When Jayr and I took some drinks from the coffee machine, Commis rejected our offer of a real one but suddenly produced an imaginary large cup and saucer, clearly full to the brim with a scalding liquid. He fussed over this, holding it gingerly, blowing gently across the surface, stirring it with an invisible spoon, tipping some of the liquid into the saucer so he could sip from that. He continued this performance until Jayr and I had finished our cups of coffee, then he put away his own cup.
When I tried speaking to him he made no answer (but cupped a hand behind his ear, pretending, I think, to be deaf). Jayr shook his head at me, discouraging me from what I was doing.
Later, Commis developed an itchy rash that appeared to travel all over his body.
He sat there and sat there, perpetually performing his imaginary feats.
Finally, not at all entertained by this self-centred behaviour, I decided to leave. As I crossed the office floor. Commis mimed intense fear and warning, shrinking back across the desktop in horror, pointing at the floor and imploring me with his eyes.
I could not help myself. I stepped carefully over the banana skin as I went into the corridor outside.
After that, Commis’s presence around the theatre was a constant. He was due to headline the third week of our season, so his early arrival meant that he was underfoot practically all of the time. I found his endless pantomimes aggravating but harmless, and did what I could to ignore him. However, he was always there, sometimes mimicking me, sometimes leaping out in front of me to show me a cat he was pretending to hold or a photograph of me he had just taken, or trying to involve me in his fantasy world by throwing balls to me, or trotting in front of me, pretending to open and close non-existent doors. He never once spoke, never emitted any kind of sound. I kept expecting that I might one day see him out of character, but as far as I could tell he appeared to be staying and sleeping somewhere in the theatre building itself. He was always there when I arrived and was still there after I left at the end of the day. I never did find out what Jayr knew of him, what their relationship was, if any. It was obviously more than Jayr said, perhaps even close or intimate, but I was not that interested and did not enquire.
I realized that my work at the Sjøkaptein was now only marginal, and by agreement with Jayr it was to finish soon — in fact I was due to leave at the end of the following week, before Commis started his run of performances, when I would be paid off.
My final task before I left was to lend whatever assistance the Lord would need when he arrived. I was nervous about this: my weeks at the Teater Sjøkaptein had shown me that a professional interest in stagecraft was one thing, but a sympathy with the people who trod the boards was another.
The Lord’s self-generated advance publicity was not for me a sign that he and I were going to work together well. However, to my surprise it turned out that in life he was a quiet, almost invisible presence, apparently shy and self-effacing. For instance, when he arrived in Omhuuv he let no one in the theatre know, so none of us realized at first that he was there. He and his female assistant had been waiting patiently in the foyer for so long, unobtrusively sitting in the chairs at the side, that one of the ticket office staff eventually went to ask if they needed any help.
When we finally saw him costumed and made up for his show he became impressive and extrovert, with an entire repertoire of theatrical gestures and loud and sometimes amusing remarks, and exuding endless confidence in his own powers.
His main illusion, with which he concluded his performance, was a set-piece which to the audience looked transparently simple, but which required careful and exact technical preparation.
He called the illusion ‘THE LADY VANISHES’.
The effect seen by the audience was of a bare stage, backed by curtains, and dominated by a large, metal structure made entirely of steel rods. This consisted of four slanting legs, and a heavy cross-member across the top, strong enough to bear weight. The audience could see that this was the full extent of the apparatus: there were no curtains, no trapdoors, no hidden panels, just a skeletal steel structure standing in the centre of the bare stage. While performing the trick the illusionist could pass around and through and behind the structure and be seen at every moment. He would then produce a large chair, and this would be connected to the cross-member by a rope and a pulley.
His female assistant — transformed from a mildly attractive woman in her late twenties into a dazzling vision of glamour by her scanty costume, flowing wig and make-up — would sit in the chair, and be blindfolded.
As the small band in the pit played suspenseful music, with an insistent drum-roll, the magician would laboriously turn the handle of a winch, and the chair and Lord’s assistant would rise towards the apex of the immense structure, twisting slowly. Once she was at the top, the illusionist would secure the rope and utter trance-inducing words. The assistant would slump in the chair, as if hypnotized. He then produced a large gun and aimed it directly at her! As the drums reached a climax the magician fired the gun. With a loud bang and a flash of light the chair would come crashing noisily down on the stage, its rope trailing behind it. The lady assistant was no longer in the chair, and indeed had vanished entirely.
The method was both much simpler and more complex than anyone in the audience would imagine. The illusion was achieved by a combination of stage lights and a mirror. Or in this case a half-mirror. Or in reality, a pane of clear glass, the one I had obtained for the Lord from the next town.
The glass was attached to the front of the metal scaffold. Because of the way the lights were shone on it, and with the assistance of more lights concealed behind the front struts, the glass was entirely invisible to everyone in the audience. Everything that happened inside the apparatus, or behind it, was completely visible. When the young woman was winched to the top, everything that could be seen was actually happening: she was really there, in the chair, and suspended from the cross-member.
However, at the firing of the gun (which by intention made a loud bang, emitted a huge flaming discharge and a cloud of smoke) two things happened simultaneously. Firstly, the lighting of the stage was switched. In particular the concealed lights inside the struts were turned off, and front lighting was increased. This had the effect of turning the sheet of glass on the front of the structure into a mirror. Because of the direction of the lighting, and the angle at which the glass was placed, it ceased to be transparent and now reflected an image of curtains (otherwise invisible to the audience) behind the proscenium arch. These curtains were identical to the backdrop curtains upstage, and lit appropriately. From the point of view of the audience, nothing inside the steel skeleton could now be seen. Meanwhile, in the same instant, the rope lifting the chair was severed by a small built-in guillotine beside the winch. This released the chair, so that it crashed down spectacularly to the stage with the rope snaking behind it. The assistant grabbed the cross-member with her hands and swung there out of sight. She hung on gamely with her hands, until the curtains closed on her and, out of sight of the audience, she dropped athletically to the stage.
All this was straightforwardly achieved, but it was also a technical challenge for myself, a stagehand called Denik and the lighting engineer. We worked for a morning and an afternoon, learning how to erect the frame (which Lord had brought with him in his property van), and arranging for the plate glass to be lowered from the flies then secured to the front of the structure. We aligned it with the hidden curtains and finally ran several repeated technical rehearsals, not only with assembling the apparatus but with the lighting cues. Although this was of course computerized, all the lights had to be set at the correct angles to achieve the desired effect.