Eighteen Theo
Eighteen
THEO
M y phone melted twice last night. I had to leave it on constant charge because the notifications kept coming and the battery couldn’t cope.
It’s more than I dared hope for.
Barry loves me. He’s already sent three emails and it’s not even 9 a.m. When does that ever happen? If this keeps up, I think he might propose.
Greg texted me late last night with a one-line, twenty-onegun-salute of support:
Atta guy! Keep the SEX coming ?
(I deleted it the moment it arrived. Creepy or what?)
No mention of #NotMyGabriel since the story blew up. Plenty of #TheoChest, #HelloTheo and #Shirtgate, which I can live with. And even though it’s slightly unsettling reading complete strangers critiquing my physique – and scarier still, learning what they would like to do to it – every comment, like, repost and conversation means one thing:
I’m BACK.
I’ll play it cool in front of everyone else, of course, but secretly I feel like dancing around my chintz-covered living room, yelling my victory to the roses. Days ago I was everyone’s favourite target for mockery and derision, the washed-up actor reduced to being mistaken for a Hollywood star. But now? The only mentions I’ve seen of Gabriel Marley in the last sixteen hours have been about my chest being significantly sexier than his.
I wonder if he’s down in London this morning, learning his 007 lines, seething that my naked chest is grabbing more column inches than his career. Yeah, you see that, Marley? This chest beats yours, according to thousands of anonymous, worryingly horny people on social media! Go and cry into your designer airpressed oat milk latte about that …
I catch sight of my proud smile in the glass-fronted kitchen cupboards. It isn’t pretty. I should probably rein in my Gabriel Marley scorn. It’s a bit ugly, however justified it might be.
In my defence, it’s only because of the number of jobs I’ve lost to him. And even though I know it’s part of the acting life, I hate it.
As an actor you often arrive at auditions to find a waiting room of doppelgangers – fifteen almost identical versions of you. Casting directors tend to have a type in mind for each role – same playing age, similar height and build, sometimes even identical eye colour and accent. It’s the bit of the job I hate most: the part that reminds you over and over again how expendable you are. If you don’t work out there’s always another almost-you ready to jump into your shoes.
Not this time, though.
This time the main attraction is me – not someone who bears a passing resemblance to me or a cut-price version of an A-lister. And it’s come from the job that was the least promising on paper. I thought a summer with The Garden Players would be a pleasant diversion, a quiet little gig to kill a few weeks, but it may well be the job that saves my career. I don’t care how much of a tart I’ll have to be for the crowds: I’m going to milk this for all it’s worth.
All the same, I’m nervous about seeing the others this morning.
I’m terrified of seeing Lucie.
The thing is, I panicked yesterday. I wasn’t prepared for how earth-shattering our onstage partnership would be. It was only when I was signing autographs for the crowd after the show that it hit me: how much I need Lucie for this to work. And I let fear get the better of me.
I’ve never relied on anyone for my career before. Even my agent. People think that being an actor is all about other people helping you. Agents, casting directors, publicists. People on the outside of the industry assume actors are pampered and spoilt, every decision made for them and every door opened by someone else. But that’s a myth the industry pushes to keep a steady flow of bright-eyed newbies coming in.
My career, my motivation, my willingness to bounce back from near-constant rejection, all has to come from me. Barry is being supportive now because it’s easy. The moment the spotlight leaves me and finding work becomes a challenge again, he’ll suddenly become less available. It isn’t that he doesn’t care, just that he’s a businessman. At the end of the day he wants the biggest return for the least hard work. If there’s someone else easier to book than you, they get priority.
But I made this happen. I didn’t wait for Barry to decide I was worthy of the job. Crashing Lucie’s monologue was a spur-of-the-moment bid to take control of my career – to show my agent and every delighted onlooker that Theo Larkin is far from washed up. And now half the internet knows my potential.
But to admit to Lucie what I felt on stage would give her too much power.
I’m nervous of handing control to other people. And I don’t know Lucie well enough to trust her not to exploit that. Because that’s the other thing about being an actor: you succeed as much from someone else’s downfall as you do from your own talent. It’s all so fragile and why I never take anything for granted.
If I had been honest with her yesterday, I could have handed her the means to potentially kill my career.
I’ve been protecting myself for years, often when nobody else wanted to. I’m not ready to drop that just because I had a great experience on stage. Even if that experience was unlike anything I’ve felt before.
She’s going to be angry with me.
She probably hates me, too.
I don’t blame her.
I call a taxi to take me from my digs to Henley Street, the driver bemused by my insistence that such a short trip is necessary. It’s because I don’t know if people will be waiting for me outside. Reading the ever more salacious reports and thirsty comments, I’m half expecting an excited, baying mob waving their phones at me and trying to steal my shirt. Driving there is safer. It also gives me an opportunity to make an entrance worthy of my newfound celebrity status.
But mostly, it lessens the chance of me bumping into Lucie on the street.
I have to put things right with her. I have no idea how.
I’m surprised – and a bit relieved – to find Henley Street quiet. I pay the taxi driver and make it to the side gate of the Birthplace without anyone seeing me.
I think I might be the first one here, which today is preferable because I need to think carefully about how I handle things.
But when I reach the staff entrance to the building, the sight of Lucie’s green bicycle chained to the drainpipe makes my heart plummet.
They’re all here early. Of course they are.
Ced and Ophelia are sitting together on the props trunk, a spread of newspapers and printed web pages strewn across the floor at their feet. Lucie is sitting cross-legged on a turquoise velvet floor cushion that’s seen better days. She’s reading a fistful of pages, her head bowed. She doesn’t look happy.
The crew room smells of fresh coffee and newsprint, the atmosphere muted but oddly calm. I don’t expect it’s likely to remain that way for long.
