"Everybody can feather their nest, but it's not just anybody that can lay an egg!"
It was a slightly damp and dull Wednesday in September, an inauspicious day to open a new production (old to the Company, new to Kalispell), but the failure of their first effort had to be remedied and remedied quickly. At least Arabella had finally, FINALLY made her debut in Theatre. She had appeared on stage in front of a real live paying audience, over Mr Simons objections, despite Miss Hardy's misgivings, and totally ignoring Mr Darling's counter arguments: she had played a dead body in a coffin in little-known playwright Eugene O'Flagherty's three act melodrama "John's Secret". They had only let Arabella be in it as she had promised to get them a coffin as a prop if they did so. Despite Arabella's bravura performance as the very dead, very still Miss Breckenridge, it was a flop. Kalispellians didn't want to spend their hard earned brass watching people on stage who were just like them; dull, hardworking Americans going about the normal problems of life.
As late afternoon ran into early evening it became time to start lighting the lamps in front of the large mirror where the actresses prepared for the next attempt. Something a little more exotic and different: "The Siberian Princess"; little-known playwright Ford Brassic's exciting historical drama set in the Russia of 1812! Miss Hardy, of course, the star of the show, as the Tsarina, the sturdy old Mrs Talbot, who usually played people's aged mothers or old peasant women (tonight she was playing an old peasant woman's mother) and, when she finally showed up, young Miss Beatrice Shaw, she of the golden ringlets and the big bosoms, about the worst actor in the troupe and their biggest draw (though Miss Hardy was loath to admit it!). She would be playing the eponymous Princess Olga. Miss Arabella Mudd ('understudy to Miss Shaw') had a small walk on part as a maid and a line: 'It is Napoleon's Army, Your Highness, they have taken Moscow!" which she had practiced so much that the words didn't seem to even mean anything anymore.
The main part of her job, as 'Understudy' seemed to be playing the piano before and after the show, and during the intermission, running around looking for missing props, painting scenery, getting the cast's laundry done, and generally being everyone else's skivvy. But she was loving every minute of it. At last she, she a little ignorant scrap of nothing from the hills of western Virginia, was an Actress! However, a couple of walk on parts were no preparation for what was about to come.
As Arabella got Miss Hardy's fake paste 'Imperial Russian Tiara' out of its box (it also served as the Imperial Roman Tiara, Imperial Austro-Hungarian Tiara; the Queen of Sheba's Crown; Queen Titania's crown, etc, etc.) the door flew open. Ah, Miss Shaw at last?! But no, it was a very agitated Mister Edward Darling, and he had only six words he wished to bellow:
"Where the HELL is Princess Olga?!"
Evelyn head jolted up from the script she was reading and she quickly turned around in her seat. Being the owner of the Excelsior Theater Company and its leading actress had its perks including having one of the very few dressing rooms the White Rose had to herself. There would have been more if the owner of the theater Ben Simons hadn't decided to keep one room as his lodgings and another (the largest one of all) as a room for private card games. No matter how the plays performed in financial terms, Ben would always come out in front due to this side venture.
However, what Ben did with the building was his own concern. What mattered to her was how much money the plays she put on made. It was taking a few tries to find out what Kalispell audiences liked and hopefully, "The Siberian Princess" was the one to finally make a profit. The others, even though they could be considered as flops, managed to sell enough tickets to break even but if this forced visit to a town in the middle of nowhere was to be a success she needed the rest of the plays to be almost sell-outs each night.
She got up out of her chair to go see what Darling was yelling about it. Princess Olga was to be played by Beatrice but it sounded like she was missing. A frown appeared on Evelyn's face as she hoped that the vacuous Beatrice was still on her way to the theater because she had overslept again.
Going to the room next door, she saw Darling was really in a state and she knew she had to calm the man down. "All right, Edward you know what Beatrice is like. She's never missed a curtain rise before, despite her ways and she'll be here soon."
"How very dare you?! Of course it's my natural hair color!"
Going to the room next door, she saw Darling was really in a state and she knew she had to calm the man down. "All right, Edward you know what Beatrice is like. She's never missed a curtain rise before, despite her ways and she'll be here soon."
