anthony and Micky Gorton’s songs, written with an eye to the Top Ten and continuing profitable appearances on LPs, were particularly susceptible to this criticism. But because the songs were the set-pieces and the items on which most rehearsal time and money had been spent, they had to survive at the expense of the text. Charles, who remembered Goldsmith’s play well from his own Cardiff production, saw the plot vanishing twist by twist, as one of the most beautiful and simple comic mechanisms in English literature was dismantled and reassembled without many of its working parts.
But the cuts were selective. It was clear that Christopher Milton had been up through the night with David Meldrum and Desmond Porton, watching each projected excision with a careful eye. Tony Lumpkin’s part came through the massacre almost unscathed. One rather dull number was cut completely and a verse and chorus came out of another. And that was it. While all the other characters had their parts decimated.
The one who suffered most was the one who Goldsmith, in his innocence, had intended to be the hero, Young Marlow. Cut after cut shredded Mark Spelthorne’s part, until he had about half the lines he had started the day with.
For some time he took it pretty well, but when the proposal to cut his second act love duet with Lizzie Dark was put forward, his reserve broke. ‘But that’s nonsense,’ he croaked. (He was suffering from The Cold and was determined that no one should miss the fact.)
‘Sorry?’ asked David Meldrum mildly, but the word was swamped by a sharp ‘What?’ from Christopher Milton.
‘Well, putting on one side for a moment the fact that the play no longer has a plot, if you cut the love duet, there is absolutely no romantic content from beginning to end.’
‘Yes, there is. There’s my song to Betty Bouncer.’
‘But that song has nothing to do with the plot. Betty Bouncer doesn’t even appear in the original play.’
‘Sod the original play! We aren’t doing the original play.’
‘You can say that again. We’re doing a shapeless hotch-potch whose only raison d’etre is as a massive trip for your over-inflated ego.’
‘Oh, I see. You think I’m doing all this work just to give myself cheap thrills.’
‘I can’t see any other reason for you to bugger up a plot that’s survived intact for two hundred years. Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter to you what the show is. We might as well be performing a musical of the telephone directory for all you care. Just so long as you’ve got all the lines and all the jokes and all the songs. Good God, you just don’t know what theatre’s about.’
‘I don’t?’ Christopher Milton’s voice was ominously quiet. ‘Then please tell me, since I am so ill-informed on the matter, what the theatre is about.’
‘It’s about team-work, ensemble acting, people working together to produce a good show — ’
‘Bullshit! It’s about getting audiences and keeping in work. You go off and do your shows, your “ensemble theatre” and you’ll get nobody coming to see them. People want to see stars, not bloody ensembles. I’m the reason that they’ll come and see this show and don’t you kid yourself otherwise. Let me tell you, none of you would be in line for a long run in the West End if this show hadn’t got my name above the title. So don’t you start whining about your precious lines, Mark Spelthorne. Just think yourself lucky you’ve got a job. You’re not going to find them so easy to come by now they’ve dropped that bloody awful Fighter Pilots.’
That got Mark on the raw. ‘How the hell did you know that?’
‘I have contacts, sonny. As a matter of fact, the Head of London Weekend Television was down this week trying to get me to do a series for them. He told me.’
‘It’s not definite yet,’ said Mark defensively. ‘They’re still considering it. The producer told me.’
‘It’s definite. The producer just hasn’t got the guts to tell you the truth. No, your brief taste of telly stardom is over and let me tell you, no one’s too anxious to pick up the failed star of a failed series that didn’t make the ratings. So if I were you, I’d keep very quiet in this show, take what you’re given and start writing round the reps.’
The public savagery of the attack gave Mark no alternative but to leave the theatre, which he did. What made the denunciation so cruel was that it was true. Mark Spelthorne had risen to public notice in advance of his talents on the strength of one series and without it he wasn’t much of a prospect.
As usual the star continued addressing his audience as if nothing had happened. ‘Now the next scene we come to is the Chase, the Lead ’em Astray sequence. I don’t think we need cuts in this one. In fact I don’t think we’ve begun to develop that scene yet. I discussed this with Desmond Porton and he agrees that we can add a whole lot more business and make it a really funny slapstick sequence. We’re going to do it in a sort of silent film style, with a lot more special effects. And I think we can pep up the choreography a bit in that scene. Really get the girls jumping about.’