The waitress puts on her coat and picks up the suitcase that the boy left behind. She doesn't want to leave her home, but he has promised her a future outside these city walls, and after so many years under siege, she has to admit to herself that it's worth a try.
She turns the sign on the door to "closed" and turns around to take one last look at her bistro. Kneeling on the ground, she closes her eyes and offers one last whispered prayer.
Not to the gods, in spite of the shrine she faithfully keeps on the wall. Not to her queen, who has stood so tall while suffering so deeply. Not even to the city, the only home she's ever known.
She kisses her fingertips, tenderly presses them to the tiled floor of the bistro, and then she stands up and she is gone.
There was a period last Thursday when I honestly thought I might wait for the cast list to drop and see how I felt about it before considering if I wanted to attend that evening’s show or not. I’m glad I didn’t, and not just because the Thursday cast list never did make it online. We all had a bit of a shock to our systems on Thursday; I wanted to see our show, and I wanted to be with people who understood how I was feeling. And, of course, it ended up being a really great show. For reasons I could have predicted, and otherwise...
It was a 2+ loop-show that night; I knew that I wanted to properly test the ghost loop concept and I knew that I wanted to spend time with favourites, so it was an absolute no-brainer that I decided to start my evening with an Aegisthus loop. I arrived in Mycenae to the familiar strains of Bartok and headed straight upstairs, where I was able to see the below-the-door light-flickerings of the 1:1 room. Obviously the next chunk of an Aegisthus loop doesn’t involve a great deal of travel but I didn’t cheat it; I listened to the music, I watched the subtle lighting changes, usually too subtle to stand out when the performers are present, and I worked hard to envision where on the table he would have been at any particular moment. Through the grief dance, through the entrails banquet, (through the record stop,) and down to the shower. When it felt like the right amount of time had passed for Aegisthus and Clytemnestra to have tenderly cleaned the blood off each other, I headed over to the arcade and stopped outside the Peep windows. For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to tell how accurate my timing was, given that this was loop one so I couldn’t expect to hear All Cried Out coming through the walls. But it was indeed only a moment, for just as I wondered if it was worth going over to a neighbouring space to find out where they were up to, a familiar figure in a long black coat walked in through the Palladium doors and climbed into the window.
Extremely pleased with my overwhelming success, I not only stuck with Aegisthus for the rest of loop 1, I also gave myself the now traditional treat of sticking around for the beginning of loop 2 in order to see his Hesperides dance, and it was of course WONDERFUL. After which I took myself to the familiar comforts of Peep for the rest of loop 2 to spend a little time with Tiny and Di, who had taken it upon themselves to buoy up everybody’s gloomy moods with their particular brand of absolute chaos and were accomplishing it ADMIRABLY.
I intended to finish my show by following Yilin’s Artemis, and enjoyed an extremely feral interlude with her in the Hinterlands, looking for all the world like she might snap at any moment and literally devour Agamemnon. But as we spread out into the wider space, I became slowly aware that there was a distinct absence of the usual activity levels, due to the unexpected absence of Neoptolemus! For a little while I was able to watch Artemis observing the scene, able to watch Agamemnon quietly and furiously converse with Patroclus, but then they started to go their separate ways and I had to make the choice – stick with my character and get a whole glorious Artemis loop, or switch to Pat and see what changes had to be made while waiting for a Neo who may or may not ever arrive.
One of the things that really sets live theatre apart is the capacity for things to go wrong, at any moment, without the option to just stop recording and have another try. But it’s not knowing that things could go wrong at any moment that makes it so exhilarating to watch, it’s knowing that you’re going to see something cool and unique while the performers deal with whatever unexpected occurrence the moment has thrown at them. So obviously I stuck with Pat. And although the changes to his loop weren’t super-drastic (it turns out Neo really isn’t that essential a character to the over-all narrative!), watching him go through his story without Neo there really changed the tone.
