Chapter 8
Ludo
The opening night of Yentl was a triumph.
Rachel Hoffman, the actor who played the eponymous Yeshiva Boy, took three curtain calls.
It was a lot of clapping. My hands stung like I’d given a hornet a handjob.
When the curtain descended for the final time and the applause had petered out, I turned to Uncle Ben and saw that he had been crying.
“We don’t have to go to the after-party if you don’t feel up to it,” I said.
“You must always show your face at the opening night party, dear boy,” he said.
“Whether the production was so good you want the cast to go right back out there and do it all again, or whether you know in your gut there won’t ever be a second night, you go to the party.
Theatre is like family. You show up for the good and the bad.
The bar mitzvahs, the weddings, the funerals. ”
“I note you didn’t include the bris.”
“No one enjoys a bris, dear boy.”
“Especially the baby.”
“Quite.”
Which is how we found ourselves sitting on a pair of very tall stools in the corner of the theatre’s very noisy upstairs bar, teetering over an impossibly small table, sipping bubbles from plastic flutes.
Not a single element of the whole ensemble had a sensible centre of gravity.
The room was bustling with actors, theatre luvvies, and the assorted glitterati of London’s West End.
With everyone jostling hither and thither, there was a very good chance of at least our drinks going tits up, if not the whole table and us with it.
Especially when I was such a notorious Magnet for Calamity (patent pending).
“I’ve never seen a stage production of Yentl before,” I said. “I enjoyed the gender fuckery.”
“The what, dear boy?”
“Yentl refusing to conform to society’s demands.
Dressing up like a man so she can study the Talmud, even though she’s a woman.
Then there’s the attraction between Avigdor and Yentl when she’s pretending to be man.
That’s a wonderfully complicated topic for the time, but relevant and probably quite empowering for a post-gender Gen Z audience. ”
Uncle Ben looked thoughtful.
“You could develop that idea into a truly remarkable review, dear boy. Although I don’t think you should call it ‘gender fuckery’ in the Sentinel.”
“We absolutely should call it ‘gender fuckery’ in the Sentinel. We should be screaming about the gender fuckery from the rooftops. The LGBTQ+ community needs to know this play exists.”
“My darling boy, the gays absolutely know this play exists. You’re too young to remember this, but we invented Barbra Streisand.”
“I wish the play had the songs from the movie,” I said.
Unannounced, Uncle Ben burst into the opening lines of “The Way He Makes Me Feel.” By the time he was singing about burning like a flame, several people around us had joined in.
By the time they reached the line about storms and thunder, Uncle Ben was in the middle of a coughing fit, but a good ninety per cent of the room was singing.
This is exactly why theatre people are such jolly good fun to be around.
Party guests had their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and were swaying gently from side to side.
Rachel Hoffman, who had not been required to sing onstage and had clearly been desperate for the opportunity to show off her vocal chops, produced a microphone from behind the bar and began leading everyone.
At the final note of the song, the room burst into uproarious applause.
I joined in, clapping enthusiastically and adding my voice to a chorus of “Encore!”
“Did you set that up?” I asked Uncle Ben when the excitement had died down.
“I didn’t have to.” He lifted his champagne, entreating me to clink health-and-safety-approved plastic drinking vessels with him. “Welcome to the theatre, darling boy.”
I knocked back a huge swig of the quickly warming fizz. I felt so alive. I felt like I was a part of something terribly special.
“I’m so jealous that this is your life, Uncle Ben.”
“Tepid Asda bubbles in plastic? You need to aim higher, dear boy. Shoot for the stars and soon you might find yourself drinking room temperature Tesco’s Finest.”
“No, this!” I said, waving my arms around to indicate everything around us and nearly unbalancing us both in the process.
I steadied myself against the wall with a hand and tried to stop the table from rocking with the other.
“Going to the theatre every other night of the week. Meeting fun and exciting people. People who are full of joy and energy, creativity and talent.”
Uncle Ben sipped from his plastic glass, then placed it carefully back down on the table.
