‘It’s all very well for the principals,’ said Stella, ‘but what about the rest of us? I can’t afford to buy twenty seats, and nobody I know is going to pay fifty p. to see me in a more or less walking-on part.’
‘Well, do what you can,’ urged Ernest. ‘Time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, eh?’
‘And what about the College yobbos? Will they each sell twenty tickets?’ demanded Geoffrey Channing, who had been given the part, as had his friend Robert Eames, of a member of Macheath’s gang of footpads. As the rest of the gang was to consist entirely of Denbigh’s students, there was a point to his question and he was supported shrilly by Stella, since most of the ladies of the town were also from the college choir.
‘You bet they won’t,’ she said.
‘Oh, Denbigh will see to all that. No doubt their parents will come,’ said Ernest, making an optimistic statement which he himself did not believe.
‘Well, I think it’s all very unfair,’ said Stella mutinously, ‘and, anyway, I think a committee should have decided who ought to have the parts. That’s what we’ve always done and it’s much the best way.’
‘It also wastes a great deal of time,’ said Sybil. ‘It was far better to leave it to just one person, especially as he’s being so useful to us.’
‘Helpful to you, perhaps,’ said Marigold Tench. ‘Personally, I think there should have been proper auditions. As it was, the whole cast was settled in a matter of minutes, without any proper preliminaries at all. Of course, if you’re all content to let the latest-joined member ride rough-shod over you, I’ve nothing more to say.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Melanie, turning her tragic eyes upwards.
‘In any case, Marigold,’ said Cyril, ‘you’ve nothing to beef about if you haven’t been given a part. You chose to walk yourself off and wash your hands of the production, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, if she wants a part she can have mine,’ said Melanie. ‘I’m sure I’m sick to death of these sob-stuff rôles. I wish I could swop with Laura. I’d love to do a bit of low comedy for a change.’
‘Just as you like,’ said Laura, ‘if the producer doesn’t object.’
‘I object!’ said James Hunty. ‘Either I play Act One opposite Laura, or I don’t play it at all.’
‘There’s been enough kissing goes by favour in this production already,’ said the bearded Rodney Crashaw. He looked accusingly and spitefully at Cyril Wincott, who grinned infuriatingly at him and whistled Denbigh’s setting of Over the hills and far away.
‘In any case,’ said Hamilton Haynings, ‘we can’t start chopping and changing now, and there’s no sense in picking out the parts we’d like to play. I confess I’m not exactly in love with the part of Lockit, but we have to be reasonable and back up Denbigh’s mistakes (if he’s made any) as best we can. We gave him carte blanche and we can’t go back on it.’
‘By the way,’ said Laura to James Hunty, ‘what’s all this about Melanie wanting to play a comic part? I was under the impression that she saw herself as the Duse of this day and age.’
‘She’s become that creep Crashaw’s leading lady. Didn’t you know? I think she’s a prize fool, but it isn’t my business to tell her so.’
‘Our platinum blonde isn’t going to be pleased.’
‘Too true. A ménage à trois is hardly likely to be her cup of tea!’
‘Is it serious? – Crashaw and Melanie, I mean.’
‘She’s crazy about him. She told my wife so.’
‘Oh, well, she’ll live and learn, I suppose.’
‘She must be full of the joys of spring if she wants to play comedy. Anyway, don’t you dare give way to her, Mistress Peachum.’
CHAPTER 15
« ^ »
Simple ignorance can be cured by simple truth
Spoken with sincerity.
Between them, Laura with goodhumour and commonsense, Hamilton Haynings by the exercise of his authority, gradually got the better of the saboteurs, so the last half-dozen rehearsals, leading up to what might be called the sub-dress rehearsal, saw The Beggar’s Opera beginning to take shape.
By the time Denbigh was informed that the company had cut its teeth and was ready for him, the warring factions had not only given up the struggle for power but were as anxious as anybody else that the production should be a success. As history has shown, there is nothing so powerful as a common enemy to bring private vendettas to an end, and this unifying force was provided by Clarice Blaine.
She had spoken at public meetings, she had written letters to the local press, she had asked questions at the sessions of the Chardle District Council, she had repeated those questions at meetings of the local rate-payers’ association and she had lobbied the local church dignitories.
The results were that the literary, dramatic and operatic society closed ranks and that the general public bought tickets for all three performances of the opera in the lively anticipation that they were going to attend something in the nature of a cross between the Folies Bergères, a strip-show of unusual daring, a Babylonian orgy and the less presentable aspects of a witches’ sabbath.
‘The tickets have never gone so well as early as this,’ said an exultant Ernest Farrow, as members clustered round him to ask for more to sell.
‘Clarice Blaine ought to go in for advertising,’ said Laura to Dame Beatrice. ‘However, I’ve managed to snaffle a couple of dockets in the front row for the third night. If nobody needs prompting during the Thursday and Friday performances, I’ve told Denbigh I shall sit in front with you on the Saturday when my part is over.’
‘William Caxton came here while you were at this evening’s rehearsal,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and asked where he should take the posters he has printed.’
‘I suppose Denbigh had better have them. If Caxton has made as good a job of them as he did of the tickets, Denbigh will be glad to have them stuck up outside the town hall.’
‘Mrs Blaine has written briefly but politely to thank me for the pageant posters. I gather that we are unlikely, however, to have her company at the town hall.’
‘We certainly shan’t. She’s been gunning for weeks to get the opera boycotted if not actually outlawed. The result is that we look like being booked solid for all three performances. In fact, I believe we could run for a week if we liked. Sweet are the uses of the English resolve to see smut where none is intended or, for the matter of that, provided. Our Beggar’s Opera is as chaste as ice, but, fortunately, the prospective audience doesn’t know that.’
‘And the music?’
‘Denbigh has borrowed freely from Frederic Austin, he says, and the result is a lively, tuneful romp. I don’t think whatever the audience expects, that anybody will be disappointed with the songs.’
The disappointment, when it came, was to Cyril Wincott. The school of which this handsome Macheath was such an ornament had acquired a trampoline and two or three of the younger members of staff were agog to try it out. Unfortunately, after school closed on the evening of the third rehearsal at the College, at which the full college orchestra and chorus, as well as the principals, were to be present, Cyril, taking a bet that he would soar higher in the air than the others, won his bet, but landed on the edge of the trampoline, fell awkwardly and broke his right leg.
Denbigh, at the College rehearsal, received the news with resignation. He was not unduly distressed. At this stage of the rehearsals everybody knew all the dialogue and all the songs, and he thought that to replace Cyril with one of the others would be far from impossible.