Without Neoptolemus, Agamemnon can still lure Iphigenia to her doom with the promise of marriage. It just makes it actively crueller that he didn’t even bother to get a fake husband, and makes Pat much more complicit as a witness when he’s acting as Agamemnon’s number two than when he’s more of a hanger-on. He continues to be far more active as a witness when the army gets to Troy, helping the Watchman prepare the basin in order for Polyxena to wash her own hands before ritually killing herself. With fewer people in the circle, it’s not safe for Polyxena to hang upside down, and so we all watch for an uncomfortably long time as a devastated Hecuba weeps over her daughter’s body, lying in the middle of the square for all to see. Pat can help carry the body to the relative privacy of Alighieri’s, but it doesn’t do anything to make up for how silently he stood by and watched, not even having a role of his own to carry out this time, just letting the scene before him unfold without even considering if he could or should do anything to stop it. When Iphigenia-as-Hecate arrives, finding Pat already marked by Hades, it feels very right today that Pat be the one she takes her revenge on. He’s no longer mere collateral damage, he is being directly punished for his part in the careless, casual, arguably needless deaths of two royal princesses.
For a few moments after Pat’s murder, I do wonder if he just plans to stay on the girders for a while, not having a Neo to dance with. But, delightfully, we are treated to a full (if somewhat briefer than I would have liked) solo death dance from Theo, and it is pretty fuckin awesome. It’s no great secret that I am a little bit feral about the occasions when Theo has played Polydorus, and I think a good part of that is because Theo is a brilliant solo dancer but Pat doesn’t really get very much to do on his own (and it’s not even worth talking about the Watchman where dancing is concerned). Any opportunity to see Theo let loose with some solo work is an opportunity well worth taking, so if they’re not going to let me have another Theodorus show before September 24th then we’re just going to have to keep our fingers crossed for the chance of another Lonely Pat (though hopefully without any injuries this time).
Anyway. It’s nice to know that even on a night when I am specifically seeking solace in the comforting predictable arms of the familiar, even the familiar can still surprise me. It’s been a little while since I left a show fizzing in excitement about seeing something brand-new and exceedingly cool, and it’s awesome that it can still happen, even at this deep deep point of my obsession.
I've been going through my old write-ups of The Drowned Man, who wants to read an account of how I fell desperately in love with this woman?
THE TIME: 24th June 2014, 7pm
THE PLACE: Temple Studios, London
It's the final loop of the show and I don't know what to do. Marshall was my plan, but he has been utterly swamped every time I've seen him, so I drift off in the direction of town to see if I can find any inspiration. I try wandering into Tuttle's shop, and although I've seen it more crowded before now, today it is stiflingly hot so after a couple of minutes of watching the moon being painted red, I decide to flee. This hasn't brought me any closer to deciding what to do, so I wander into the drugstore, where a few people are clustered around the closed telephone booth, and I sit on the counter stool nearest the wall and set to examining the various doodles. Shortly after this, the Drugstore Girl appears right in front of me and fixes me with a flirty sideways look. This is a slightly unexpected but thoroughly excellent turn of events, and I fix her with a flirty sideways look right back. She then holds up her hand in the universal sign for "I'll be back in a minute" and scoots sideways along the counter to greet Tuttle, who has just appeared with a pinwheel, which he hands to her. She thanks him for the pinwheel, tells him it's beautiful, then drops into a deliciously dry voice to say that she'll "put it with the other one", which she does before serving him a lemonade. She offers him the straw holder, he takes a straw, then drinks his lemonade all in one go before scuttling out of the store. The Drugstore Girl then returns to me, saying "he's a peculiar one, that boy", then she offers me a lemonade, which I am clearly all too delighted to accept. She offers me the straw holder, I reach out to take a straw, and she slams it shut before I can. She's laughing at me, I'm laughing at me, and then she offers me a straw again and I manage to take one this time. Barmen never want to give me whiskey, but Drugstore Girls never want to stop giving me lemonade, and I am in love already and know where I'll be for the rest of the show.
At some point, it might be now or it might be a little later, the Drugstore Girl decides she needs to change her shirt. She pulls a spare one (completely identical in every way) out from behind the counter, then starts unbuttoning. She then flirtily shouts at us all to stop looking, and ducks down behind the counter to finish changing. Halfway through, she pops up again and we make brief eye contact. I quickly cover my mask eyeholes with my hands, and she laughs at me. I love her a LOT. There's another moment I can't pinpoint timewise but I'm sure must have happened pretty early in the loop. She goes through all the phone booths, taking down Harry's self-promotion leaflets, before bringing them sadly over to me. "Do you know this guy, Harry Greener?" OBVIOUSLY I DO, but I decide a coy tilt of the head might be my most appropriate response at this point. "Oh, he's a nice guy..... but he's not very good." And she's laughing, but she's also sad for Harry as she puts the leaflets in the bin.
