“Tell him- Oh hell, this is going to make me crazy. Mr Pessoa, your English is really quite good. Do you think you might just try to keep up a running translation rather than pausing to say ‘He says’ and ‘He wants to know’?”
“I will try,” Pessoa said, and after that he did. At first he was slow and scrupulous, but within the hour he was caught up in the rhythm of it and even took to duplicating the inflections of the speaker.
It made things much easier.
The first scene took place in the pirate stronghold. Fflytte had marked the script with “pirates clown about,” which suited Hale as a starting place, since clowning was a good way both to break the ice and see what his amateur actors could do in the way of physical emoting.
“Now,” he told them, “I want you to remember that your audience won’t be able to hear your words. You have to tell them everything by your gestures, the expressions on your face, how you stand and move. Imagine that your audience on this stage is made up of deaf people. You-”
“Do you want us to shout louder?” Lawrence, the smallest and youngest, asked.
“No, they don’t hear at all. Surely you’ve all seen a moving picture?” All the heads nodded. “The only thing you hear is the music, isn’t it? Now, imagine that the cinema is filled with all those pretty girls, the sisters. They won’t be able to hear your words, will they? You have to impress them by how you act. You have to tell them your story without using words.”
The heads nodded again. Encouraged, Hale went on.
“Your first scene takes place in the pirate stronghold. You’re gathered there to celebrate the end of Frederic’s apprenticeship, since he has turned twenty-one.” The plot had been laboriously explained to them already, but reviews, Hale had found, were essential when amateurs were involved. “It’s a party, there’s drinking – although no, we’re not breaking out the rum today for the rehearsal-” (Hale was pleased when this brought groans and jokes from his pirates.) “-and there’s a lot of clowning around and … sorry, Mr Pessoa? Oh, clowning around is jokes, merry-making, games. It’s a celebration. So let’s pretend for a minute that you’re all at this party. I’ll play the part of Frederic, since he’s off with the sisters filming in Cintra. Raise your glasses – yes, just pretend – and … what would you do? Dancing? How about some dancing?”
He began to clap loudly, and Adam followed by Francis gave themselves over to the spirit of it and jumped about. Some of the others joined in, singing and leaping, and then two of them started a wrestling match and in moments the birthday party had disintegrated into a free-for-all of arms and legs and happy shouts. Hale waded in to separate the nearest pair of combatants, and a fist came out of the melee, sending him reeling.
For the second time, the pirate lieutenant’s voice sliced through the air, freezing a stageful of men in their places. Samuel moved fast, sending one lad flying and hauling another upright and off the boards in a single jerk.
“Stop!” Hale managed to wheeze. Samuel paused, looking over his shoulder. Hale coughed and said, “I’m Frederic, remember?”
The lieutenant studied him, then lowered the lad he had been holding – Earnest, looking very frightened indeed – gently to the floor. He brushed the boy off, bent to pick up a couple of hats and restore them to their respective heads, and stepped back to the side of the stage.
So much for clowning. Still, it suggested some additions to the scene, and when Hale had his breath back, he began to run through them: Several of the lads could perform cart-wheels (Lawrence took care to button his pet white mouse into its pocket first); middle-aged Gerald had a quite impressive squatting dance move, almost like a Russian folk-dance; Irving had a face like rubber; Benjamin had a dark intensity that would play well next to fair-headed Frederic.
And so it went.
Still, before long they ran up against the limitations of using a stage to practice scenes that took place out of doors. And other than the initial party, that included all of the scenes. Time and again, Hale would have to exhort a man to imagine that there was a tree there, or water behind him, or a boulder behind which he could hide. Each time he did so, a string of questions came trailing across the stage: How big a tree? (It doesn’t matter.) What kind of water? (Salt, with small waves.) Why is there a solitary boulder there? (Because I put it there.)
It did not take too many of these diversions before Hale felt like beating one of the less-imaginative pirates over the head with an invisible chair. He looked at his watch, and put out one hand, calling a halt and sending them all to lunch.
“And I want you sober when you come back!” he shouted at their backs. He sighed, gingerly prodded his bruised stomach, and retrieved the jacket he had shed in the heat of frustration. Pessoa, halfway down the aisle, paused to look back at the stage.
“Would it make a difference if you were to practice in the out of doors?” the translator asked with diffidence.
“Not in the manicured little parks you have around here, they’d be no better than the stage.”
“I was thinking, perhaps, the botanical gardens?”
Hale considered the suggestion, and told himself that not all of the translator’s suggestions would be as fraught as the Harlequin. He finished straightening his neck-tie. “Show me?”
The gardens, right adjacent to the theatre grounds, proved ideal. Particularly as it wasn’t actively raining when the men – more or less sober – came back from their luncheon. And Pessoa knew the man in charge, who let them in at a special rate for the group. There were trees and a little water and even a few diminutive boulders, and Samuel’s crew responded to the setting with the relief of men coming home after a confusing time abroad.
Originally, Hale had intended to bring the police constables in for the scenes, but after seeing the enthusiasm with which the pirates had thrown themselves into the party melee, he was glad he had decided to wait a day. Or two.
He explained that the scene he needed them to think about was when the police came-“The police are coming? Here?” “Only in the picture, Charles.”-when the pretend police came, because the pirates had taken the Major-General’s daughters captive-“I’ll take them captive, yes!” “I can have two?” “Harriet is mine!” “No, she is mine!” at which point Pessoa’s translation bogged down. Since there was little need for translation Hale merely raised his voice and went on. “-taken the girls captive, but freed them to return to their father. The Major-General then sends the police – yes, the pretend police – and that is when you fight them.”
As he talked, he had taken off his jacket and worked his way into a special, heavily padded waistcoat he’d asked Sally to fashion after the knives came out on Saturday. She’d had to cannibalise other garments – none of the costume corsets had whalebone now – but it ended up a garment that might protect his more vital organs from any stray non-collapsing blades.
“All right, first thing is to give your own knives to Samuel, here.” When none of them moved, Hale said, “You’ll get them back at the end of the day, and it saves you from worrying about pulling the wrong blade.” When still none of them moved, he added, “If I end up in hospital, it’s going to slow the production down considerably.”
Samuel’s hand went out, and one by one, the pirates filed past and divested themselves of their arms. Fourteen men: Hale stopped counting at twenty-three weapons.
He felt somewhat more confident when they began lining up to practise stabbing him.