Rich, Famous, and Beautiful -- 1.9

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This one's a little long.

IX.

After Merchant had ended, I had a great deal of time to myself for the two months that it would take the company to prepare and run The Taming of the Shrew. I suggested that Celeste would make a fine shrew, but the role went to a fiery Irish actress that had been with the troupe for years.

During this time, I accomplished two things. I had my first adult relationship, and I read and reread Hamlet until it was committed to heart.

I had dated before, mostly back before I’d started acting. These were men I was introduced to through my parents, and the dates were very traditional: expensive dinners, hand-holding long walks, then to be driven home by the chauffer. I never saw any of these boys more than twice and I don’t think that I was meant to. My parents probably set these up as a sort of dating rehearsal for later in life. If I hadn’t found acting, they probably would have married me off by this point, to a stock analyst or to some media baron’s son.

In my hiatus, I started seeing John Bertram, who was one of the set builders for the company. He was the type of rugged lumberjack-looking man that you couldn’t help feeling attracted to. He’d approached me very simply one day, told me he thought I was very pretty, and asked me out for a steak. He wasn’t a Rhodes scholar, and there’s always something uncomfortable about dating someone who you know won’t last, but he was very good to me.

This also broke one of the last ties with my parents. Not as if our relationship had been strong since I left, but they absolutely couldn’t handle my dating ‘someone so rough.’ What they meant was, ‘someone so poor.’ They’d also threatened to cut off my money, and I told them that I was making enough on my own that I didn’t need their help anymore.

“Humph,” my father said over the phone. “You do what you see fit. You always have.” Strangely, he was the one who understood my life, more than my mother. Mother probably couldn’t imagine life without a fleet of servants trailing after her. She probably thought that the actors who played my servants on stage also did my laundry and drove me around town.

After the run of Taming of the Shrew ended, I made an appointment with Edward Zwick.

“You wanted to see me, Kate,” he said as I sat down in the chair and looked at him with resolve.

“Yes, I have something very important to discuss with you about the next show.’

His interest was raised. “You haven’t changed your mind have you?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what is it that you wanted to talk about? You’ll give a man a heart attack if you keep leading him on like that.”

I smiled at Edward, gave him my most self-assured grin, and said, “I want to be Hamlet.”

He sat back in his chair, rubbed his chin, and thought it over. “Yes, that might work. It’s an old show and it’s been done to death, so we need something to keep it fresh. I like that role-reversal idea. We’ll make the king the queen, Hamlet will be visited by the ghost of his mother . . . I think it could work.”

“No, Edward. That’s not what I meant. I want everything else to be the same. The king is still a man, Ophelia is still a woman, but I get to play Hamlet.”

“I don’t quite get it,” he said. “You want to play a man?”

“No. I want to play a woman.”

I watched his face to see the recognition crack through. His eyes widened. “You want Hamlet to be a lesbian?’

“Exactly.”

“No,” he shook his head. “We couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because the sponsors would drop like flies. They’ll never take to the idea.”

“We’ll get new sponsors.”

“It won’t happen.”

“Then I’ll sponsor the damn play! You know I can afford to.”

“Why do you want to do this so badly, Kate? Because someone called you gay?”

“Everyone calls me gay!”

“And what will this prove?”

“That I’m not afraid,” I said. “That I don’t really care what people think. That it doesn’t matter.”

Zwick shook his head, “But it could never work.”

“I’ve read the play over a dozen times, it works.” I pulled a warped and worn copy out of my purse and handed it to him. “What are the things that characterize Hamlet? Self doubt, perhaps? Frailty, thy name is woman. Half of the speeches are a self critique. And it is not as if we have to pretend that the others don’t notice I’m a woman. Can you imagine the sheer discomfort of the entire court when I say to Ophelia That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs. You said yourself, Edward, that the show has been done to death. For the first time in a very long while, we can show the audience a Hamlet that they never imagined.”

Zwick tried to look grim but I could see he was convinced, at least in part. “I’m starting to think that you won’t take no as an answer.”

“You’ll make theatre history . . .”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“So you’ll agree to do this?”

“I suppose.”

I leaned across the desk and kissed the top of his balding head.

His bald head blushed, “Don’t get too excited. I’ll have to clear it with a number of people first.”

“One more thing,” I added. “I want Henry Vaughn to play Laertes.”

“Aw, Christ!”

The Company’s producer didn’t take too much convincing. He knew of the minor scandal on that talk show, and he knew that controversy generally makes money. He wanted to put the issue out front, with posters of me embracing Ophelia. Everyone else wanted to keep it mostly a secret and let word of mouth make the show popular.

“If we put the lesbian issue out front people are going to think we’re exploiting it,” Zwick told him.

To which the producer replied, “I don’t see why we don’t exploit the dyke issue.”

Do I have to tell you that the producer was an asshole. No, I don’t think that I do.

There were doubts throughout the cast over whether or not this whole endeavor would work. So much so that even I began to lose faith. But when we had read through the first act, we knew that we’d found something very special. Although most of the court is uncomfortable with peculiar relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia, Henry was playing Laertes as the understanding but realistic brother. On Hamlet’s affections, he states:

Her greatness weighed; her will is not her own,
For she herself is subject to her birth.
She may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for herself, for on her choice depends

The safety and the health of this whole state.

He would support his sister but he knows that the court would never allow such a relationship to be made public.

There were a dozen standout lines that we made take on brand new meanings. Hamlet criticizes his friend Horatio as a prude when she says:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Then are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The play made perfect sense with only moderate changes in the text. We had to, of course, change a hundred ‘he’s to ‘she’s, and ‘son’s to ‘daughter’s, and we had to remove a number of references to Hamlet’s beard—which Henry thought were hilarious and begged for the lines to stay, but otherwise the text stood as it was written.