Shortly, Andy and Miguel will be coming in for their scene, but before that happens, the Drugstore Girl takes an upturned coffee cup on a saucer and slides it towards me. No teasing now, just a gift - a green jelly-baby! Which happens to be my favourite flavour. The masks can't possibly hide facial expressions as well as we hope, as we grin at each other through my mask and I receive my jelly-baby happily. Then she takes the magazines that are on the end of the counter and pushes them towards me so I can read one if I like. Then Andy and Miguel arrive and are doing whatever they do in the barber section of the shop while the Drugstore Girl watches. Miguel bullies Andy, and then disappears through the phone booth. Does Andy go somewhere briefly at this point? The Drugstore Girl has a minute to be annoyed that Miguel's made a mess of her nice clean counter, which she wipes down, before Andy's back and she's serving him lemonade. And I'm not even jealous, because DRUGSTORE GIRL AND ANDY. ❤ Then they're dancing together, slowly and sweetly at first, before moving to the phone booths and getting bigger and more passionate and I'm still sat on my stool, but I'm sitting on my own feet so I can see them and it's just delightful. Then they're off out of the drugstore! I don't always go with the Drugstore Girl when she leaves the drugstore, but I know where they're going, and I can't not follow. They're sneaking into Temple Studios, they're dancing down the corridor, they're hiding in corners to flirt, they're stopping in spotlights to dance a little more, and then it's Bulldog, which I hardly see any more! Studio 5 is totally crowded, but most people are on the floor so I'm able to move across the sparkly stage to see the action on the bedroom set and then the kitchen set and then the locker room set. Frankie, in his upsetness, announces that the Drugstore Girl could play the bulldog rather than Faye, but as it's a creepy Seamstress today I only feel bad for him, knowing what has happened to him so far and what's yet to happen to him and how no one really is looking out for him at all, not in a nice way, anyway.
The scene finishes, and I make the error of loitering by the stage for easier egress, so I miss what happens in the locker set, but the Drugstore Girl is leaving and she's slipping a piece of paper into the pocket of Andy's jacket, which she's currently wearing. We return to the drugstore, and I'm slightly disconcerted that someone is sitting IN MY SEAT. Except he's not, he's standing next to my seat, but too close for me to really resume sitting for a couple of minutes, but it's okay, it's Harry! He's reading a magazine. And then he's trying to sell the Miracle Salve, singing along to the music coming over the speakers, and dancing a little under the light, and it's a sweet moment, only slightly ruined by the Drugstore Girl then offering Harry a 'strong cup of coffee', on the house. He tries to refuse, but she won't let him, asking if he's going to make her drink on her own, and that's it, Harry's off towards drunkenness again, and - slightly surprisingly - so is the Drugstore Girl. Harry's off into town, and another audience member slips onto his recently vacated stool. The Drugstore Girl offers this person a jelly-baby coffee cup then picks up a nearby Day of the Dead leaflet. She looks at it, and asks them if they will be going to the hoedown. The reply is a firm non-verbal yes. The Drugstore Girl then picks up Andy's jacket from the counter where she left it, and pulls out the piece of paper from his pocket. I'm able to read it from here, and it's a note from Andy, calling her pretty and telling her she should meet him in the tavern as he'd make it worth her while. She places the note back in the jacket pocket, then picks up a napkin holder so she can use its reflective surface to start getting ready for the hoedown. And then Eugene is there! He looks different today, taller and somehow EVEN MORE INTENSE than usual as he explains he's new in town and wonders if he could borrow some napkins. She finishes applying her lipstick, blots it on a napkin, then hands the holder to Eugene, telling him to bring it right back. He takes it away, and ... gosh, remembering is hard, does she then clamber onto the counter to put her skates on? It would be a sensible time to do so. Then Eugene brings the napkin holder back, and leaves again. She finds the page of script that he's hidden inside it very quickly, and looks at it with an expression of not confusion but a sort of kind understanding. She hangs the script page from the bulldog clip on the wall, before picking up the Day of the Dead leaflet and a glass of lemonade and skating out of the store. And then she's out into the town square to dance with the Barman.
