Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“What do you suggest? I’ve got the lines down and I’ve seen the play at Covent Garden in London, so I can visualize this part of the play leading up to the murder and the moments just after it.”

“Well, perhaps you could think of me as a mother figure. Lady Macbeth is often played as an older, haglike virago-bossing you about and taunting you over your lack of courage and questioning your manhood when you believe you’re a grown-up boy who can think for himself. That should give you the tenor of these scenes and put some vigour into the lines.”

This stratagem took less practice than either of them imagined, for so quick and cutting were Lady Macbeth’s barbs, so mocking and sardonic her tone, and so convincing the fury in her face that Marc found himself reacting viscerally. Macbeth’s pathetic and ineffectual replies popped out with the requisite cowardice firmly attached. It was only the speed of the exchanges and their pacing that prompted repeated run-throughs. Marc found it very difficult to re-establish his role during such repetitions, but Mrs. Thedford, to his wonderment, was able to recapture the intensity of a dialogue even when it was restarted in the middle. He soon acknowledged to himself that, in the Macbeth sequence at least, Mrs. Thedford would have to carry the audience: his amateurism would be on full display. Fortunately, the concluding piece of the Macbeth sequence was to be Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing scene with Thea as the gentlewoman and Beasley as the doctor, which had been rehearsed to perfection earlier. She would be cheered to the echo.

By the end of the Macbeth rehearsal Marc felt drained. The post-murder scene, with its multiple references to blood and seas being incarnadined, stirred up images of the carnage in Tessa’s room and a soldier’s sword steeped in gore. Mrs. Thedford seemed to be capable of charging her lines and gestures with legitimate passion and then simply withdrawing to whatever constituted her own personality with its separate virtues and feelings. But then, of course, here was a woman something less than fifty years of age who had succeeded in a man’s world against insuperable odds. Extraordinary emotional strength, self-confidence, and perseverance, in addition to intelligence and talent, would have been necessary. To own and manage a theatre and theatrical troupe would require the ability to motivate and supervise people who were inherently competitive, envious, and insecure, to navigate the shoals of financing and legal contracts, and to weather the inevitable economic setbacks and personal betrayals that were the thespian’s lot. Undoubtedly, it was such strength of character that had carried her through the crises of the past two days. If she had wept or lost her nerve or entertained despair, she had done so in private and alone.

“Now, then, Marc, let’s do the Hamlet. It should be child’s play after Antony and Macbeth.”

“But why not let Clarence play Hamlet in this scene as well as the others?”

“In order to keep our audience happy and unquestioning, I felt we needed to find a third piece for you, but Beatrice and Benedick would have been impossible for us because it’s all tempo and tone, and our complete Hamlet sequence is too long and involves too much blocking. So I just picked out this edited version of the bedchamber scene between Hamlet and Gertrude-one we could rehearse alone.”

So they proceeded as before. The lines and speeches came easily, as Mrs. Thedford had foreseen, in part because Hamlet was closer in age and temperament to Marc and in part because Marc had been compelled to memorize copious swatches of the text during his home-tutoring period with Dr. Crabbe. But he found it much harder to be on the attacking side than the receiving end, as he had been in Macbeth, much harder to be shaming his mother with lines like.

and to watch in horror as the proud and confident Mrs. Thed-ford reduced herself to a cringing, mortified creature, defenseless against her son’s moral tirade. With the ghost’s appearance edited out, the scene wound down with the queen utterly abashed and Marc having to mouth epithets that caused his gorge to rise, but apparently made young Hamlet feel purged and righteous:

When Mrs. Thedford had concluded the piece with “I have no life to breathe / What thou hast said to me,” she took a deep breath, reached over, and caressed Marc’s wrist. It was a simple gesture, wistful almost. But it struck Marc like a jolt. He felt himself physically aroused-attracted and intimidated at the same time. There seemed to be something mysterious and taboo in her appeal that left his feelings in turmoil.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her concern now taking over. “I’ve pushed you too hard, I believe. I’ve forgotten that this ordeal has had a personal meaning for you as well as us.”

“I haven’t slept well, but I’ll be fine.”

“Your friend, Mr. Hilliard, stands in the shadow of the gallows?”

“I’m afraid he does. And there is nothing I can do to help. He has confessed.”

Marc could see his own pain mirrored in her eyes, and some of his confusion. “Was it Tessa’s visit?”

Marc nodded. “He is under the illusion that he has killed for love, even though he has no recollection of doing the deed.”

“That sounds Shakespearean, doesn’t it?” she said lightly. Then her face became grave. “But I am sorry that Tessa escaped us this morning. She went out through the tavern. She’s still a child in many ways, but she has done Mr. Hilliard a great wrong.”

“And he has wronged himself also,” Marc said. He smiled with some effort and said sincerely, “Anyway, I would like to thank you for helping us with this enterprise tonight. I may not get a chance to do so again.”

“Oh?”

“You are free to make arrangements to leave tomorrow, if everything works out as we expect this evening. Unless you want to stay and complete your schedule.”

“Tempting as that is, I think it best for the others if we get on to Detroit as soon as possible. I’ll give you an address in Buffalo where you can ship the body, if that is all right. Jason has an elderly aunt there, his only relative.”

“I’m sure the governor will approve that.”

“And Major Jenkin tells me you are to be married soon.”

“Yes. A week this Sunday.”

“Lucky young woman,” she said. She paused and went on: “This … enterprise tonight, will it put you in danger?”

“Not if my acting skills hold up.”

Mrs. Thedford smiled. “They’ll do just fine.” It seemed for a moment that she might take him in her arms and … what? But she didn’t, and for that Marc was grateful beyond measure. If she had, he had no idea what he might have done or what irrevocable train of events he might have set in motion.

“Break a leg,” she said.

It was five o’clock when he left Merriwether’s room, where he had been mentally rehearsing his roles, and started walking towards the Cobb residence. Using the key that Ogden Frank had given him, Marc left the theatre by exiting through the door that led directly into the owner’s quarters (thus avoiding the tavern altogether) and then out the rear door into the alley. Frank, with his hand-wringing now more anticipatory than despairing, had even supplied him with a key to the outside door so that he could slip in and out by this means whenever he wished.