Father took in a play twice a year. Not because he enjoyed it, on the contrary, you’d think he was in a dentist chair instead of a theatre. He went because it looked very good. He went to premieres, mostly, hoping to get his picture in society newspapers or magazines. And he only took in classics--classics that had also been cleared by knowledgeable friends. He was petrified of taking in the wrong show, one with male nudity or any of the other scandalous behaviours he’d heard about. So, twice a year, the family would sit through The Twelfth Night or Arms and the Man, and father would remain cross-armed for three hours and then be first out the door.
I enjoyed the George Bernard Shaw plays, because I understood them. Shakespeare might as well have been in Latin for all the sense it made to me. I liked Hamlet and MacBeth because there were plenty of fights and madness that could be understood without the words. But A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a complete waste of my time, and it was also so long that I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it to the bathroom in time. If I was really lucky, we would get to see an Oscar Wilde play. But we stopped attending those early on when my father discovered, through fellow members of high society, that Wilde had been a homosexual. I wonder still exactly what my father feared might happen to us. Was he afraid that audience members would leave thinking, ‘What a wonderful show! Too bad I’m gay now.”
While my father knew nothing of these plays we saw, he went out of his way to meet the important actors and directors. This further helped my father appear ‘in the know’ when it came to drama. He could be asked in conversation, ‘What did you think about how proscenium was dressed?’ and imagine it was a salad, but still appear sophisticated by responding, ‘I’ll have to ask the director when he comes for dinner tomorrow.”
It was in this way that he met the great Alistair Irving. Mr. Irving, when I was sixteen years old, was near the end of a spectacular career. He’d been in the theatre when my father was a boy, and over his lifetime he had played every great role. He’d been both Shylock and Antonio, kings Richard III and Henrys IV and V, Faustus, Henry Higgins, he’d done Beckett, O’Neill, Chekov and Ibsen, and he had studied under Staussberg for two years. He was a legend, but he was now getting quite old. At sixty-eight, his acting was as strong as always, but his movement was poor. His hips were very bad, so he was forced to play his age. And a man at almost seventy is like a woman at forty as far as good roles are concerned.
Our biannual theatre night came only a month after my announcement at dinner. We went to see Romeo and Juliet, in which the great Alistair Irving played old Capulet. He was, as always, acclaimed for his performance. At the time, I only knew him as a mean old man who shook his daughter by the shoulders, screaming ‘Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wench!’ I also knew that Romeo had a nice bum.
At the cast party later that night, my father guided the family through the crowd towards Alistair. He cut through a swath of people and planted his hand into the older man’s. It became clear that the two had met on a number of occasions, but it was unclear when.
“This,” my father said, drawing me into the conversation, “is my daughter, Katherine.”
“Delightful to meet you, young lady,” he said.
“I’m sixteen,” I said, importantly.
“Oh, don’t worry, my dear,” Alistair said, “you could be sixty-one and you’d still be young to me.”
My father gave me a withering look before continuing the conversation. “My spirited daughter here has taken an interest in acting.”
“Wonderful. Wonderful.”
“I know that this might be a great deal to ask, but I was wondering if you could offer her some sort of instruction. In regards to acting,” he added, to be certain.
“Well, Mr. Wells, I don’t really have much experience in this sort of thing . . .”
My father smiled and put a hand on his shoulder, “The great Alistair Irving has experience to spare.” I can’t blame my father for his behaviour. He was doing his best for me, looking for the single, best teacher for me. If I’d told him I wanted to be an astronaut, he probably would have approached Buzz Aldrin in the same manner. “I’ll pay whatever expense you deem fit,” he added.
One look at my father’s eight-hundred dollar pants told Alistair that the man before him had a rather unlimited bankroll. “Well, Mr. Wells. Even at my age I’m willing to take on new things. I would love to instruct your daughter.”
If I had a quarter for every time I got caught eyballing some guy's eight hundred dollar pair of pants... I'd have a lot of quarters, let's just say.
Comments
I remember when I read this the first time. I HAD to read the whole thing in one sitting.
You are torturing these good people.
I need the assistance of you and your erudite peers over on my blog. Stop by when you can. We're talking books.
She called us erudite. Let's get her! Oh, that's a good thing? Ah well, either way, follow me!
http://mamalikey.blogspot.com
Erudite = Learned
As in learnED rather than learned.