As I'm pretty confident in her movements for the next few minutes, I leave the Drugstore Girl and the Barman to finish dancing and collect her boots, and I go round to my usual spot for the hoedown where I get to watch the end of Andy's solo bar dance, which is always a source of utmost joy. And then it's hoedown o'clock, and I am in the unique-for-me position of being too in love with the character I'm following to pay attention to anyone else. When Eugene arrives, the Drugstore Girl greets him happily before directing him to where he'll be standing to dance, and showing him the steps he'll need to be doing, which is the most charming thing. As we get towards the end of the dancing where everyone will be going their separate ways, I head round to the other side of the bar so I can pick the Drugstore Girl up on her way back through the saddlery. But on the way, she surprises me some more - instead of getting up from the floor, worse for wear, and slowly heading out, she hops behind the bar and steals herself some whiskey. She's definitely up for more partying and looks set to go all night, but then gets nervous of the fighting and heads out to the saddlery where she meets Eugene and receives the message that they must be perfect or trapped behind the gates forever. Again, she seems understanding rather than confused, and as he leaves to go back to the grocery store, she starts rummaging through the various cowboy boots, presumably in search of more whiskey. A sudden banging noise distracts her from her search, and she looks up to see "Faye Greener, you baaaaad girl" and Miguel. Have I mentioned how in love with the Drugstore Girl I am yet? She picks up her note from Eugene then leaves the saddlery, bumping into Tuttle who is standing by the fountain, holding his tin and with red paint all over his hands, and looking down in the direction of the motel. "Whatcha looking at, Tuttle?" enquires the Drugstore Girl. He flusters out an answer, claiming not to be looking at anything, and the Drugstore Girl looks at him knowingly, saying "not looking at Faye Greener, huh?" before going back into the drugstore, once more proclaiming him to be peculiar in her sassy but not unaffectionate manner.
This time, I sit on the stool at the other end of the counter, and the Drugstore Girl fixes me with a flirty sideways look. The deja vu is complete when she offers me another lemonade, and this time one of the special stripy straws. She then pours herself a lemonade, and is somewhat disquieted when it comes out pink in spite of being yellow in the jug. We can hear the shouting of William and Andy by the fountain, and she looks worried as she picks up Andy's jacket and quietly asks "boys are always fighting, right?". Then Andy bursts in and comes behind the counter - I can't remember what he was saying, but I do remember she was trying to calm him down, but it doesn't work and he's off out into the night again, having knocked all the postcards over. The Drugstore Girl is sad and despairing, but she's also extremely lovely and charming so about fifteen of us leap to put the postcard stand to rights again. She doesn't even manage to get a look in herself, and as we finish, she says "you're all awesome. I wish I could afford to hire all of you", then picks up a small dish of chewing gum and offers it round to everyone.
Then the Drugstore Girl beckons me to come closer, and I do. She's saying something about there being a party, and she's all excited, and then she's asking me if I want to go to the party. I nod, of course, I'd go anywhere for this woman by this point. She takes off her apron, and takes out her lipstick, asking if I want some. Again, I nod, so she puts on a fresh coat then gives my mask a kiss, leaving a lovely print. Then she gives me the rose that has been sitting with the pinwheels, takes me by the hand, and we're off down to the finale. All the way there, she's squeezing my hand, and turning around to smile at me more (SO MUCH IN LOVE).
The Drugstore Girl takes me to the mound, and then holds me in a proper bear-hug for the necessary squeezing. The murder happens, I throw the rose, then she takes me by the hand again and takes me to a box by the birthday tent. I then get a big warm hug goodbye, and she goes off to dance. The real hazard of following the Drugstore Girl is how sore your face ends up by the sheer amount of smiling that is involved. I swear, my cheeks still ache a bit.
so i just did the four-show weekend, and i'm not sure if i'll ever manage to write it up properly, but i have scribbled down a few notes that i can expand upon as and when i get to it. this is what i have so far for the perfect loop i had with my favourite character as played by my favourite performer
Horrible. Absolutely horrific. Very much the worst time I have ever had while getting everything I ever wanted. The chat-up line on the note to Eurydice – disgusting. The calculated charmingness of making a spelling error and checking it with me before rewriting the note – abhorrent. A loop full of light, laughter and passion – awful. Realising that although I am being sacrificed to Apollo, it is because he is doing it for a very wholesome reason – appalling. Finally receiving my personal most elusive 1:1 after months of effort on my part – foul. Being asked to bare my soul via the medium of writing on a napkin – agonising. Being forced to read these vulnerabilities out loud with my own mouth – excruciating. Being asked a very simple question and having absolutely no idea how to answer it in the moment – painful. Whoever wrote about the “mortifying ordeal of being known” has obviously experienced a day like this, and while I am obviously delighted and grateful to have had such a full-chested loop, I am also EXTREMELY bruised by the end of it.
