Shakespeare's Valentine Pt. 06

147.

Saturday, February 12: two performances, a preview, and then opening night. Not ideal, but them's the breaks. Gil gave us permission to hold a little something in reserve during the matinee. After all, a preview was technically a rehearsal with an audience, but there was an energy about our production, which...well, it's tough to describe. It supported us, I guess. It does happen occasionally, if the play is good enough. It can never happen with a bad script; play, movie, television episode, whatever: if the writing's bad, acting it feels like wading through mud. But if you're on a winner-and Shakespeare wrote winners-the play can lift you, like air under a bird's wing. All you have to do is keep things moving, and the play will let you soar.

We tore through that preview; a little rushed, a little amped on nerves, a little too eager for an audience. We were maybe 90% there, not that the audience knew the difference. The house was perhaps two-thirds full, and they were with us. As the lights came down on Malcolm's final words, they rose as a body, so that even the first line of the call-Andi Tan (Young Siward/Fleance/Caithness,) Brandon Adair (Lennox/Messenger,) Dylan Weston (Donalbain/Menteith,) Bo Adams (Bloody Sergeant/Angus/cream faced loon,) and Morton Greene (Old Man/Doctor)--bowed to a standing ovation.

Cherri and I had the final two solo bows, before I-being slightly taller than Cherri, but considerably shorter than almost everybody else-led the company call. How that would manage to happen as smoothly as it did throughout the run, I'll never know, but as the lights dimmed, my Lady pulled me close, kissed me on the cheek, and whispered: "Meet you in the greenroom?"

I nodded. "15 minutes?"

She snorted. "Says the man with no wig, and no hair. Half an hour. Maybe."

148.

More like 45 minutes, but I wasn't complaining. I spent it sitting on the beat up old suede sofa thinking about small tweaks, mostly in the second half of the play. There were a few little gaps I'd close, but there was also that beat about the approach of Birnam Wood. Brandon had the line, and he was doing so much acting as he spoke it-despite Gil's best efforts-that I wasn't sure the audience was hearing the information. I couldn't do anything about Brandon-it's unprofessional, not to mention incredibly rude to give an adjustment to a fellow actor-but I could delay my next line for a second or two, just to let the audience hear that I had a peripatetic forest on my hands...

"Goddamn, you're lucky you're bald!"

I looked up to see my beautiful, if slightly disheveled, co-star in her puffer coat, jeans, and a white faux-fur cap that made her look like a very sexy captain in the KGB, or whatever they have now instead of the KGB.

I stood up and walked over to her. My arms slipped around her waist, and I leaned in until we were almost nose to nose.

"I'm lucky to be doing a superb play with a beautiful and talented Lady..."

She giggled: "Who also happens to be sexually insatiable, at least where you're concerned."

"Hmm, yeah, that's another piece of luck. The baldness thing's just genetics."

We kissed gently, but...we had another show in less than three hours, we both needed to eat something, and...we broke apart by mutual consent. Cherri purred. We hadn't had sex for the last three nights, and while we were hungering for each other, we were also only half way through a two show day, at the end of which there was supposed to be some kind of opening night reception. Somebody hadn't thought that one through. The cast would be lucky to get back to the apartments without collapsing face first into the snow in front of the theater.

149.

We wandered out into the evening, and headed towards our temporary homes, Cherri's arm around my waist, and mine around her shoulder.

"So, my Lady, how'd you feel?"

"Not bad. Like everybody, I was a little keyed up; first audience, and all. I wasn't expecting laughs, not that there are many of them, but, well, like in...what is it, 1.4? When Duncan comes to dinner? Some chuckles on "All our services twice done and then done double..." What was that about?"

"Maybe nervous laughter, like just after the murder, when Lennox describes the storm..."

"And you've got that great response: "T'was a rough night." Yeah, but that almost always gets something."

"Well, mostly. The first time I did the play-when I was Angus and various messengers, and the Mackers was a guy named Jamie Cobb-he got that laugh, but then the second time, when I was Ross and the Porter, that guy, what was his name...something Daniels, I think. He was terrible. I remember you could drive a commuter train through his cue pick-ups. So, no laughs for him."

"I wonder if we'll find more."

"I hope so."

