Sicken and So Die (20 page)

But the show's real triumph belonged undoubtedly to Russ Lavery. The improvement shown in the day's rehearsals was maintained through the evening. He must have been utterly exhausted, but an adrenaline high spurred him to ever greater achievement. The rest of the company were infinitely supportive to him and when, at the end of the performance, he came forward to take his solo bow, they joined in the audience's ecstatic ovation.

Russ Lavery, glowing with realised ambition, bowed and bowed again. He'd ‘gone back to his theatrical roots' and grown from the experience. After his fourth solo bow, since the applause showed no signs of abating, he stretched out a hand into the wings and gestured the director to join him.

The tiny figure of Alexandru Radulescu bounced on-stage and took Russ Lavery's hand. They bowed together, incandescent in their mutual triumph.

Then the actor stepped forward and, managing eventually to still the audience, announced, ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'd just like to say, on behalf of the entire company and crew, that we dedicate tonight's performance to the memory of a great actress and a very dear friend – Sally Luther. We love you, Sally – and we did it for you!' As Russ stepped modestly back, the audience erupted into an even more vigorous ovation. For them the evening had had everything: a sensational news story, a star familiar from television, an ‘understudy triumphs' backstage drama – all overlaid with the righteous, self-justifying glow of having ‘seen some Shakespeare.'

All of the company were invited by Julian Roxborough-Smith to have a post-performance drink in the Patrons' marquee. After the traumas and hard work of the previous thirty-six hours, they had earned it.

Charles Paris, who hadn't touched a drop since the wine he'd shared with Moira Handley in her Portakabin, eagerly seized a glass of red from the tray of a passing waitress.

‘It's refreshing to see a production which conceptualises from an alternative learning base and challenges the diktats of traditional authoritors, isn't it?'

If he hadn't recognised her face, Charles would have known instantly that the granny-spectacled woman speaking to him was Carole Whittaker of HAN.

‘Erm . . . well . . . yes,' he hazarded.

‘Radulescu has an almost post-modernist attitude to the text
qua
text, synergising a kind of input to Shakespeare whose outreach goes beyond the microcosm of received and conformable educational data – don't you agree?'

‘You're not wrong.'

‘So his extrapolations from the atavistically protected corpus of words known conveniently as
Twelfth Night
come to represent a parallel but diverse textual statement.'

Charles Paris thought he almost understood that bit. ‘You mean he's created a
Twelfth Night
that is different from Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night
?'

‘At the most primitive level, yes. But at the same time a process of inter-textualising is at work, so that not only the verbalisation is transformed, but the received definition of the media-related categorisation in which the opus partakes is also challenged.'

‘Hm. Too right.' Charles nodded. ‘Erm . . . Will you excuse me . . .?'

Carole Whittaker seemed unworried by his abrupt departure and moved to share her thoughts with Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Charles would always treasure the image of growing puzzlement that spread across Chad Pearson's genial features.

Alexandru Radulescu was moving round the room, gathering plaudits and spreading congratulations. He came face to face with Charles, and grinned. ‘Coming better, yes . . .? I was right about how Sir Toby should be played – no?'

‘Well . . .' To have agreed would have been total hypocrisy. In performance Charles might have come closer to Alexandru's views, but he still didn't believe the director was ‘right'. He salved his conscience by avoiding the direct question and making a general comment. ‘Thought the whole thing went wonderfully well – congratulations.'

The conversation might have continued, had Alexandru Radulescu not been swept away by Julian Roxborough-Smith to meet Great Wensham's mayor, ‘who is also a past president of the Great Wensham Rotary Club.'

Charles found himself face to face with Moira Handley. She grinned, but he noticed the tight lines of tiredness around her eyes. ‘Very good,' she said. ‘I gather it went very well.'

He experienced the little pang all actors feel at such moments. ‘You mean you didn't see it?'

