A Midsummer Night's Scream (3 page)

It wasn't easy to guess her age. She could be anywhere from sixty-five to seventy-five. Her luxuriant white, slightly curly hair looked as if it was her own, not a wig. Her eyes were a clear, perceptive light blue. She moved erectly and easily. No hint of arthritis. Only her hands gave away that she was old. A few age spots. A couple of slightly enlarged knuckle. Jane hoped she'd age as well as Gloria Bunting had.

An extraordinarily good-looking and well-dressed young man had come into the roomwhile Imry finished speaking. He spotted the elderly pair and came over to introduce himself. "I'm Denny Roth," he said, patting them on the shoulders patronizingly. "You've probably heard of me. I've been in several independent films. One of them won several awards at Sundance."

Jake was still sitting near Jane and Shelley and made a small snorting noise and winked at them again. "As an extra, wasn't it, Denny?"

Denny ignored this and took a seat next to the director. Jake introduced Jane and Shelley. "Mrs. Jeffry and Mrs. Nowack are going to make sure that we get fed and watered. Be extra nice to them if you know what's good for you."

Steven Imry clearly didn't like someone else making the rules and introductions. He stood in front of the head chair and said, "Starting now, we're going to use your characters' names at all times, as I said before. I've—"

Gloria cut him off. "I'm Ms. Gloria Bunting and don't you forget it, young man."

"Gloria is right," her husband agreed. "That's simply not how it works in a
real
theater, Professor. You might wish to be trendy, but it's not professional."

It seemed as if Imry hadn't recognized that he had offended the actress and her husband. Or maybe he didn't care. "It's a technique I've used before with great success. It gets everyone into the spirit of the play sooner. You'll address me as

Professor Imry. Tonight is simply a first reading. No gestures, no movements. We'll get to those tomorrow. I just want to hear you emote."

There were a few muttered groans, but Jane couldn't tell who they came from. The older actors simply shook their heads. Shelley muttered almost silently, "Emote?"

Jane had also cringed at the use of "emote." She smiled at Shelley. The longer they'd been friends, the more they thought alike — most of the time. But not always. For instance, they disagreed violently about how books you owned should be treated.

She put this thought aside as the reading started. Jane was surprised at the different ways each actor read. John Bunting, now designated by the director as Mr. Walter Weston, slurred his words, but seemed to have already memorized the script. That surprised her. But on reflection, it shouldn't have. It was probably how he had earned his living from his youth. He looked a great deal older than his wife. He obviously dyed his thinning hair. He'd run to fat and had the bloodshot eyes and the big red nose of a heavy drinker.

His wife, Gloria, who played Mrs. Edina Weston in the script, was letter perfect and didn't even open the script to follow it. She took on a sort of Katharine Hepburn accent when she was speaking.

Joani-with-an-i wasn't nearly as well prepared and had to follow each of her lines with her long-nailed, red-painted forefinger.

Professor Imry was appalled. "You should have had this from memory by now, Angeline. I expect you to have it down by tomorrow's first rehearsal," he warned. "At this stage, you could be replaced."

She nodded sullenly, but her attitude was a bit fearful as well.

Denny Roth, who had the role of Todd Weston, the handsome, wayward son who had brought Angeline home to his family as his betrothed, had the script memorized by now as well, but read as if he were already bored with it, apparently changing some of Professor Imry's wording.

Imry chastised him. "Read it as if you mean it, and don't improvise."

"It's not my voice the way you've written it. I sound too old. My character's vocabulary and sentence patterns should be his own, not yours."

Jane had just noticed that there were several extra scripts on the table next to her chair at the back of the room. She took one and handed another to Shelley.

Imry's face turned bright red. "This is my script. And I'm the director. You will read it the way it's written and is being directed."

"I'm not as easily replaced as Joani, you know," Denny said. "You don't seem to know my charac-

ter as well as you should. Where did I go to high school? My parents are rich. They'd send me to the best private schools. I'd know better grammar than you've let me use in this script. It's absurd that the script tells me to say 'Angeline and
me
are getting married.' The correct way is 'Angeline and
I
are getting married,' and I'd be well enough educated to know it."

Imry pretended he hadn't heard. "Continue. It's Edward's line next."

Edward, who was really Jake, had it memorized. He played a sort of comic-relief younger brother. Somehow he managed to make Imry's stiff writing light and almost amusing. Jane thought of all of them, he might be the best actor, except for Ms. Bunting.

The next bit of script was spoken by someone Jane hadn't even noticed before. He hadn't been introduced. Glancing at the script, she saw that he had the role of the butler, Cecil, and that his real name was Bill Denk.

"Madam and sir, Cook says luncheon will be served in ten minutes." He was a young man, but spoke in the cracked voice of an elderly retainer.

Jane and Shelley both glanced at their watches. Enduring this wrangling wasn't exactly fun. "Could we slip out now?" Jane whispered.

"Why not. Nobody needs us here," Shelley admitted.

They went outside and Shelley found them aplace to sit on a wall in the shade of a small tree. She gestured at the building and said, "Paul found out that this theater has a long and interesting history. At the beginning, this was a pricey neighborhood, and the building was a nice theater with live actors-this was before radio and television. Then the neighborhood started going to pot, several patrons were robbed on the way to their carriages, and another, nicer theater was built elsewhere.

"Over the years," she went on, "it sat vacant for long periods, then was turned into a movie theater. Was closed again. Then a developer bought it and rented it to a church. The church bought two of the small houses next to it to tear down and make parking places."

"How did Paul learn all this?" Jane asked.

