Reading the Play
IF you happen to be a dramatist, or are thinking of becoming one, I should advise you not to make a habit of being present at the first reading of the play. For the impression received is absolutely crushing. Six or eight players gather together: they look tired to death; they yawn, feel cold, stand or sit about in groups, and cough sotto voce. This gloomy and depressing state of affairs continues for quite half an hour, until, finally, the producer cries: “Come, ladies and gentlemen, let us begin.”
The company, bored to extinction, seats itself round a rickety table.
“The Pilgrim’s Staff; A Comedy in Three Acts,” the producer reads out, whereupon another individual hurriedly mumbles, “A modest, middle-class room. To the right a door leads into a hall: to the left a door leads into a bedroom. In the centre is a table, etc. Enter George Danesh.”
Nothing happens.
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“Where’s Mr. X?” bursts from the producer. “Doesn’t he know we are reading the play to-day?”
“He’s rehearsing another part on the stage,” some one mutters unwillingly.
“I will read his part then,” decides the producer, “Enter George Danesh. ‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me.’”
Nothing happens.
“Damn it,” shouts the producer, “where’s Clara?”
No answer.
“Where’s Madame X?”
“Perhaps she’s ill,” suggests a voice miserably.
“She’s acting at another theatre,” says some one else.
“Yesterday morning Mary was telling me that . . .” some one begins to relate, “that . . .”
“All right, then, I’ll read Clara’s part,” sighs the producer, and races through the dialogue between George Danesh and Clara as though all the devils in hell were at his heels. No one listens to him at all. At the other end of the table a low-voiced conversation begins.
“Enter Katie,” gasps the producer finally, and takes a deep breath.
Nothing happens.
“Now, look here, Miss,” grumbles the producer, “please don’t go wool-gathering. Are you Katie or are you not?”
“Oh, Mr. Producer,” answers the ingénue brightly, “I forgot to bring my part.”
The producer mutters something terrible under his breath, and proceeds to recite the dialogue between Katie and Clara himself, rushing along nineteen to the dozen just as though he were a priest reciting the Lord’s Prayer at a pauper’s funeral. Only the dramatist endeavours to follow the flow of words: no one else betrays the slightest interest.
“Enter Gustav Vchelak,” concludes the producer in a hoarse scream.
One of the players starts; begins hunting through his pockets for his pince-nez; puts them on leisurely; hunts through his part for the exact place; and then enquires at length, “Which page is it?”
“Page six.”
The player turns over the pages, and begins to read his part in a slow, solemn, tragic voice. Good Heavens! exclaims the dramatist to himself, this fellow is supposed to be a jolly bon-vivant. Meanwhile the producer representing Clara and the player representing a jolly bon-vivant recite the gloomy responses which are meant to represent sparkling dialogue.
“When do you expect your hubsand?” the player chants in a corpse-like voice.
“Husband,” corrects the producer.
“But it says hubsand here,” the player insists.
“It’s merely an error in typing. Just correct it.”
“Why on earth can’t they type things properly?” says the player in a disgusted manner, digging his pencil into his part.
Meanwhile the agonized group is getting under way, when all of a sudden, stop! A sentence is missing in one of the parts, after “it was his first love,” and before “you are fond of your food.” Stop, the parts are mixed here. And then on again: indistinctly, stumblingly, hurriedly, pours out the text of the “eagerly awaited novelty.” When an actor has read his part, even if it is only three pages from the end, he gathers up his things and makes off. No one appears to be at all interested in how the play will end. And at last, when the final words are spoken, there is a silence, a dead silence in which the play is weighed up and judged by its first interpreters.
“What clothes am I to wear?” ejaculates the heroine of the play, breaking the heavy silence. Meanwhile the dramatist reels out of the theatre convinced that never before in the history of the world has anyone written such a hopelessly rotten, piffling play.