The one thing he was known to have done during that period was to try to get a star name for The Hooded Owl. As with theatre companies, only he knew how many he approached with the script, how many refusals he got, how many tentative agreements dependent on dates and money. There were two main male parts and one female, so presumably stars of both sexes were approached.
All that was known was the result of his machinations. A fortnight before rehearsals were due to start, which was the time when Charles Paris was engaged to play the second male lead, it was bruited about in the business that the female lead was to be played by a young lady who had recently, ‘in order to concentrate on her career as a serious actress’, left the cast of the interminably-long-running television soap opera, Cruises.
The fact that she wasn’t much of an actress, serious or any other sort, was irrelevant. The audience would flock to see her. It didn’t matter if she just stood on stage, they would still love her. (In fact, people who had worked with her thought it might be better if she did just stand on stage; they knew the hazards of trying to push her beyond her range.)
Once Paul Lexington had his star name, he was happy to fall in with Peter Hickton’s suggestions for the rest of the cast. So long as they were cheap, competent and available in the event of a transfer, he didn’t much mind who they were. As a result, Peter Hickton cast largely from his regular Taunton company; he knew them, they worshipped him, and he fancied himself in the role of star-maker.
In the lead he cast Alex Household, an actor in his late forties, who had had early success then a rather bad patch culminating in a complete breakdown. but was now coming back, in the view of Peter Hickton, twenty years his junior, ‘stronger than ever’.
In the part of the daughter, Peter Hickton cast Lesley-Jane Decker, an actress eight years his junior, who he thought had ‘enormous potential’. And the way he looked at her didn’t suggest he thought that potential was limited to the stage.
For the part of Alex’s failed brother, Peter reckoned he had had a brainwave. There was no one in the regular Taunton company of the right age, but he remembered an actor he had worked with when Assistant Director at Colchester, who had exactly the right ‘smell of failure’ that the part required. Peter rang the guy’s agent and found, to his delight, that he was free.
To the agent in question, Maurice Skellem, his client’s ‘freeness’ was no surprise. Charles Paris’s engagement diary was a joke on the level of all those corny old lines about The Kosher Book of Pork Recipes, Britain’s Economic Miracle or The Pope’s Book of Birth Control. ‘I’ve sorted out a great job for you, Charles,’ the agent asserted when he rang.
‘Oh yes?’ Charles had replied sceptically.
‘Sure. Great new play called The Head Owl.’
‘Where?’
‘Taunton.’
‘Ah.’
‘Director asked for you specially.’
‘Oh.’
‘Said he wanted someone who really smelt of failure.’
‘Thank you, Maurice.’
So it was that Charles Paris joined the cast of The Hooded Owl.
It was the day before rehearsals started that the agent of the former Cruises star rang to say that she had just signed up to do a series for West End Television of a new sit. com. set in a lingerie shop and called Knickers; so, because that was going to keep her very busy, she had flown off the day before to Kenya for a safari holiday. And no, sorry, she hadn’t actually signed The Hooded Owl contract.
Frantic phoning ensued. Paul Lexington tried in vain to produce a star in twenty-four hours, but eventually had to accept Peter Hickton’s casting of Salome Search, a Taunton regular, ‘who’s awfully solid, Paul, and, you know, has never really had the breaks, but could be massive’.
So it was that, while the former Cruises star pointed her camera at world-weary rhino, her predestined dressing room at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton, was shared on the first night of The Hooded Owl by Alex Household and Charles Paris.
CHAPTER TWO
Nerves, like hopes, Charles found, didn’t go away, however long he worked in the theatre. The fact that he had survived a few hundred first nights did not make each new one any easier. In some ways it made it more difficult; he now had more experience of the things that could go wrong than he had in his twenties, and so the dark side of his imagination had more to work on.
But two things delayed the full impact of his nerves about the opening of The Hooded Owl. The first was having a large part, a fortune that was not often his lot. He began to realise how stars could remain cool right up till the first night. Their responsibility was greater, but the mechanics of learning all their lines and rehearsing kept them pretty busy. It was those with small parts and long gaps in rehearsal who had time to sit around twitching over endless diuretic cups of coffee.
The other factor which staved off the assault of nerves was the work-rate Peter Hickton demanded of his cast. Because most of them had worked with him so much, they knew what to expect, that he would rehearse every waking hour (and a good few normally allocated to sleep). Equity rules about maximum hours were ignored. There was an Equity representative in the cast, duly elected by the rest, but he was one of the Peter Hickton rep. too, so he made no demur.
Peter Hickton was one of those people who gained ascendancy over others by demonstrating how little sleep he needed. Charles, whose ideal was a whisky-sodden eight hours, found this was a contest in which he did not wish to participate, but he had no alternative. He couldn’t turn up for a nine o’clock call in the morning and complain that he hadn’t finished rehearsing till one the night before, when he knew that the director had been up till four working on the lighting plan.
Charles also found this relentless rehearsal made serious inroads into his drinking time, a part of the day he had always regarded as sacrosanct. He wasn’t an alcoholic (he kept telling himself), but he did enjoy a drink, and he found resorting to a half-bottle of Bell’s in his pocket somewhat undignified. Apart from anything else, it gave his antiquated sports jacket a lop-sided look. And it tended to clink against things. Also it gave the wrong impression. When Salome Search caught him one day taking a surreptitious swig in the Green Room, she gave him a look that showed she had got a completely false idea of his relationship with drink. She obviously regarded it as a till-death-do-us-part marriage, whereas he liked to think of it more as a casual affair, in which either partner could drift off at will (though, when he came to think of it, neither often did).
Peter Hickton’s rehearsal schedule (probably a misnomer for a process that was simply continuous) intensified towards the end. The Monday night’s Tech. Run, which followed a full day in the rehearsal room, finished at three-thirty a.m.. As a special concession, the next morning’s call for notes was not until nine-thirty, then rehearsal of odd scenes continued till it was time for the evening’s Dress Rehearsal, which, though intended to be played as per performance, did not end till a quarter to two a.m.. Because of this, Peter Hickton demanded a second Dress Rehearsal, on the Wednesday afternoon before the first night. This was followed by notes, taking everyone right up to ‘the half’ (the time half an hour before curtain-up, by which all members of the cast have to be in the theatre).
So Charles didn’t even have time for the half-hour in the pub over a couple of large Bell’s, which he regarded as such an essential preparation for the full realisation of his art.