A loud sigh of pleasure and wonder arose from the audience. The wonder at least was understandable: the sets were the work of a Russian artist or artisan whose instructions had been to portray sixteenth-century Verona in a style the twenty-first-century English would appreciate. (He had conscientiously read the play in a recent translation and had put in many a touch he thought was Shakespearean.) Two men carrying swords, more fancifully dressed than their predecessor, came in and conversed for a short time. Two other men followed. The attention of the audience was held at first by the sheer unfamiliarity of everything before them, then by the excitement of the fights, which had been well arranged and thoroughly rehearsed, then by the (to them) dazzling opulence of the clothes worn by the Prince and his train. The exchange between Montague and Benvolio was cut almost to nothing; the good-looking young man playing Romeo was a natural actor, with a command of expression and gesture that enabled most of those there to catch the drift of those passages he understood himself, and it was found generally inoffensive.
Alexander had naturally not bothered to read the synopsis in the programme (an unnecessary demand on his English, for one thing), so he was almost surprised when, just after the start of the third scene, the tall dark-haired figure of Sarah Harland walked on to the stage. She was wearing a blue-and-white dress that miraculously both fitted and suited her and altogether she was looking even finer than he had remembered. After she had made a couple of brief remarks, two other females chatted for a few moments; she moved away and looked out into the auditorium and immediately, or so he fancied, caught sight of him. If she had, the way her face changed boded ill for his chances after the show, chances which seemed further diminished when he turned his eyes away and found himself looking straight into those of Kitty Wright. She arid her father were sitting remarkably near for him not to have noticed them before. It was going to be tricky, making for Sarah without Kitty seeing, but short of cancelling Sarah it would have to be done. An old Russian proverb said a rabbit in the snare was worth two in the field, and someone with far less experience of women than his would still know full well that infidelity even in remotest intention drove them wild with rage, in sad contrast to his own view that they could do what they liked provided they were available whenever he wanted them. (This may well have been his expressed view; his practice on learning of such conduct was to turn wild with rage and walk out at once, unless indeed nothing else was fully available at the time.)
The audience had some trouble with the Nurse’s maunderings about Lammas-eve, which the writer of the adaptation had not dared to shorten because of what the experts had told him. There were attempts to laugh at it, but they soon died down when it went on being incomprehensible and, more important, when the other characters present went on either showing impatience or refusing to listen. But enjoyment of the occasion and the fair amount of goodwill accumulated in the first few minutes saw the Nurse through. What caused the first stirrings of resentment was Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, again uncut for similar reasons, and again for similar reasons the initial laughter was short-lived. By the end the house was audibly restive, and cheers greeted Romeo for finally shutting him up. Capulet’s ball, what with the music, dancing and costumes, and a new set of great singularity, quietened things down for a time, though the Nurse drew an outburst of catcalls.
By the middle of Act II the conventions had been firmly established. Romeo and Juliet themselves were to be respected, or at least allowed to speak their lines in comparative silence. Mercutio, the Nurse and, as soon as he appeared, Friar Laurence were picked out as the enemy, to be subjected to jeers, abuse, threats and all manner of wordless yell. Jubilation at the death of Mercutio in the first scene of Act III stopped the show for over five minutes. A personal appeal from Romeo got it going again, but it never fully recovered.
Muttering grew audible in Juliet/Sarah’s speech at the beginning of the next scene; she was without the support of Romeo’s presence and her dramatic powers were inferior to his. One passage, however,
‘Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-bro wed night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun, she seemed to understand and spoke with some conviction, not that that made any difference to the muttering.
The end came, or began, with the re-entrance of the Nurse. The prospect of more of her was suddenly too much to bear. Unlike the church congregation, the people here had thought they had an idea of what was in store for them and been disappointed. They had been looking forward to enjoying themselves and had been bewildered and bored. They had been told over and over again that this was a great play by a great Englishman and there was nothing in it. They had put on these ridiculous clothes and come all this way to be made fools of. It was what some of them had been calling it from the beginning – just another Shits’ trick.
In what followed almost no one took no part and there was no opposing faction within the audience. Shouting, gesticulating, assuring one another that it was no joke and not good enough, they stood up en masse and slowly made their way to the space between the front row and the orchestra pit. The half-dozen Russian-trained stewards were swept helplessly along. The riot police had already been summoned by electronic alarm but it would be several minutes before they could arrive. The crowd appeared indignant rather than menacing and at first contented itself with verbal aggression. From behind the footlights Romeo, Juliet, Capulet, Benvolio, Prince Escalus pleaded and apologised in dumb-show; words would have been wasted. Then some of the younger men from what had been the audience set about climbing up the barrier surrounding the pit with the evident purpose of getting on to the apron and so to the stage proper. Those questioned the next day said they intended no personal harm and meant only to do some damage to the set and properties, but anybody could have been forgiven for deciding to be on the safe side and making his or her exit before it was too late. The players did that.
Alexander, standing in the central aisle halfway down the front of the house, had an excellent view of all this and even more of the events that followed. For a moment the stage was empty. Then Romeo and Benvolio hurried back on to it and down on to the apron. They were shouting violently though inaudibly, inaudibly not only to Alexander but, as it seemed, also to anyone in the crowd; nobody looked at them. And they were shouting a single word, a monosyllable to judge by the movements of their mouths. He wondered very much what that word was. Nor did he have to wait long to find out. In the most spectacular fashion, a cloud of smoke, dense and spreading with remarkable rapidity, drifted into his view from behind the flats of Capulet’s orchard. Very briefly it was his view alone. During that interval the concealed door next to the stage, the one by which Aram Sevadjian and Theodore had come to join him at the rehearsal he had visited, was opened from the far side. Actors among others began to come through that doorway, a minor Montague, a minor Capulet, one of the Prince’s train, a man recognisable as Mercutio. He was certainly recognised by some of those milling about near him, but before he could be assailed or otherwise abused others had seen the smoke, much thicker and more widespread than when it had first appeared.
The shouting stopped, or rather changed into unnecessary but understandable cries of ‘Fire!’ Alexander looked at the stage again. Romeo and Benvolio were nowhere to be seen; they could only have descended into the auditorium. One after the other Prince Escalus, a man who might have been a stage-hand, a girl who might have been anything, Capulet came into sight and clambered down from the stage, presumably unable to make their way to the pass-door Mercutio’s party were using. Where was Sarah? Here at last she was, still dressed as Juliet, running, coughing, carrying a hold-all. In her turn she reached the apron and started to negotiate the gap between it and the barrier, but she was impeded by her hold-all, lost her footing and in a flash had fallen through the gap into the orchestra pit. Alexander acted nearly as quickly. He had moved along one of the rows of seats so as not to be in the path of the multitude surging up the aisle; now he scrambled over into the next row down and repeated the process until he reached the front. It was no great business for one of his physique to force his way through the press and haul himself up on the barrier so as to be able to see over it.