Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh [Marsh, Ngaio]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Extratorrents, Kat
Published: 2010-01-22T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

Dress Rehearsals and First Night

The days before the opening night seemed to hurry and to darken. There were no disasters and no untoward happenings, only a rushing immediacy. The actors arrived early for rehearsals. Some who were not called came to the last of the piecemeal sessions and watched closely and with a painful intensity.

The first of the dress rehearsals, really a technical rehearsal, lasted all day with constant stoppages for lights and effects. The management had a meal sent in. It was set up in the rehearsal room: soup, cold meat, potatoes in their skins, salad, coffee. Some members of the cast helped themselves when they had an opportunity. Others, Maggie for one, had nothing.

The props for the banquet were all there: a boar's head with a lemon in its jaws and glass eyes. Plastic chickens. A soup tureen that would exude steam when a servingman removed the lid. Peregrine looked under the covers but the contents were all right: glued down. Loose: wine jugs; goblets; a huge candelabrum in the center of the table.

The pauses for lights were continual. Dialogue. Stop. "Catch them going up. Refocus it. Is it fixed? This mustn't happen again."

The witches each had a tiny blue torch concealed in their clothes. They switched these on when Macbeth spoken to them. They had to be firmly sewn and accurately pointed at their faces.

Plain sailing for a bit but still the feeling of pressure and anxiety. But that, after all, was normal. The actors played "within themselves." Or almost. They got an interrupted run. The tension was extreme. The theatre was full of marvelous but ominous sounds. The air was thick with menace.

The arrival at Macbeth's castle in the evening was the last seen of daylight for a long time. Exquisite lighting: a mellow and tranquil scene. Banquo's beautiful voice saying "the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses." The sudden change when the doors rolled back and the piper skirled wildly and Lady Macbeth drew the King into the castle.

From now on it is night, for dawn, after the murder, was delayed and hardly declared itself, and before the murder of Banquo it is dusk: "The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day," says the watchful assassin.

Banquo is murdered.

After the banquet the Macbeths are alone together, the last time the audience sees them so, and the night is "almost at odds with morning, which is which." Otherwise, torchlight, lamplight, witchlight right on until the English scene, out-of-doors and sunny with a good King on the throne.

When Macbeth reappears he is aged, disheveled, half-demented, deserted by all but a few who cannot escape. Dougal Macdougal would be wonderful. He played these last abysmal scenes now well under their final pitch, but with every wayward change indicated. He was a wounded animal with a snarl or two left in him. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ..." The speech tolled its way to the end like a death knell.

Macduff and Malcolm, the lairds and their troops arrive.

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