‘Saw the first ten minutes and most of the last act. We have got other performances on, you know. I had to put in an appearance at a Bach piano recital and a one-man show about W. B. Yeats.'

‘Ah.'

‘Then tomorrow it's Palestrina in St Michael's Church, a lecture on stained glass at the community centre, literary lunch at the Marlborough Hotel, bagpipes in the town square, Mozart in the Corn Exchange, the Amateur Operatics'
Brigadoon
. . . A few other events I've forgotten, finishing with alternative stand-up in the big top.'

‘Busy schedule.'

‘You could say that.'

‘Well, if you have time in that busy schedule for a quick drink at some point?'

Moira Handley shook her head ruefully. ‘Don't see it, Charles.'

‘Oh.'

‘I think we had a moment, you know, but I think it's probably passed.'

‘Mm. Probably.'

He might have been left standing there pathetic and awkward if Pauline Monkton hadn't bustled up. She was bubbling with enthusiasm and self-confidence.

‘Well, talk about press coverage, eh?'

Moira turned her quizzical gaze on the press officer, but said nothing.

‘Couldn't have been better. All the nationals here. I think the secret with publicity . . .' Pauline Monkton confided knowingly, ‘. . . is not to bother about the RSVPs. Oh yes, put them on the invitations, by all means, but if nobody replies, don't worry about it. Doesn't mean they're not coming. Oh no, publicity is about targeting the right individuals. Get the right press list, distribute invitations to the right people, and they'll come, no problem. Even spread it among their fellow journalists. Do you know,' her voice dropped to an awed tone, ‘there are press here tonight who I
didn't even invite.'
She nodded complacently. ‘Shows they got the message this was a first night that just shouldn't be missed.'

Charles and Moira exchanged looks, and he could tell they shared the same thought. The press presence at Great Wensham that evening had nothing to do with Pauline Monkton's strategy – with or without RSVPs. It was prompted entirely by the news of Sally Luther's death. But neither of them would be so cruel as to tell the press officer that.

Moira was summoned away to sort out some other cock-up over the volunteers, another task which Julian Roxborough-Smith had assured her he had ‘completely in hand'. Charles, left on his own, scooped up a second glass of wine from a waitress's tray, and looked around the scene.

It was really remarkable how little Sally Luther's death had impacted on the
Twelfth Night
company. Sure, at that moment they were all caught up in the communal euphoria of having got the show on against the odds, but he'd have expected a little more introspection. Instead, it seemed as though Russ Lavery's formal acknowledgement of the death had closed the subject. Sally Luther need never be thought about again.

The only person who still seemed affected by her absence was Benzo Ritter. The boy's face looked stressed, but even he was perking up. A few more drinks and he too would be able to forget his infatuation – at least for a little while.

Charles Paris wondered whether Sally Luther's murderer was in the marquee at that moment. If his theory was right, if her death had been one in a sequence of poisonings, then that was likely.

The perpetrator must have been present at the Chailey Ferrars press conference after which Gavin Scholes had become ill, in the Indian restaurant which did for John B. Murgatroyd, and around the stage during the
Twelfth Night
tech the previous evening.

The only people who qualified were Talya Northcott, Tottie Roundwood and Vasile Bogdan. Talya had not come to the Sponsors' marquee for a drink; she had been taken away by Mummy to have her wounded pride soothed with assurances that she would have made a much better Viola than Russ Lavery.

But Charles noticed his other two suspects were in the marquee talking together, and he edged through the crowd in their direction. Standing with his back to them, pretending interest in a poster-size festival programme, he listened to what they were saying.

‘A triumph,' Tottie Roundwood enthused. ‘He's got exactly what he wanted.'

‘Oh yes,' Vasile Bogdan agreed. ‘And I think we can confidently state that he wouldn't have got it without our help, don't you?'

ONE NAME dominated the news pages of the next day's tabloids: Sally Luther. The death of a pretty actress – prettier in the archive photographs they reprinted from her sitcom heyday – was a good popular story.