We'd come to the apartments. Cherri gave me a squeeze. "I think I'm going to grab a nap, and maybe a smoothie. Maybe we can...um...canoodle a bit after the show?"

"And by canoodle, I assume you mean...?"

"Fuck."

"Yeah, I figured."

"So?"

"Uh, let me think about...okay!"

She leaned in for another quick kiss. "Goof." Then: "Dai, is it weird that I'm sort of superstitious about seeing you between now and opening? Almost like I'm a bride who doesn't want the groom to see her in her wedding dress...I mean, we've just done the show, and we're less than three hours away from doing it again. Am I nuts?"

I considered that. "If you are, I am. I might not have used the bride/groom analogy, but..."

"Shit!" She looked...apprehensive. "I didn't mean to...I mean, I'm not suggesting..."

Maybe she wasn't. But we'd both thought about it: how to stay together after the run was over, when I went back to New York, and she returned to DC. I'd thought about marrying Cherri. I'd thought about it quite a bit. Mostly I liked the idea. That's not to say it didn't scare the living shit out of me, but mostly...

A topic for another time.

"Don't worry about it, my Lady, and just for the record, I think you'd look beautiful in white. Of course I think you'd look beautiful in anything."

She smiled. "Men! All you ever think about is getting married. Why can't you just relax and have some fun?"

"Uh uh! Dad always said: give it up too quick, and the ladies won't respect you in the morning."

We both started laughing. She grabbed the lapels of my coat, pulled me to her and kissed me hard. "You're insane, and I love you. Now get out of my sight until 1.5. Go-I don't know-slaughter some Norwegians or something."

150.

I had a little less than two-and-a-half hours before I had to be back at the theater. In that time, I had to grab some food, get some rest, and pick up an opening night gift for Cherri. I'd ordered what I had thought would be her gift from an old acquaintance in Flagstaff, and it had arrived earlier in the week. But now, I wasn't so sure...maybe more of a Valentine's Day sort of thing. And Valentine's Day was only two days away.

All well and good, but we were opening tonight. I had cards for cast and creatives-director, designers, etc.--but Cherri was my leading lady, as well as my lover and my...girlfriend? That sounded weird. Jesus, Brenner, sweat the nomenclature some other time! You've got less than three hours to find something meaningful for your professional partner and the love of your life on a Saturday evening in rural...FUCK!

Time for a Krogers run.

151.

God bless the American grocery store. Dinner? Not a problem: pre-packaged egg salad sandwich, banana, potato chips, cup of yogurt, and a Hostess fruit pie. Yeah, yeah, so sue me. I love those fucking things. Opening night present? Got you covered there too. One dozen red roses, complete with baby's breath, wrapped in the finest of clear plastic...plastic. They even had a blank card with a picture of a pine forest: Birnam Wood, before it got restless and took a day trip to Dunsinane!

I got back to the apartments, ate my dinner, filled out the card:

To Cherri Morganthal,

My dearest partner in greatness.

My Lady,

And my love.

Let's murder them tonight! (Literally and figuratively.)

Break 'em, and by the way, I adore you.

Xoxo,

Dai

I'd never been much good at opening night cards. I hoped this one would do.

152.

Back to the theater by 7:00, an hour before curtain, and the time I was (usually) required to show up for fight call. I don't actually know if fight call began as a union requirement or just institutionalized common sense, but before any performance which involves choreographed violence, the actors involved are required to rehearse the moves. Accidents and injuries do sometimes happen, but they happen a whole lot less often if you run a fight at half, and then three-quarter speed before every show. However...

Mac and Andi, like most fight directors and their fight captains, required only one fight call per day. We'd had one before the preview, so...I could have slept another few minutes and shown up at half hour, but I wanted to get Cherri's roses into her dressing room before she got there herself.

I knocked softly on the door of the Dressing Room #1-distinguished by a waiting area with couch and glass coffee table-which had been allocated to Cherri and Regina, as the company's two leading ladies. Regina opened the door a crack.

"For me? Aren't you sweet?"

"Actually..." I began, handing over her card as well as Cherri's goodies.

She stepped into the hallway, wrapped in a bathrobe with "The Crucible" embroidered over the left breast, and gave me a long hug.

"In bocca al lupo, Honey!"--Regina the Italianophile's version of 'Break a leg'--"Dai, it is no shit an honor, and a pleasure, to be a part of this one with you."