"Oh you think, do you?!" demanded Mr Darling dramatically, "Then, pray tell me Madame, why, when I enquired at her lodgings, was I very curtly informed that she has cleared her belongings from her room and bolted without paying her bill, leaving me, ME! - one of the leading thespians of his day - suffering the slings and arrows of an irate Mrs Wigfall?! She is gone! Gone I tell you!! Oh, why do the fates bestow such calamities upon our little troupe!! Why? WHY?!"
"Why?" asked Mrs Talbot quietly, not even looking up from her knitting.
"Guess we'll just have to cancel the show" shrugged Arabella.
"WHAT?!! Wash your mouth out with soap and water, Miss Mudd!!" hissed Darling "There is no such word as 'Cancel' in this Company! The show WILL go on. You are the Traitor Shaw's understudy, YOU must take her part, girl!!"
Arabella gulped. "Maybe she just changed lodgings?" she squeaked. In a town with only one boarding house, this seemed a little like grasping at straws.
The door opened and another man pushed his way it, it was Mister Astin, the Company's Juvenile Lead: tall, dark and handsome, the idol of the ladies when on stage, a beautiful mannequin upon which to hang a dinner suit or a uniform, a fine tenor and a manly stride. Off stage, over fond of the drink and the gambling tables... and surprisingly dull; but, at least, not over fond of the ladies. In fact, quite the opposite.
"It's Beatrice!" he announced.
The entire room looked up expectantly. even old Mrs Talbot in her rocking chair looked up from her knitting. "Yes?!"
"She's done a bunk, that cowboy she was sparking with is gone too. They've done a midnight flit." he further elucidated.
Mister John Martin Astin, the Company's Juvenile Lead
"She did what!", Eve replied in voice that was almost a shout. She wasn't happy about the situation but she was more angry that she found out now just before they were due to go on stage.
"Damn that girl and damn that cowboy as well."
After a minute or two to take time to calm down a little, she looked over at Arabella, "Darling is right, you're going to have to play Princess Olga tonight. In fact, you have no choice in the matter."
"Everybody can feather their nest, but it's not just anybody that can lay an egg!"
"She did what!", Eve replied in voice that was almost a shout. She wasn't happy about the situation but she was more angry that she found out now just before they were due to go on stage.
"Damn that girl and damn that cowboy as well."
Arabella was so shocked that she didn't even put her hands over her ears when Miss Evie (and the rest of them, even Miss Talbot) swore.
After a minute or two to take time to calm down a little, she looked over at Arabella, "Darling is right, you're going to have to play Princess Olga tonight. In fact, you have no choice in the matter."
"What if I can't remember the lines?!" she yelped, but Mr Darling had an answer.
"Miss Mudd, there is one sovereign cure for that... it is called 'walking onto the stage!"
As it was, the main problem was getting Miss Shaw's costume to fit Arabella. They were pretty much the same height, but Miss Shaw had been far, far more generously apportioned in the bosom area, and at one point during her dressing, Mr Darling was heard to cry "Raid your bottom drawer, Mister Astin, if you please: we are going to need more socks!!"
_________________
It was a full house: packed even. Mr Darling peeped out from the wings of the tiny stage and could be heard muttering "Excellent, excellent: what suckers we democratic Americans are for a dash of royalty, dangled before our eyes like a handful of glistening fool's gold."
Arabella forgot that having to be the Princess didn't preclude her from having to play the piano as the audience flooded in. Were there even this many people IN Kalispell she wondered as she thumped out a rousing chorus of something Russian-y whose composer's name (like most of the names in the play, actually) was almost impossible to pronounce. She didn't know which was worse: all the strange faces being ushered in, or the other ones she did recognise. Performing before either had its own terrors.
Darling strode on as she played her final coda and dashed back stage. He was so over the top, he was always a cinch to start any production and had the audience booing and hissing him as the primary villain, the French Ambassador, La Comte de Batard, within a few seconds of his arrival. Then Miss Hardy came on to applause as the winsome and beautiful Tsarina: every woman in the audience wanted to be her, every man in the audience wanted to protect her and win her love.