Her career was recapitulated and analysed. The days when her face was a fixture on the nation's television screens were recalled, together with tales of the fervour she inspired in her fans. At her peak she was the recipient of a massive postbag, including the usual creepy, obsessive letters that beautiful public faces inspire.

She'd even had the ultimate showbiz accolade of a stalker, who followed her around for some months. Unusually, she had been pursued and spied on by a woman rather than a man. Though this made her feel less threatened, it was still unnerving. Eventually she had called in the police, and her action had the right effect; the pestering instantly ceased.

As well as recalling her career, the papers were lavish with tributes to Sally Luther from other showbiz names. The television executives who'd turned their backs during the eclipse of her popularity all came forward to say what a fine actress and delightful person she had been, how much they'd loved working with her, and how disappointed they'd be not to work with her again.

The circumstances of her death were described, but few details were known beyond the facts that she'd been taken ill on stage during rehearsal and had died in hospital. One of the papers tried kite-flying the expression ‘mystery illness', but if they hoped that would give rise to speculation about AIDS, they had reckoned without the affection in which Sally Luther had been held. For the great British public – particularly after her death – she represented the squeaky-clean girl next door; they would never dream of associating her with something as squalid as AIDS.

But if Sally Luther had colonised the front of the papers, the Arts pages were dominated by two names – Alexandru Radulescu and Russ Lavery.

The Asphodel production of
Twelfth Night
got an astonishing amount of coverage. Neither Pauline Monkton's cunning ‘targeting of the right individuals', nor the additional interest given by Sally Luther's death was sufficient to explain the number of national critics who had been at the first night.

The reason was Alexandru Radulescu. He was – at least for a few months – the current vogue name, and no one who mattered in British theatre wanted to risk missing his latest production. Even if it meant forsaking the West End for the comparative wilds of Great Wensham, they had to be there. No doubt Radulescu and the Radulescu style would soon be condemned as ‘dated' and ‘meretricious', but during his brief moment in the sun he was the director who could do no wrong.

His revisualisation of
Twelfth Night
was hailed as ‘mould-breaking', ‘daringly different', ‘a radical reinterpretation of what had always been thought of as a safe old play' and ‘an evening of pure theatre that challenges the spectator's every preconception.'

Charles Paris could have spit.

He wasn't surprised that an untutored audience would go for Alexandru's flashy tricks, but he was amazed that professional critics could be seduced by such modish claptrap. Surely they should respect Shakespeare's text, and recognise when it was being traduced – that was their job, for God's sake! Critics should uphold the enduring values of the great British literary tradition, not be a prey to every new fad that comes along.

Even as he had the thought, Charles Paris realised how impossibly reactionary it sounded. Maybe he really was past his sell-by date. Maybe the values he represented were going the way of the dinosaurs. For a moment he was undermined by the appalling possibility that Alexandru Radulescu might be right.

But if the director was one of the golden boys of British theatre, there was another coming up fast to share the limelight. Russ Lavery had the kind of reviews even he – and his ego was of no mean proportions – would have been too bashful to write for himself.

The words ‘star' and ‘genius' were bandied about like small change. ‘A truly great Shakespearean performance,' one critic enthused. ‘To be at Chailey Ferrars last night was to know what it must have been like to witness the debut of Garrick or Kean.'

Oh, for heaven's sake, thought Charles. What is going on here? He would never be able to understand the random cycle of critical opinion. He had rehearsed many shows he thought excellent, and then seen them suffer savage dismemberment by the critics. He had been in productions he regarded as total shit, which had received rose-scented notices. It made no sense at all.

All he knew about criticism was that the only reviews he remembered were the bad ones. Over the years he must have had a good few laudatory notices – come on, he
must
have done – but all that stayed with him were of a type with the one he'd once received from
Plays & Players
: ‘Charles Paris was also in the cast, though why is a question which neither the director nor the playwright seemed prepared to address.'