STAGE FRIGHT

STAGE FRIGHT

"Do you think it will rain this evening?"
That was Sally's only line and she was determined to get it right. Since becoming a member of the Northern Players nine months ago there had been few opportunities for Sally to shine on stage. That was okay; she had joined the drama group to keep her friend Siobhan company, and not from any desire to show off her thespian abilities. Siobhan had read that drama classes were a good place to meet men; newly divorced, she declared herself too old for internet dating. Football matches had proved useless as a hunting ground: the Stadium of Light was heaving with men on a Saturday afternoon but none found favour with Siobhan. Drama group had provided equally meagre pickings so Siobhan, despite having begged Sally to sign up with her on the grounds that it would be more fun than Corrie, left after three weeks and registered for wine appreciation classes at the old poly. She had been observed comparing tasting notes with the tutor, Neil, in Yates's several times since then.
Sally had stayed with the Players.
"You have a small talent, you know" Ginny Fox had pronounced after the third week.
Sally was flattered, even though she had heard Ginny say pretty much the same thing to Mary Milburn, who very clearly had a talent for eating chocolate biscuits and if that was called for in a part, Mary was your woman, but she couldn't act for toffee...or biscuits.
Something had clicked for Sally, though, the first time she had performed in front of the class. They had been told to 'improv' being homeless. There had followed a series of dramatic performances which included Bob, shivering wretchedly in a doorway, Elaine looking imploringly at passers-by with outstretched hand and Martin sobbing piteously as a cruel landlord forced him out with his wife and child into the snowy night.
When it was Sally's turn she gathered together a pile of leaflets advertising the recent performance of Blood Brothers and stood quietly in the middle of the room. Occasionally she smiled shyly.
"What's she meant to be?" whispered Elaine, not quite sotto voce, to Martin.
Other faces round the room looked equally puzzled. Sally held the silence for a few seconds, then
"Big Issue!" she called, in an accent that held traces of Eastern Europe and with a huge smile.
There was immediate feedback from the group.
"You're homeless, you're meant to be sad and scared and cold," complained Bob. "We're meant to be feeling sorry for you."
"Well, Bella's homeless. She lives in the hostel on Castle Street. I always buy the Big Issue off her because she's cheerful and she says hello, even when it's lashing it down," said Sally.
"It's not proper acting, though," grumbled Elaine. "It's just pretending."
Sally didn't care. She had felt something, in that moment of silence when they had all been looking at her, waiting to see what she would do. She had been in control and she had enjoyed it.
When the chance came to audition for the autumn production of "All About my Mother" Sally had put herself forward and been rewarded with the small role of nun, who dies in the second Act. Her character did not have a name but Sally privately called her Sister Clara. Sister Clara was worried about the weather and how it might affect the failing health of Sister Rosa, a role played in the film by Penelope Cruz and in the Players' production by Mary Hong, a Chinese student who was quietly entrancing. Sally knew she wasn't young or pretty enough to play Rosa but she had briefly entertained thoughts of landing the part of Manuela, the mother of the title. That role had of course gone to Ginny and, Sally conceded, she was right for the part.
"I was a mother! I AM a mother. I have felt her pain - it is the universal pain of all mothers, when our sons disappear, when they go away and leave us," Ginny declaimed.
Ginny's son Phil was actually still very much around. He had dropped out of university after the second term to devote more time to his band, The Alleged. The name was a cunning ploy to get the band frequent mentions on the radio.
"They're always saying it on the news: the alleged plot to kidnap the prime minister; the alleged fraud at HSBC. Stands to reason, when people hear that, they'll think of the band," Phil had told Sally when they were stacking chairs after class.
Sally had laughed, and gone to see The Alleged play at The Smugglers later that week. They were not bad, she thought, and Phil had obviously inherited his mother's ability to establish rapport with the audience. And Ginny was a good actress. She was much the same height as Sally, but seemed taller. If in class her gestures appeared sometimes exaggerated, her voice strident, her manner little short of aggressive...on stage she was compelling. You were drawn to her; Ginny demanded the attention of the audience and held it.
Manuela was a tragic figure and on a couple of occasions Ginny had brought tears to the eyes of the cast in rehearsal, the mood lightening only when Martin made his entrance as Agrado, the transsexual prostitute.