"You can hire people who research old papers and do title searches. Anyway, the older people in the church started moving to Florida or dying off, and the church couldn't make the payments, so the building was empty again. For a short while it was used as a soup kitchen. Half the dressing rooms were made into that little kitchen, and the room where they're meeting now was where the people ate. Then for a while groups could rent out the kitchen and eating room for craft groups. And the final use was for A.A. meetings in the audience seating area. In one of the intervals, urban renewal made the neighborhood a lot better."

"Quite an interesting background," Jane said. "Somebody should save that information and post it somewhere in the building. How did it come into Paul's possession?"

"The old guy who'd owned it forever died. His grandchildren didn't want to be responsible for keeping it up, and were going to demolish it and sell the land," Shelley explained. "Paul, as I told you, bought it, and donated it to the college when he realized he couldn't use it for storing food, because it couldn't be brought up to code. So he had it cleaned up, had a few repairs done to the roof and brickwork, and donated it to the college."

"So he managed to save it. That was good of him."

"I'm sort of sorry I dragged us into this," Shelley admitted. "Let's make a deal here. We're not part of the cast. We can call the actors by their real names, okay?"

Jane sighed with relief. "That was going to be my suggestion, too. I'm not good at remembering names anyway, and especially not two sets of names for the same person. I'm curious as to why these rehearsals aren't done during the day"

"It's because the students are on what's called Fast Track Summer, which means they can do a whole semester's work in seven weeks. But they have to take every class every day, with one-hour breaks for studying for exams. That's why they can't get here until six."

"Oh, yes. Imry said something like that but I wasn't paying enough attention."

"That's an interesting concept. I'm going to ask Mike if his college does that."

"I'm going to hide this script in my briefcase and take it home to read tonight," Shelley said. "So far I'm not much impressed with it."

"I don't like the director," Jane said. "I think it's unfortunate he's also the writer of the script. Too much ego bundled in one person. It's odd about the casting, don't you think?"

"In what way?" Shelley asked.

"With the proper makeup and clothing, the Weston family will look like they're all related. Imry did make good choices in this case."

"You think so?" Shelley was perplexed. "They don't even have the same colored eyes. Both the Buntings are blue eyed, and the older son's eyes are brown. That's impossible, I think."

"Shelley, we see them up close. The audience won't see the color of their eyes. I wasn't crazy, I have to admit, about Denny."

"What's wrong with Denny? He was right about his character's background and was dead on about 'Angeline and me.' "

"But it was wrong of Denny to tackle him that way in front of all of us. He should have taken Imry aside and told him that his grammar was wrong in private instead of showing off in front of all of us. I think I'm having heatstroke," Jane

said, sorry that she'd brought up the subject of casting. She stood up. "We don't have to sit out here in the heat any longer, do we?"

"I just dragged you out here to air a few opinions. Since we agree, we can wait inside." Shelley glanced at her watch. "The caterer will be parking the van in the back alley any minute now."

while Shelley
was letting the caterers in through the back of the theater and showing them where to prepare and serve the snack supper, Jane took out the canvas bag she'd brought along and removed her needlepoint project. She'd been working on it all day. Looking at the patterns in the book she'd been given, she realized quickly that most of them, except the bargellos, were in sets of four or six stitches. She'd roughed out a basic pattern that could accommodate either multiples of four or multiples of six.

She'd only done two patterns so far. One was a square block of jacquard in light and dark blue in the upper left corner. The pattern beneath it was a cashmere diagonal in a long strip down the left side in a dark pink and dark purple. She was contemplating which colors and patterns to do next when Gloria Bunting, who had no dialogue in the scene they were reading through, walked over and sat down beside Jane.

"That's lovely," she said. "I was a friend of the actress Sylvia Sidney and she was always needle-pointing on the set. She did lovely work. I envied the skill. She showed me the basic stitches, but I didn't follow through."

Jane smiled. "You know she did at least one instructional book about needlepoint, don't you? I have a copy at home. I bought it when I tried this years ago and failed. Now Shelley and I are taking lessons."

"When are the lessons? And are they close by?"

"The first was this morning. There are two sessions a week, one each Tuesday and Thursday morning for four weeks, right here in town. The woman limits the class to five. But maybe she'd be willing to add a celebrity."

Gloria was pleased at this description. "Could I catch up tomorrow? Maybe you could take me to the shop and tell me what I need to buy. Although I think I should start something smaller than what you're working on. The arthritis in my hands might make it impossible."

"Are you going to be here long enough to take the whole course?"

"Good Lord, I hope so. We contracted for two weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of performances. I don't think this dog of a play will last that long, but I'd stay over to finish the course anyway if it doesn't."

Jane reached in her canvas bag and showedGloria the instruction book. "It's fifty dollars for the bound canvas, this book, the needles, and enough thread to make something this size. I think that's a bargain. Then the lessons are ten dollars for two hours of help and advice. At least you'd have all the information to take along when the play is done."

"I need something to do while I'm here. We don't normally do these amateur things in which all the rehearsals are in the evenings. I like to put in almost a full day's work, then relax at night until the play starts. This is the opposite. This time we're working at night and I need something to fill the mornings. Of course, both John and I grew up here and now our daughter lives here, too. So we have grandchildren to visit with on weekend mornings."

Shelley reappeared from the next room and said, "The snack supper is ready. I hope it's a good time for a short break. You're welcome to fill your plates and bring your food back in here, if you like."

"Excuse me, Ms. Nowack?" Imry said. "I don't remember carrying around food being part of the arrangement."

Shelley stared at him for a long moment and said, "This is a charitable donation. You do remember that, don't you? And there is a handy old phrase that 'beggars can't be choosers.' Besides, I arranged it this way so you wouldn't lose rehearsal time."

"But it was a rude way to state it," Imry said.

"And who started the rudeness?" Shelley asked.

Bill Denk, who played the butler, grinned at Shelley, saying in his old-man voice, "You go, girl," and started clapping. It was taken up by the others.