“It has been a good life,” he said. “It’s true.” He gently turned the plastic stem of the champagne flute between his thumb and fingers. He looked suddenly thoughtful. He’d been doing this a lot lately. I reached a hand across the table and found his.
“What the matter?”
“Sometimes I imagine the life I would have lived if the war hadn’t come, if we’d stayed in Poland,” he said. “It’s a sort of grief, I suppose, for a life I didn’t live.”
“You don’t regret your life here, surely?”
“No, dear boy. Of course not. If my mother and father hadn’t brought us here, I would never have met you!” He squeezed my hand. “And I would never have met Michael—and Michael was the very best part of my life.”
“I think you’d have still found each other,” I said.
“That’s a lovely thought, dear boy.”
I had never met Uncle Ben’s partner. He was one of the many thousands of gay men who didn’t survive the decade before I was born.
I felt a twinge of regret for saying I envied Uncle Ben’s life when his life had also contained such unspeakable pain.
That Uncle Ben was talking about Michael wasn’t unusual, but all the same, there’s nothing more worrying than someone in their late eighties speaking wistfully about what-ifs and the good old days.
Despite the champagne in front of us and the revelry around us, the atmosphere at our little table was now primed for Uncle Ben to ask if I was free to go casket shopping with him in the morning, or to hand me a list of music he wanted at his memorial service. I raised the last of my warm champagne.
“To Michael,” I said. Uncle Ben raised his glass and repeated, “To Michael.” We knocked back our drinks, and when we put our empty plastic glasses back down on the table, Uncle Ben’s eyes were watering.
“Do you want another one?” I asked, thinking that by going off to fetch one I might give him a quiet moment to gather himself.
“No, thank you, dear boy. I think it’s time this old man went home.”
“Are you sure? Jonty has invited us to join him at the club if you’d like to go.”
“You go,” Uncle Ben said, climbing down off his stool. I leapt down from mine to give him a hand and keep him steady. “I’m tired. It’s Saturday tomorrow, and I think I’d like to go to temple in the morning.”
Though he lived just around the corner from it, Uncle Ben almost never went to the synagogue.
Yentl’s passion for the Talmud seemed to have worked some kind of magic on his brain.
I gave him my arm, and he threaded his hand through it.
I stood a little more upright, because I wanted the man on my arm to see how proud I was to be seen with him, to be his date and escort for the evening.
It took us a while to get to the cloakroom because at least two dozen people cornered Uncle Ben to say hello, thank him for coming, or praise him for the glowing preview published in that morning’s Sentinel.
“Shall I see you home?” I asked, as we stood on the pavement outside the theatre while Uncle Ben finished a cheroot.
“No, my sweet-hearted boy. The night is young, and you are young.” He put out an arm to hail a black cab that was rolling along Shaftesbury Avenue towards us with its light on. The light flicked off. “You must go out and make the most of it. Go kiss boys. Go do gender fuckery.”
The electric cab glided silently up to the kerb and stopped. The door opened, and I helped Uncle Ben climb in, supporting him by the elbow.
“Where to, mate?” the cabbie asked. “Stringfellows, is it?”
The idea of Uncle Ben wanting to go to a strip club made me chuckle. Uncle Ben guffawed, before descending into a coughing fit.
“Connaught Square,” I told the driver. I clambered out of the cab and waited for the automatic door to close behind me.
I was standing on the footpath, waving like a loon, waiting for the cab to drive off, while Uncle Ben talked animatedly about something with the driver.
Suddenly, the rear door window lowered, and Uncle Ben’s face appeared at it.
“Did you forget something?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I meant to say congratulations!”
“What for?”
“Darling boy, you didn’t fall off your stool. Or tip the table over. Or fall down the stairs. Or trip over your own shoelaces. You’re not even ending the night covered in champagne! We have made progress, my dear little klutz!”
“Don’t be cheeky,” I said, pleased to see he had cheered a little. I tapped my hand on the roof of the cab. “Stringfellows, please, driver!”
As the cab took off up the street, I could hear Uncle Ben roaring with laughter.