"Typecasting is that," said Elaine to Sally in another loud whisper. Elaine had hoped for the role herself but Martin was perfect as Agrado, his tendency to over-emote just right for the part. He had taken advice on walking in high heels from Ginny and had complained frequently to the rest of the cast that...
"...these bloody tights won't stay up and they're giving me nappy rash."
Elaine suggested Sudocrem and the antiseptic smell wafted through the rehearsal room as Martin tottered past.
Sally was on the whole pleased with her role and practised her line often in the run up to opening night.
"Do you think it will rain this evening?" she enquired of her reflection in the bathroom mirror, the morning of the dress rehearsal. Sally's face looked back at her and offered no comment. Stray strands of hair sprang from the shower cap like copper wire and her brown eyes, the colour of Minstrels, blinked blearily. Sally flattened the cap round her face, like a nun's cowl.
"You have a talent, my dear," she intoned in a voice that was one part Dame Edith Evans and two parts Ginny Fox.
Distantly Sally's phone chirped the opening chords of "I just called to say I love you," and Sally rushed downstairs trying to remember where she had left her handbag. The phone was eventually located charging on top of the TV and Sally found the number and pressed redial.
It was Ginny's number, and Phil who answered.
"Sally? Oh thank God for that. Listen, we've got a problem. Mum's lost her voice."
Sally's mood had been bobbing up and down like a cork in a Jacuzzi, as she alternately felt excited and terrified at the performance to come, a performance in front of real live people. Phil's words hit her like a stone as she realised at once the import of his news. No Ginny, no play.
"Are you sure?" she asked Phil and then, realising how stupid that sounded,
"Can she take something? Honey and lemon? Has she seen the doctor?"
"Thing is, Sally, this has happened before. It's a nerves thing. Sometimes Mum's voice just seizes up and she can't get the words out. It's why she had to leave the RSC in the end. It'll come back eventually but not by tonight. Can you do it?"
Sally's sympathy for Ginny flooded the space inside her that had been filled with excitement earlier. The drama group had heard rumours that Ginny had once been on the verge of a great acting career, which she had abandoned for reasons that could only be guessed at. Pregnancy was the consensus, though Sally had never bought that - plenty of actors have children, she reasoned. A grand passion, was Sally's view. A partner who had forced Ginny to give up the stage, only to abandon her for someone younger and prettier. The truth seemed somehow more cruel. Ginny's acting career had been stopped by Ginny herself. By stage fright.
"So we have to cancel then. Shall I ring Derek at the Box Office," Sally asked Phil.
"No Sally, Mum thinks you should do it. You can be Manuela," Phil said.
Sally was only half-listening as she scrabbled in her bag for a pen, with the intention of making a list. Lists somehow calmed things down, brought order to chaos. She wrote
1.          Me play Manuela.
And then paused and looked at what she had scribbled.
"Me?"
"Yes, that's what Mum's written here. She must think you could do it Sally. Great stuff! Listen, I'll meet you at the rehearsal room in half an hour and we'll run through the changes with the rest of them. Hey, maybe I could take your part - I reckon I'd be a good nun. Sorry Sally, got to go, Mum's waving at me."
The phone went dead. Terror gripped Sally like an electric shock. Nameless nun had been fine; Manuela, centre stage for much of the action, was another question altogether.
All through dress rehearsal Sally was on the point of running away but on opening night, ten minutes before curtain up, she was physically unable to run anywhere, being gripped by fear so total that her legs had turned to stone.
"I can't do it," she said to Ginny, who had come into the dressing room to give her a hug.
"You should be doing it - you're Manuela, I'm Sister Clara no-name."
Ginny looked at Sally, then wrote on the pad she carried with her.
"Be me."
When the curtain rose it was perhaps only Sally who knew that she was not acting but pretending. Pretending to be Ginny, pretending to be Manuela in truth. If she fluffed one of her lines it really didn't matter; the audience enjoyed it.
When Sally came out of the theatre later the sky was dark, a few brave stars fighting against the blackness.
"Ok my darlings, who's buying the drinks?" called Martin as the cast walked down the hill to the pub.
Sally looked up at the night.
"Do you think it will rain later?" she said. "Probably," said Elaine.