The interior of the Bedford Street Playhouse looked like a Wedgwood box, with white sculptures standing out in relief against a background of china blue. A long folding table set up stage left was littered with stacks of actors’ headshots, scripts, and the ubiquitous paper coffee cups.
Ralph introduced C.J. and Bernie to Humphrey and Beth, then seated himself behind the table and pushed an open box of cookies toward C.J. “Before you jump into the scene, have a ratafia cake,” the designer said, with his mouth full. “Beth baked them. Sort of to get us all in that 1801 mood.”
“What are ratafia cakes?” C.J. asked the director.
“Sort of like little meringues made with ground almonds, egg whites, and orange-flower water. They were a very traditional dessert back then.”
“But,” Humphrey chimed in, “in 1801, they used to make them with bitter almonds instead of grinding sweet ones. Bitter almonds contain prussic acid.”
C.J. frowned. “Sorry, guys, I flunked chemistry. Enlighten me.”
“Poison,” Beth and Humphrey responded in tandem. They looked at each other and laughed.
Beth smiled. “Prussic acid is hydrogen cyanide. Poison.”
“I think I’ll pass,” C.J. said.
The audition was almost as painful as prussic acid poisoning. Poor Bernie was a hopeless actor, and C.J. left the stage feeling defeated and robbed of the opportunity to have done her best work. So much for karma. She was in the corridor putting on her coat when Ralph emerged from the theatre. “C.J., they’d like to see you do the scene again with a different actor.”
Back onstage, C.J.’s second chance was going terrifically. Beth was highly complimentary of her work and made particular mention of C.J.’s flawless English accent, praise indeed coming from a true Brit.
As she was preparing to leave the playhouse, C.J. felt a tap on her shoulder. Ralph again. “They’d like to bring you in for a callback, C.J. So you’ll be hearing from us within the week about the specifics. Congratulations.”
As it turned out, there were nine grueling rounds of callbacks before C.J. made it to the final cut. Personally as well as professionally, her nerves were raw.
Two weeks after her first By a Lady audition, she stood on a chair in the backstage area, being fussed over by a professional costumer brought in by the producers. The people from Miramax wanted to see the final casting choices in full costume, by appointment, one at a time, as if they were being screentested. C.J. caught her reflection in the dressing room mirrors. “Wow! Except for the zipper in the gown, I really feel like I’m back in 1801.”
“You look exactly like one of those pre-Regency portraits. It’s amazing,” commented Elsie Lazarus, the assistant stage manager.
Milena, the costumer, handed C.J. a straw bonnet decorated with simple yellow ribbons. “I can’t wait to see how you look in this.” C.J. tied a bow under her chin, edged it just off to the side as she’d seen in illustrations of the period, and regarded herself in the mirror.
“Don’t forget to accessorize,” Elsie said. She gestured to a coquelicot shawl and the cream silk reticule and ecru lace mitts that hung in a net bag on the costume rack. “All set?” C.J. nodded. “Then let’s go! Break a leg!”
Fighting the manifestations of stage fright, C.J. stepped out onto the stage. In accordance with the lead designer’s mandate from the producers to deliver a rehearsal version of the eventual Broadway set, Ralph had constructed a pair of freestanding frames with brass-handled doors, which now added definition to the space, creating the boundaries of Jane Austen’s parlor in Steventon.
Beth’s voice echoed from the audience. “Right, then, would everyone please humor me and put your Starbucks cups down for the next five minutes. Let’s settle. Thank you. All right, C.J., I’d like to hear the monologue toward the end of Act One as if we’ve got Lefroy onstage with you, and take it all the way through to Jane’s exit, please,” Beth added crisply.
Infused with something out of the ordinary, C.J. began the speech she had been asked to memorize for her final audition. Perhaps it was the addition of the costume and accessories, but she had no trouble believing that on that stage in Greenwich Village, she was stepping back in time more than two hundred years.
“I will think on it, Tom,” C.J. said resolutely, nearing the end of the scene. “And accord the utmost consideration to your proposal.” She crossed thoughtfully to the doorway, stopped, and turned as the lights began to fade. “Bath,” she said, her voice tinged with ambivalence. “I’m going to Bath.”
As she closed Ralph’s door behind her and exited the stage, C.J. found herself enveloped in complete and impenetrable blackness.
Chapter Two
The beginning of a most unusual journey in which our heroine soon learns that Merrie Olde England isn’t always.
SEVERAL MOMENTS ELAPSED before C.J. was able to adjust her vision. She surveyed the breadth of the polished oaken floor of the stage, her gaze lighting upon an arcaded area at the back of the house. Through the musty gloom she discerned elaborate boxes trimmed in wine-red upholstery on either side of the intimate theatre above the pit level. The rest of the theatre—including the galleries, which were divided into smaller loges—was decorated primarily in a rich shade of malachite green.
Where am I? C.J. wondered aloud, her voice greeting her in echo. She had just exited the stage at the Bedford Street Playhouse—had stepped off the makeshift set of By a Lady into the familiar backstage darkness—or so she thought. But now she was not backstage—either in Manhattan or anywhere.
She peered into the dim cavern illuminated only by renegade slivers of daylight seeping in from outdoors. The small, shallow orchestra stalls were furnished with hard wooden benches rather than individual seats, and the balconies encircling the interior of the auditorium on three sides were considerably close to the stage.
Apart from the hushed, almost reverent, quiet of the darkened empty theatre, there was