It was decided that I would wear traditional costuming, black doublet, white collar, tights. As we weren’t going to advertise that our Hamlet was female, we wanted the audience to be confused for quite a while once I took the stage. I’d be dressed as a man, with shortish, unisex hair, but I would clearly have the face and voice of a woman. The producer had pitched the idea of my wearing form-fitting Amazonian armour, which also went over well with Henry. But we decided otherwise. The producer kept further suggestions to himself, most of them probably involving a graphic love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia.

The poster also kept the gender secret under wraps. It had the World’s Globe Players presents Hamlet, underneath which was a photo of Claudius on his knees praying, with Hamlet behind him, almost completely in shadow, sword raised overhead. “Murder most foul,” read the caption.

The play started very traditionally. The actors stood on guard in heavy armour, carrying huge pike-staffs. They nervously discuss the ghost that has appeared twice, and for whom they have invited Horatio to see. The ghost of Hamlet’s father floats in on wires, amid billowing spoke. His armour is covered in dirt and blood. He floats around long enough to terrify the guards, and then disappears again. Horatio pledges to inform young Hamlet of the events that have transpired, and all exit. The start was so traditional that we even risked boring the audience just a little.

Next came the court scene at Elsinore. We filled it with councillors and commoners, so many people that it was impossible for the audience to pick out Hamlet. Until, that is, Claudius dismissed Laertes and called me forward. When I uttered my first words, “A little more than kin and less than kind,” I could hear the confusion ripple through the auditorium. It was an audience learned enough not to speak to each other, but there were unintelligible sounds made by a large number of people. “Is that a woman?” is what they wanted to say.

When the courtiers and royalty left and it was Hamlet’s time to relate her father’s death and her mother’s too soon marriage to her uncle, we decided that it would be a very important scene of the play. I would have to win back all of the audience members who felt confused or uncomfortable with the way things had turned out. I took a great length of time to finish the thirty-two lines of text. And I wasn’t afraid to overspend my emotion so early in the play. I beat my hand against my chest, beat a hand against my head even. I practically spat out the words, “Frailty, thy name is woman,” appearing sick of my association with the species.

The rest of the act proceeded as usual. Hamlet is visited by the ghost of her father, she swears revenge against his murderous uncle, and makes the other guards swear upon her sword that they will not reveal what they have seen.

The next surprise for the audience was the intentions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. After Hamlet has begun to feign madness, the King requests the help of two of Hamlet’s old friends. Things take a turn from the traditional when Claudius suggests, with a lusty grin, that the two men should draw her on to pleasures. More racy still is the conversation when the three friends first see each other.

Hamlet says, “My excellent good friends! How dost thou , Guilderstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?

“As the indifferent children of the earth,” Rosencrantz says.

And Guilderstern adds, “Happy in that we are not overhappy. On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.”

“Nor the soles of her shoe?” I ask.

“Neither, my lord,” Rosencrantz answers.

“Then you live about her waist,” I say, “or the middle of her favours.”

Guilderstern punches my arm, “Faith, her privates we.”

It’s never quite clear the relationship that Hamlet has had with these two men. At the very least they were her suitors, but we also made it seem that Guilderstern and Hamlet were once lovers. If one were to choose to analyze our production of the play, one might say that Claudius’s request for them to draw her to pleasures would indicate that he believes her homosexual tendencies to be the root of her madness. That is, if one were to so choose.

Hamlet’s ‘get thee to a nunnery scene’ was played as much as self criticism as it was an attack on Ophelia. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. Hamlet is not a tower of strength. She is not secure with their relationship. She knows that the life she has chosen has caused her and others nothing but problems. And she lashes out at Ophelia for want of lashing out at herself. Her attack on Ophelia is just another self conscious attack on womanhood.

But pardon me, I drone on about academics.

I’ll skip over the confrontation between Hamlet and her mother. Suffice to say that, where it’s a scene which often borders on the incestuous between the Prince and his mother, our version hinted at an unwanted relationship between Hamlet and Claudius.

In the end of the show, as always, the stage is bathed in blood and littered with bodies. There were audible woops and cheers as empowered women enjoyed the sight of a woman holding her own against the much larger Laertes. And there were equal sobs when a dying Hamlet, held by Horatio, said:

If thou didst ever hold me it thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile
And in the harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.

Shortly after, Hamlet dies. Fortinbras arrives on the scene to hear the sad tale, and orders for Hamlet a military funeral. Our first run of the show was over.

There were three curtain calls.

The show truly couldn’t have been more successful. At the opening night party I was congratulated by more people than I could ever remember. Even Henry Vaughn was sincere when he said, “It was your vision that made this play great, Katherine. I applaud you.”

It was wrong how much I loved the attention. I could recognize it even then. I could have pretended to be embarrassed by the outright praise, but I adored it, and even sought it out in people I hadn’t yet been lauded by. I was like a child, basking in something as simple as applause.

I needed to be praised. It was a flaw.

In tragedy theory, ladies and gentlemen, the term is know as humartia.

Before the run of the show had ended, I received what would prove to be a very important phone call.

“Ms. Wells? My name is Norman Webb. I caught your show last night and I have to say that I’ve never quite seen anything like it.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I’m a talent agent and I represent a number of movie actors in the city. I was wondering if you were currently seeking representation?”

I thought I would be sick I was so excited. “I, well . . . I can’t say I’ve been actively seeking an agent but I can’t say that I’m not interested.”

“That’s what I hoped to hear,” Webb said. “I think you’ve a big future ahead of you. I’d love if we could meet sometime this week and discuss what I might be able to do for your career.”

“I’d love that too,” I told him. I knew before I met him that it was the end of my stage career.

And that's the end of Part I.