Batard made his predictable terrible demands (Booooo) and the Tsarina gave her spirited reply and dismissed him (Hooray!!) Then the anodyne but undeniably handsome Mr Astin strode on in a hussar unifrom with britches so tight that there was an audible creaking of corsets as the more hot blooded female members of the audience, along with Mister Pettigrew, leaned forward in their seats. Beside him, Mrs Talbot braved her rheumatism, cowering as a dishevelled peasant woman.
"It is I, Grand Duke Popov, back from fighting the dastardly French! But lo, what is wrong, Old Mother?" he asked the quivering crone.
"I have been sent to the evil Princess Olga to be judged for stealing a slice of black bread to feed my hungry brood!" the old actress wailed as only she could wail.
This was Arabella's cue. she marched on stage, only to be greeted by Jimmy Miller on the front row shouting "Oh shit, it's that girl from the funeral parlour, we want the blonde one with the big tits!" The more rowdy element of the audience laughed out loud at this unseemly interruption to Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
Arabella, usually the biggest coward in any fight, would have run back to the dressing room and bawled her eyes out at this setback; but Princess Olga saw red, she marched to the lip of the stage pulled a rolled up pair of socks from inside the bust of her dress and threw it square in Jimmy Miller's face! Then she delivered her line, not to Mrs Talbot, but to the shocked big mouth. "Guards, take this peasant outside to be flogged, beheaded and thrown to my hounds!!"
"Hey, she can't do that to me! I'm an American citizen!" Miller protested loudly, but those sitting around him told him to shut up and sit down and the scene, and in fact the whole of the rest of the play, proceeded relatively quietly from then on in, apart from the odd audible muttering of Miller about his democratic rights and some wag at the back who, every time a character displeased Olga, shouted "Throw him to the hounds, Princess!" or "Flog him!" or, during one scene where the wicked Princess Olga nearly seduced the goody-goody Grand Duke Tight-Britches, their lips very nearly touching on stage, shouted "Well, go ahead and kiss 'er yuh fool!"
It was an odd thing that, actually: although they were both 'gay as Jays', Arabella and Mister Astin had a bizarre sexual chemistry when on stage together and when the Company put on review type shows, would always do some soppy 'Southland' type duet, with Arabella in frothy bloomers swinging on a swing and Mr Astin in top hat, ante-bellum frock coat and extremely tight riding britches warbling some ditty together about steamboats and cotton plantations and magnolias. Corny, but they always pulled it off. Off stage, they virtually ignored each other.
Arabella and Mr Darling on stage had a different type of chemistry: explosive. they spent so much time trying to upstage each other that they sometimes forgot they were in a play at all and many an after show row took place, usually ending with Mr darling flouncing off to the saloon exclaiming "I cannot go on with that girl again!! I cannot I tell you! Either she goes or I go!!"
As for Eve Hardy and Arabella together... they were as flat as Miss Mudd's décolletage after she'd thrown her socks at Jimmy Miller. They would have to work on that.
Ooops - got carried away!
Eve had to admit that Arabella had raw talent but it needed work. The girl had to learn to work with others a bit more and realised that it always wasn't about her. Arabella also had to learn to ignore the audience and continue on no matter they did or say.
When the performance was over, Darling went into his usual spiel about not being able to work with anyone who tried to upstage him. Eve had been through this hundreds of time and Darling usually calmed down after some re-assuring that he was still more important to the company than some upstart. Which at this point was true. However, Arabella, like most actors had grander plans.
As for herself, she was content with running her theatre company and touring the smaller towns. Maybe she would give it all up one day if she found a good reason to but for now there wasn't and what matter was the reaction to Arabella's debut and how the girl would handle it.
Knowing that Arabella was found of tooting her own horn at times, Eve knew that she would have to stop her from going all around town and bragging about her performance. From her discussions with Ben, she found most people in town could only tolerate Arabella so much. They preferred to turn and go in the opposite direction if they saw her coming. The town's perception of Arabella had to change if she was going to sell tickets.