I hesitate in the doorway, not wanting to break the scene. After yesterday’s performance and our thundering success with the audience I should feel like I belong. But here I am, an outsider looking in again.
And I can’t blame them for any of it.
I’ve been an idiot.
I’m tempted to sneak back out, but Ophelia raises a hand without looking up from the newspaper she’s holding.
‘You could lurk there all day, Mr Larkin,’ she booms, a smile playing on her lips. ‘But really what would be the point? You are the talk of the town, after all.’
Face burning, I enter the room. ‘You saw it, then?’
‘Impossible to avoid it, love,’ Ced offers with a wry smile. ‘Bit like your chest.’
‘About that …’
‘It was unexpected,’ Ophelia concedes. ‘But by gosh, did it do the trick!’
To my relief, when she looks up she’s smiling. Phew . One down, two to go …
I edge closer to my colleagues. ‘You’re happy, then?’
‘Ecstatic! And later today we do it all over again! We’re on for a two p.m. show because we will have extra guests today. A news crew are coming to visit this morning. They’ll want to film some excerpts of you three running lines and may well want to talk to you, Theo. Then we have a press conference at half past twelve, where we’ll formally announce your residency …’
There is a snort from the faded turquoise floor cushion.
‘Something to add, Lucinda?’
‘Nope.’
Great .
‘And I’ve been talking with the management team. I think we scrap four days a week and move to five. Mondays for rehearsals. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays for performances plus alternate Saturdays and Sundays. Two performances per day, at eleven a.m. and one p.m. Perhaps an extra three p.m. show at weekends, if demand dictates. Right through the summer. Would that be acceptable to you?’
I’m stunned. ‘Of course,’ I manage. ‘Same programme?’
Ophelia throws back her head and laughs. Ced watches me with amusement. Lucie doesn’t move.
‘Why no, my dear Theo! We switch, every week. New pieces. New monologues, new two- and three-handers.’ She taps a large, many bookmarked copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare on the desk next to the trunk. ‘I think The Bard has more than enough to furnish our programme.’
‘Right.’ My nerves rise and turn somersaults inside me. I don’t know many Shakespeare pieces. I’m not even that familiar with most of his plays. Learning Ferdinand’s lines was scary enough and that wasn’t even a monologue. How am I going to master so many scenes with hardly any time to learn them and a heavy performance schedule to get through?
‘Bit of a crash course, eh?’ Ced grins. ‘With any luck we’ll pop a bit of Hamlet in there to give you a head start for the big place.’
‘That would be great,’ I reply, wishing I felt as confident as I sound.
‘And, here’s the big news I’ve been dying to tell you,’ Ophelia beams, ‘seeing as you and Lucie caused such a commotion with your pieces yesterday, the management team and I are agreed: our Summer Garden Performance programme will feature the greatest lovers Shakespeare ever wrote!’
Now Lucie looks up.
‘What?’
‘Benedick and Beatrice. Rosalind and Orlando. Lysander and Hermia. Romeo and Juliet! Imagine – a new pair of star-crossed lovers every week! We’ll have people flocking back time after time to see you two fight and tussle and lust and fall madly in love all over again!’
‘No!’ Lucie and I say together.
‘Yes!’ Ophelia counters, clapping her hands.
‘Ced – come on – help us out,’ Lucie begs him, but Ced has his hands raised and is flushing deep pink.
‘Sorry, darling, this has nothing to do with me.’
‘Actually, maestro , it might …’ Ophelia clasps her hands together as if beseeching a benevolent deity.
Ced’s expression darkens. ‘What do you mean?’
Our Director of Garden Performance shimmies a little closer to him, her manicured hand resting lightly on his knee. ‘They’re going to need help, dear. Professional help …’
‘Excuse me?’ Lucie retorts.
‘Not like that … I mean, someone to guide, teach and mould them. Someone who knows the lovers better than anyone. Someone who could frankly act every romantic lead off the stage …’
‘No.’
‘But maestro …’
‘Absolutely not, Pheels. It’s bad enough I’ve been sidelined in rehearsals because someone needed extra time, and made to play third fiddle in the garden performances so that some people can flirt and forget their shirts. But demote me to Dance Captain? I don’t think so!’
‘But we need you, Cedric!’
‘The distinct lack of me in your “great lovers” plan says otherwise.’
‘But you would have your pieces, too,’ Ophelia argues. ‘Classic scenes. Soliloquies.’
‘Oh really?’ Ced folds his arms. ‘Who?’
‘Anyone you like.’
‘And would this anyone I like be bumbling Friar Laurence? Touchstone the clown? Great big hairy Bottom ?’
If I weren’t so horrified by Ophelia’s plan for the summer, I would laugh. Ced’s outraged mention of the unfortunately named player in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterclass in comic delivery.
‘Of course not, darling,’ Ophelia falters. ‘Julius Caesar. Henry V. Hamlet …’
Whatever swift parry Ced was about to return halts in mid-air, his mouth hanging open.
‘The big Hamlet?’
‘Yes?’ Ophelia’s usual tone diminishes to a hesitant question mark.
Ced glances at me, then Lucie. ‘Done.’
‘ What ?’
‘Relax, Lu. I’ll whip the two of you into shape in no time.’
Lucie glares back and I swear the room crackles with thunder.
Oblivious to the grenade she’s just casually flung into the crew room, Ophelia jumps to her feet. ‘Well, that’s settled, then. Splendid. I’ll go and tell Mona immediately. She’ll hate being wrong.’ We watch, stunned, as she skips across the room, pausing in the doorway to look back at us. ‘She bet me a tenner you’d all say no. Time to cash my winnings!’
And with that, she exits.