"Thank you, Regina! Praise from the praiseworthy! Break 'em tonight, and I can't wait to see your Beatrice!" Then, holding out the roses: "Is Cherri...?"

"In the bathroom until you go away. Give 'em here. I'll make sure she gets them."

"Thanks, Darlin'. Man, but it's nice to be working with you again! Oh, last thing: is Bandhavi coming?"

"Last week of the run. We'll have a drink, the four of us. Now scat! We got shit to do!"

I grinned. "See you on the heath!"

"Not if I see you first!"

She took the roses and Cherri's card, called "He's gone!" into the room, stepped back inside, and closed the door. I made the rounds, handing out cards, giving and receiving hugs and good wishes. We're mostly poor, and we're all of us crazy, but the actors, directors, designers, stage managers, board ops, spot ops, fly ops, running crew and the rest who power American regional theaters are some of the best people in the world, and it was and is-to borrow Regina's phrase-an honor and a pleasure to work among them.

153.

Back to the dressing room I shared with Jem Hauptmann-Duncan in Macbeth, Dogberry in Much Ado-and an Oak Ridge regular I'd met the previous summer. Over that summer I'd come to know Jem about as well as anybody gets to know Jem who doesn't happen to be feline. His station in the dressing room was festooned with a couple dozen pictures-some of them in small, expensive frames-of his eight cats. We'd gotten along well enough. Jem was polite, if a bit aloof. I'd thought him a bit underpowered for Cassius, but I'd loved him as Duke Senior in As You Like It. Then, at some point early in Macbeth rehearsals, something he'd said made me think that perhaps he was part of the anti-Cherri faction at Oak Ridge. That didn't bother me too much. I'd even thought of asking him about it, but Jem wasn't a particularly chatty guy at the best of times. As I passed his station on the way to mine, I dropped his card next to the towel on which he kept his makeup.

"Thank you, David." His voice surprised me. "Have a wonderful opening."

"You too, Jem," I replied. "Break a leg; it's a pleasure working with you again."

"I agree." I decided to take that as a compliment returned, whatever it sounded like. "Oh, by the way, the Lady was here." He never referred to Cherri by name. "She left something on your station."

"Okay. Thanks for letting me know." Talking to Jem sometimes felt like being sent to the principal's office. I found myself wondering if he'd ever played Scrooge. He'd be a very good Scrooge.

"She also gave me this." What the...? Jem was positively chatty this evening. "Which was kind of her..." He handed me a mug with what looked like a cartoon from the New Yorker printed on it: a cat in a business suit sat at a desk talking into a phone. The caption read: "Can I call you back? I'm with a piece of string."

I laughed aloud. Jem looked perplexed. "Paul Noth is a favorite of mine. I wonder how she knew?"

I thought about that bottle of Willett Pot Still Reserve. "She's a very keen observer of people." I ventured.

"Which may be one reason she is such a good actress." It sounded as if the compliment had cost him something. I waited for a beat, but Jem had apparently said his piece. He turned away, and began doing something on his phone.

154.

At my station, I found the usual collection of notes and small gifts distributed by those of us-myself included-who like to do that sort of thing. There was the usual printed note from my agency offering congratulations, and letting me know that they'd made a $50 donation on my behalf to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a candle from Marissa, a kind and earnest young vegan who was delighted to be playing the third witch, several packets of Walkers Shortbread-I don't know if it's even legal to do a production of Macbeth in the United States without somebody rocking the Walkers Shortbread-as well as a neatly wrapped package, with a card taped to the front.

The package looked big enough to contain a few National Geographic magazines, if anybody still reads magazines. It was maybe a foot long by ten inches wide by half an inch thick. I carefully detached the card-I'd been raised right: you read the card first-and when I opened the envelope, I chuckled. I wondered when Cherri had been in Krogers buying the card with the pine trees on it.

The card read:

"My Thane,

This is an opening night card, so I'll try to keep things professional, and G-rated (or at least PG-13.) Working with you on the Macbeths has been a pure joy. You are everything I could ever ask for in a partner: talented, available, unpredictable, supportive, intelligent, and so very sexy. You've helped me rediscover why I love being an actor. (And why I love sex! I think I can say that and keep things PG-13, as long as I don't mention how much I crave your cock. Oops!)