She made her way to the room where Arabella was. Hopefully, the girl had changed clothes by now as she didn't relish a conversation through the door.
"Everybody can feather their nest, but it's not just anybody that can lay an egg!"
When Miss Hardy entered the more down-market dressing room Mrs Talbot and Beatrice had shared, Arabella had removed her Princess Olga dress and carefully hung it up and was now parading up and down in her frillies, lecturing old Mrs Talbot and Mister Astin about how great she'd been.
"And did you see that part where Mister Miller was trying to sass me from the audience and I told him off! Ha ha, the look on that idiot's face! And how about that part in act two when I forgot my lines and just made some stuff up, and it made it look like Mister Darling'd forgot his lines! That was funny! And say, Johnnie, how 'bout that big cheer we got when you kissed me on the balcony. It's funny, I thought I'd hate being kissed by a man but it was all right because I was pretending to be Princess Olga, yet looking at you now, the whole idea makes me feel sick."
"It's mutual." said Mr Astin laconically, wondering if he could score a loan from the annoying Miss Mudd so he could go gambling at the Stardust. Mrs Talbot just carried on knitting in her rocking chair and smiled indulgently at the girl's excited ramblings: she had been a young actress herself, once.
The door opened and Arabella turned to see who it was: perhaps an admirer with an enormous bouquet of flowers or something. Oh, just Evelyn.
"Oh! Howdy Miss Hardy! Say, wasn't I wonderful tonight?!" she fished, shamelessly.
"You did well enough...given the short notice," Eve answered, "However, if you are going to continue, you must remember that this is an acting company. We rely on you just as you rely on us to make it all work out. If one of us gives a bad performance then we all suffer."
She paused for a moment to have a quick look at the costumes to see if anything needed fixing and to give herself time to frame her words. In a way, she would have to be stern to get what she wanted from the young girl.
Turning back to face Arabella, she nodded, "One also has to remember that in their hometown, they will have to make people see them in a new light...to make people believe that you are the part you are playing and to forget that you're the girl who works in the funeral parlour."
"Everybody can feather their nest, but it's not just anybody that can lay an egg!"
"You did well enough...given the short notice," Eve answered.
"Oh I know, and just imagine how much better I'll be when I'm expecting it!" she beamed. It would take more than just a little 'damning with faint praise' to knock Arabella's duck off.
"However, if you are going to continue, you must remember that this is an acting company. We rely on you just as you rely on us to make it all work out. If one of us gives a bad performance then we all suffer."
"Ooohhhh, you mean like Mister Darling? Yep, he was a little heavy handed on occasion, but I think I saved it!" she chirruped, Mrs Talbot in her rocking chair chuckled gently, Mister Astin, as per usual, looked impassive.
Turning back to face Arabella, she nodded, "One also has to remember that in their hometown, they will have to make people see them in a new light...to make people believe that you are the part you are playing and to forget that you're the girl who works in the funeral parlour."
The scales fell from Arabella's eyes: but they were the wrong scales, slightly.
"Ohhwuh! You want me to throw in my job at Mister Jolly's! Why sure. I was just helpin' out where I can because he's so short handed right now with Raymond gone, don't even know why he done that... er... did that..." she was trying to improve her diction and elocution all the time now. "... and anyhow, Mister Jolly don't like messing around with the ladies and girls. Least not the dead ones. He says folks have wagging tongues."
She'd slightly forgotten where this was all going.
"I'm not sure that is quite what Miss Hardy means, Miss Mudd." Mrs Talbot chipped in. "I think it is more to do with your on-stage and off stage demeanor."
Arabella frowned and looked at Miss Hardy.
"My what now?!"
Eve sighed, "To put it simply...when you appear on that stage I want people to see Princess Olga or whatever part you are playing and not Arabella Mudd."
She went over to the girl and place her hand gently on her shoulder, "You've got talent but it isn't any good if you haven't got the presence you need both on stage and off it. You need to learn to rise above the rabble and learn to ignore what is going on in the audience."
Stepping back, she sighed again, "You will also need to learn how to play the press as they can make or break a show. How's your relationship with the local newspaper?"