MASQUES OF SATAN by Oliver Reggie

Author:Oliver, Reggie [Oliver, Reggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9781553101468
Publisher: Christopher Roden/Ash-Tree Press
Published: 2011-12-23T05:00:00+00:00

‘Filming here nearly over. Shan’t be sorry. Ghastly Spanish food swimming in oil. Fell off a horse yesterday in full armour. No joke. Puss-Cat, I’m taking out a Spring Tour of King Lear next year and I’ve done a deal which guarantees us a West End Theatre. The long and the short of it is I want you to be my Cordelia. What say you?

Your ever loving,

Roddy

I have to confess that my first reaction was a typical actor’s one: jealousy. He was taking out a tour of King Lear and there were plenty of parts for me — Kent, perhaps even Gloucester — why hadn’t Roddy been in touch about it? But this was no time to feel hurt; Yolande was asking me what she should do. I said it was obvious. She should get her agent to contact the Navigator Productions office and accept the offer. Yolande said she had already done that.

Then there was a long laborious discussion in which she went on about her utter inadequacy for the role — she had never done Shakespeare professionally — and I, as I was expected to do, reassured her that she would make a splendid Cordelia. I thought it might be tactless to remark that one of her main qualifications for the part was the fact that she was a light girl, only just over seven stone. The elderly actor playing Lear, you see, must carry Cordelia on stage at the end of the play, so weight is a consideration, especially in a long run, and it was one of which I am sure Roddy had been mindful.

Well, that seemed to be that. I didn’t hear much from Yolande till after Christmas. Then she began to be a bit worried because Roddy had not been in touch with her. This was the arrangement, you see. She was not allowed to ring him in case Lady Margery answered the phone: he would always call her. More worrying perhaps than that, there had been no response from the Navigator Productions office about her acceptance of Cordelia. This puzzled me, because by this time my agent had been notified that Roddy was ‘interested’ in me for the part of Kent.

Early in January Roddy asked me over to the Navigator Offices just off the Charing Cross Road to ‘talk about Kent’. I knew this amounted to a firm offer, so I went eagerly and found him welcoming and friendly as always, but, I thought, a little distracted. We discussed the production and my part, which he described as ‘hellish important’ and ‘absolutely key.’ We also discussed the salary he was offering. He apologised profusely that it couldn’t be higher; in fact, he seemed so distressed about it that in the end I began to feel guilty, as if I had gone in asking for more money than he could afford which, of course, I hadn’t. In the end, to relieve the tension, I said:

‘I gather Yolande is going to be your Cordelia.’

Roddy’s reaction was most unexpected.

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