ANYWAY, your gift. A director I worked with just after college liked to say that each time you do a Shakespeare play, you join the distinguished fellowship of actors who have performed that play from Shakespeare's time to ours. I thought you might enjoy a little something from another couple of members of the fellowship. I also thought about waiting to give it to you, so that I could see your reaction, but I chickened out.

I hope you like it, but I don't really care, just as long as you love me. Because I love you, Dai Brenner, with all my heart.

Break a leg, but not before you kiss me in 1.5!

Love,

Cherri."

155.

Turns out you can feel love, physically. And I'm not talking about the physical manifestations of sexual desire either, hard cocks and wet pussies and such, although that's all pretty great too...

Tears came into my eyes. The corners of my mouth twitched upward into the beginnings of a grin. My heart pounded in my chest, and my breathing deepened. My body temperature rose from within, or at least it felt like it did. All five of my senses felt...lonely. My fingers ached to caress the skin of Cherri's lower back. It was weirdly specific. My mouth wanted her mouth. Not, for the moment, her nipples or her neck or her labia; her mouth, specifically her lips.

Words on a card. No, I'd never been in love before. Not like this.

I reached for her gift, and peeled off the wrapping paper: a framed black and white photograph-8 x 10-maybe a press shot. The Macbeths, of course. The man was handsome, in black wig, goatee and mustache. The woman was...beyond beautiful, in what looked like a lighter colored wig, and the heavy theatrical makeup typical of the period. I knew who they were. Of course I did. The picture was from one of the most famous productions ever. I didn't need to read the inscription, or the two signatures, but I read them anyway. The ink was still dark, even after almost 70 years, and the writing was neat and legible. The man had apparently dashed off a quick acknowledgement to whoever had requested the autographs. Then he'd signed his name, and handed the pen to his wife. In the picture, the royal couple sat on thrones with triangular backs, and in the gray background space between them floated the words: "With love and thanks, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh. Stratford Memorial Theatre, 1955."

Over my shoulder, I heard Jem Hauptmann whisper: "Good Lord!"

155.

"Come thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry, 'Hold, hold!'"

Early on in the rehearsal process, I'd persuaded Gil to let me enter a little early, catching my lovely Lady at the climax of her incantation. Now I stood upstage of her, and slightly to her right, admiring her shape through the forest green velvet dress which clung to the curves of her long, lithe body. I'd seen Cherri less than three hours ago, and still I could feel my breath catch, my skin tingle, and my cock swell beneath my kilt. She kept her eyes forward, sensing me in the room behind her as she continued:

"Great Glamis!"

She began to turn towards me, as I crossed down to her right until we were on the same plane. Our eyes met, and she smiled.

"Worthy Cawdor! Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter!"

She ran into my arms, kept her face downstage so that she could be heard; my Lady was a pro.

"Thy letters have transported me beyond

This ignorant present, and I feel now..."

On the line break, she turned her face up to mine and closed her eyes as she breathed:

"The future in the instant!"

Three words to complete her line. The easiest three words I had to say in the entire play: "My dearest love..." And then I kissed her.

156.

At some point during rehearsals, it occurred to me that, for my Macbeth, this moment-holding his beloved wife in his arms, kissing her after months apart, having just returned from a brutal and bloody civil war-this is the last genuinely happy moment in his life. For those few seconds he can forget the approach of the kinsman and sovereign he's half-decided to kill. He can put aside for the duration of a kiss the prophecy he feels compelled to fulfill through violence. Soon she'll be urging him on. In our staging she'll draw the dagger from the sheath at his back on her line: "...be the serpent under it." and put it into his hands as she continues: "He that's coming must be...provided for..." And from then on, he'll have no time to do anything other than obsess on the murder, commit the murder, cover up the murder, protect her from the cover up, isolate her from the necessity of piling slaughter upon slaughter to solidify their position, return to the witches for some reassurance that his reign and legacy can be solidified, and then, every night after they become king and queen...every night...he'll fuck her. Joylessly. Lovelessly. Mechanically. A parody of their former intimacy, rooted In a vain attempt to conceive the heir he fears that he can never engender. At the end of our first act, he'll bend her over the ruins of their banqueting table, and begin to raise her skirts as he tries to persuade himself that "We are yet but young in deed." Just before he thrusts into her...blackout.