Fault in the Structure

his missing five guineas, he turn’d me off. Now I never suspected he had counted them.’

After that, the business of Jenny Diver, Sukey Tawdrey, the pistols and the arrest of Macheath by Peachum and the constables brought the scene to a dramatic end, and the audience settled down to its boxes of rustling chocolates and its appreciative conversation while the scene was changed to Newgate gaol.

The first indication that there were to be certain departures from what had been rehearsed came with the entrance of Melanie as Lucy Lockit. There was no doubt that Melanie had not only looked upon the wine when it was red, but upon a fair measure of gin also.

She almost tripped over her own feet as she approached the perfidious Macheath, and her opening remark: ‘You baish man, you!’ was delivered with such concentrated venom that even Laura, accustomed as she was to Melanie’s histrionics, was surprised and startled by the outburst and by the slurred sibilant, and when the next bit of the diatribe came out as: ‘How can you look me in the faish after what hash parshed between ush?’ surprise turned to certainty.

‘My gosh!’ said Laura in a whisper. ‘The fool’s as tight as a tick!’ She left her seat, crouching low, and slipped round to the back of the stage. In the wings she found Ernest Farrow literally wringing his hands.

‘What on earth are we to do?’ he said. ‘Melanie is drunk.’

‘Superbly so,’ agreed Laura. That this was no overstatement was proved a moment or so later. Upon the words: ‘I could tear thy eyes out!’ Melanie caught Lawrence a smack across the face which made him recoil and then she followed this up with a furious attack upon him which gave a vivid impression that she intended to carry out this threat.

Laura hissed at the students who were manipulating the curtain. As it came down, she and Ernest dashed on stage and pinioned the fermenting Lucy Lockit and hustled her into the wings, where she collapsed into a heap at the top of the O.P. stairs and broke into noisy, tipsy weeping.

Laura said to Ernest: ‘I’ll find Marigold Tench and tell her to get into my Mrs Peachum costume and stick some make-up on. You push out in front and tell the audience that Melanie has a temperature and can’t continue. Crave their indulgence for a few minutes.’

At this moment Hamilton Haynings, who had been waiting on the Prompt side for his entrance as Lockit, Lucy’s father, came across to them.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Is she ill?’

‘Yes. Get on and say so. All right, Ernest. You just put the word round backstage that we shall be resuming as soon as Marigold is ready.’ She pulled the weeping Melanie to her feet. ‘Come on. The dressing-room for you,’ she said. There was a chaise longue in the dressing-room. There was also Marigold Tench. Laura pushed Melanie on to the former and tackled the latter.

‘Put my costume on. We’re much of a height,’ she said. ‘You know the book of words and the solos and duets as well as she does. This is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. I’ll help you dress.’

‘I feel sick,’ moaned Melanie from the chaise longue.

‘Then for pity’s sake go and be it,’ said Laura, hauling her up and dragging her towards the lavatory.

To the credit of the cast, nobody panicked or fluffed. The new Lucy proved more than adequate. She had had enough to drink to excite without intoxicating her and she put up what, under the circumstances, was a most meritorious perforamnce. The audience applauded her warmly, not only out of kindness to an understudy who had been called upon without warning, but as a tribute to a good performance.

As for Hamilton Haynings, he was seen that evening at his best. Going in front of the curtain in the lugubrious rusty black coat and breeches of the master gaoler, he had assumed the Friend and Champion of the People role which had served him so well in his public speeches before council elections. He was sorry, he said, for the hold-up. A doctor was in attendance upon Miss Cardew and had diagnosed a temperature of one hundred and three degrees. It had been very plucky of Miss Cardew to attempt to play the part when she was feeling so ill, (applause, for which he waited), but it was impossible for her to continue. He craved the indulgence of the audience for just a few minutes and bowed himself off to further applause.

The opera continued on its course. Having fulfilled the promise of Trinculo’s foul bombard and shed her liquor, Melanie had fallen asleep on the chaise longue. The costume of Mrs Peachum proved to fit Marigold well enough, and Laura returned to her seat next to Dame Beatrice and was soon leading the applause for Lucy Lockit. She had been doubtful whether Marigold’s esprit de corps would prove equal to the demands made upon it and was grateful that her doubts had been dispelled. Eventually a speech from Macheath, ‘Tell the sheriff’s officers I am ready’, had brought the opera to the verge of its final scene.

Willing student hands trundled the fatal cart up the ramp and into position centre-back of the stage, but then came the second hold-up.

‘Where are those wedges for the wheels?’ demanded a voice:

‘In the corner, top of the stairs, where we always put them,’ came a reply.

‘They aren’t there now.’

‘Well, ask the stage manager.’

But the wedges had disappeared.

‘Look, the show must go on. We don’t really need the wedges. They’re only an extra precaution. The rope will hold the cart and two of you can stand by while Macheath mounts it. He’s only up there a matter of minutes, anyway,’ said Ernest Farrow, a speech which was remembered against him later. ‘Do let’s get the scene going. The chaps are ready in the corridor with the bouquets and we’re running late already. Some of the audience have trains and buses to catch and the town hall staff expect to be off duty at ten-thirty.’

Backstage Macheath was proving recalcitrant.

‘I don’t want that beastly thing over my head and I don’t want my hands tied,’ he said.

‘Of course you do,’ said Ernest Farrow, hastening over to him. Two stalwart students, taking their cue from this, pinioned him, merely looping the cord over itself as they had done at the other performances. They crammed the white cap over his head and ears, and patted him on the back.