I had been in Ashland less than a day and had not yet adjusted to the way locals and visitors alike tend to shorten play titles to one-word monikers.
'Excuse me?'
Guy Lewis laughed. 'Daphne and I are seeing one of the Henrys in the Elizabethan tonight. I forget which one. The Festival always seems to be doing at least one of those. They all tend to run together after a while. By the way, have you seen Alexis lately?'
My ears reddened. 'Actually, Alex and I are here together.'
Guy Lewis grinned and slapped me on the back. 'Good for you,' he said heartily. 'Alex is quite a woman. Are you seeing Henry, too?'
I shook my head. 'We're scheduled for Romeo and Juliet.'
Guy Lewis nodded. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'We saw that two days ago. It's excellent. Wait until you see the girl who plays Juliet,' he added after a pause. 'She's something else. By the way, there's a little backstage get-together at the Bowmer right after the play tonight. Just a few people mingling with the actors. I'm sure Alexis would enjoy it. Why don't you join us?'
'I'll check with Alex,' I said.
By then we had crossed the street and walked far enough that we were approaching the brick courtyard located between the two theaters. The space between the outdoor Elizabethan and the indoor Bowmer was jammed with a happy, show-going crowd that was congregated around some central but as-yet-unseen point of interest. As we came closer, I heard the sound of music and laughter.
'That'll be the Green Show,' Guy Lewis informed me. 'Have you ever seen it before?'
I shook my head. 'Looks like now's the time,' I said.
I didn't tell him that I had any kind of personal interest in seeing this hitherto-unexperienced spectacle. Together we worked our way over to the edge of the packed throng until we could see the action.
On a small raised platform, a group of dancers costumed in Elizabethan attire was performing what was probably a distant precursor of today's square dancing. Behind them stood another costumed group of individuals, all of them playing strange-looking, mostly unfamiliar instruments. And in the middle of that group of musicians, tall and ramrod straight, stood Jeremy Todd Cartwright, honking away on a long, thin horn that might have been an old-time, fourth-grade Tonette after it overdosed on steroids. From the way his cheeks puffed, Jeremy was blowing his lungs out, but the resulting sound reminded me more than anything of a quacking duck. A tunefully quacking duck.
That's a krummhorn? I thought. He's going to support Kelly and a baby playing that thing? Give me a break!
The number ended. To a round of enthusiastic applause, the Green Show troupe gathered its instruments and started toward the entrance to the Elizabethan Theatre with most of the crowd moving along behind them. 'Well,' Guy Lewis was saying, 'there's the wife. I'd best get cracking. Hope to see both you and Alex at the party after the show.'
'By the way,' I said, before he moved out of earshot. 'How's that Bentley of yours running?'
'Great,' he said. 'Daphne found this terrific mechanic. He has it purring like a kitten.'
With a casual wave, he blended into the crowd. A moment later, Alexis Downey appeared at my elbow. 'Wasn't that Guy Lewis?' she demanded.
'As a matter of fact, it was.'
'What's he doing down here?'
'Seeing some plays, I guess. By the way, Guy said there's a backstage get-together at the Bowmer after the plays tonight. We're invited to come along. If you're up to it, that is.'
'Damn!' I was surprised by the sudden angry vehemence in Alexis Downey's voice.
'Alex, what's the matter?'
'Dinky told me about that party,' Alexis returned darkly. 'It's a very intimate little affair designed to pull in some very major donors. I don't know who the hell they think they are, poaching on my fund-raising territory. All I can say is, it's a damn good thing we're here.'
She flounced away from me toward the entrance to the Bowmer.
'What do you mean?' I asked, trailing along after her.
'I have a verbal pledge from Guy Lewis that the Seattle Rep is a major beneficiary of his estate. If that bitch down here tries to change his mind, she has another thing coming!'
My mother died years before I met Alex Downey, but right then the two of them sounded like soul mates. As a child, I spent years waiting for that 'another thing,' expecting it to beam down from the sky like a righteous bolt of avenging lightning. Alex may have been upset, but it pleased me to hear that echo of my mother.
Also like Mom, Alex is slow to anger. Once riled, though, look out. As we took our seats, I counseled myself to hold my tongue.
Actually, keeping a low profile is good advice when it comes to dealing with any irate woman. It merits special mention in a chapter dealing with 'Hell hath no fury…' and all that jazz.
I don't know that exact quote. I'm not literary enough to recall who said it, but avoiding scorned women is also sage advice.
Later on I would wonder if anybody ever bothered to pass along that judicious bit of folk wisdom to poor old Guy Lewis.
CHAPTER 4
Married people do it all the time. They go to plays or parties or some other event so angry they barely speak to one another. I know I did it with Karen, but this was my first experience of that kind with a date. Even though she wasn't necessarily mad at me, Alexis Downey was so upset that she wasn't talking to anybody, me included.
As we waited for the play to start, I disregarded my own wise counsel and made a few feeble attempts at conversation. Alex rebuffed each one so totally that I gave up and kept quiet. When the play started, I watched. Alex continued to stew. I'm surprised the people seated behind us could see the stage with all the smoke that must have been roiling out her ears.
I guess I expected the words in a 1960s version of Romeo to be changed and updated, but as far as I could tell, the dialogue remained much as Shakespeare wrote it. The difference lay in the costuming and in what Dinky Holloway had referred to as 'stage business'-the people and actions that come and go onstage around the principal actors, like background music in a movie.
Maybe everyone else found it perfectly delightful. Not me. I'm old-fashioned. If I'm going to endure Shakespeare, I want all the robes, capes, and costumes that make it look like Shakespeare. The priest who paraded around looking like a sanctimonious, Bible-toting Baptist minister didn't set well with me. The Capulet party that Romeo and his motorcycle-riding buddies crashed turned out to be an old-fashioned ice-cream social. Those thuggish young men with packs of Camels rolled in their T-shirt sleeves and their slicked-back ducktails might have stepped right out of my Ballard High School yearbook.
Despite Guy Lewis' rave review, I didn't find Juliet all that terrific, but then I'm not partial to redheads. Right about then it stood to reason that a daughter who was headstrong and stubborn and who didn't listen to her daddy wouldn't rate high on my list of current favorites.
Of all the characters in the play, I sympathized most with old man Capulet, who, despite his white suit, straw hat, and good-old-boy mannerisms, was still, by God, a father trying to convince his strong-willed daughter to listen to reason. The Bard didn't name his creation The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet because she shapes up and pays attention.
I don't believe it was an innocent fluke of casting that caused Dinky Holloway's Juliet, played by Tanya Dunseth, to be a red-haired beauty with translucently pale skin, while Romeo, played by a handsome young actor named James Renthrow, was exceedingly dark. I'd call James Renthrow an African-American, except the playbill says he's from Jamaica. In deference to fully accurate cultural diversity, I don't believe the term, 'African-American' correctly applies to Jamaicans.
