“Cook says conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
“Cook has an extraordinary faculty for hitting a nail on the head. When did she say that?”
“It was when Carrie’s brother had to marry his young woman.”
“I doubt whether that was a question of conscience, but we must give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I cannot prove who plastered one of my best shirts with your mother’s lipstick.”
“We were playing murders, so there had to be blood.”
“I appreciate that and as you were having a birthday party and there were guests present, I forbore to ask any questions.”
“Cook says you shouldn’t tell tales out of school.”
“Nor in it, either. You remember that.”
“So I didn’t tell you it was Bayard Thompson put the lipstick on your shirt.”
“Well, it’s all fixed, it seems,” said Simon, a few weeks later. “There was only a fortnight unaccounted for, but the Yorkes are going to fill in in return for use of this place for the play. What’s more, the dancing-class lady, Signora Moretti, is undertaking to coach the Midsummer Dream fairies in dance and song, so Rosamund and Edmund will be in the play to that extent. I have only one misgiving. There are to be three performances and all of them in the evening. Lynn, the financier chap, is going to be Yorke’s ‘angel’, so the costumes will be lavish, the lighting professional, amplifiers hitched up among the trees and the Ladies’ Orchestra to supply the music. Heaven only knows what else he seems prepared to pay for. One thing: he can afford it.”
“What are your misgivings?”
“The lateness of the hour at which the performances will close. The children will be kept up until eleven at night or later.”
“No, as a matter of fact, they won’t. I was talking to the signora when I took the children to dancing class last Saturday and she has made it a condition that the younger children will not be in the concluding scene at all. It can be played by Oberon, Titania and Puck, with members of the Ladies’ Choral supplying the song and leaving out the last fairy dance. The small children will be released at the end of the first scene in the third act.”
“Even then I suppose it will be long past their usual bedtime.”
“It won’t hurt them for just three nights and they can sleep on in the mornings. It will mean a fat fee for Signora Moretti if the children appear. We can’t do her out of it. It’s not as though the play itself is something from which the children can take any harm, and they’ll adore being in it.”
Chapter 2
Read-Through
“Is all our company here?
—You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.”
« ^ »
Cast it yourself,” said Donald Bourton. “You know what a lot of time got wasted and what ill-feeling there was when we had a casting committee last October for the Christmas play. No two members agreed about anything and the result was very nearly a fiasco. You’re producing and directing and it was you who got Lynn to put up the money. You ought to have your own way about allotting the parts.”
“That’s all very well, but it’s not so easy to take matters into one’s own hands with an amateur cast. With professionals you can say take it or leave it, but with people who are doing it for free, and with all the vested interests lined up against you, it’s not so simple. At least to have a committee does spread the load.”
“And mucks up the production. Anyway, it seems to me that this time there is only one vested interest to consider, and that’s Lynn himself. I take it that he’s not financing us purely out of the goodness of his heart.”
“No. He expects fat parts for himself, his wife and, to a lesser degree because the boy is doing his A-levels this year, something for his son.”
“Oh, well, he who pays the piper calls the tune. You’ll have to guide his choice a bit, that’s all.”
“It’s all very well to talk. He’s short and stout, as you know, and will probably want to play one of the lovers. He’s already bespoken a part for his spouse. He’s read the play and thinks she would make a good Hermia. I wanted your Barbara for that.”
“Cast Barbara as Helena and have the audience wondering why both the men wanted Hermia when Helena was in their midst. Barbara won’t mind what part she plays, so long as Lynn pays her. She is a professional, you know.”
“Well, perhaps the read-through will settle a few things, although I doubt it. People always have such inflated ideas of what they can do on the stage.”
“I hate to mention it, but do I get a look-in anywhere?”
“So far as I’m concerned, you can have your pick of Lysander or Demetrius, unless Lynn picks one of them for himself. We must do our best to head him off if he does. There’s another thing which makes the casting a bit of a problem. Shakespeare, for obvious reasons, used as few women as he could, whereas in our lot we have far more women than men. In
“Whoever plays Quince—and you
