Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [123]
Young Rita agreed, “She’s so much taken up with her old details and carpentering and everything that she can’t see the picture as a whole. Now I thought it would be lovely if we had an office-scene like the one in ‘Little, But Oh My!’ Because I saw that, in Duluth. But she simply wouldn’t listen at all.”
Juanita sighed, “I wanted to give one speech like Ethel Barrymore cv would, if she was in a play like this. (Harry and I heard her one time in Minneapolis—we had dandy seats, in the orchestra—I just know I could imitate her.) Carol didn’t pay any attention to my suggestion. I don’t want to criticize but I guess Ethel knows more about acting than Carol does!”
“Say, do you think Carol has the right dope about using a strip light behind the fireplace in the second act? I told her I thought we ought to use a bunch,” offered Raymie. “And I suggested it would be lovely if we used a cycloramacw outside the window in the first act, and what do you think she said? ‘Yes, and it would be lovely to have Eleanora Duse play the lead,’ she said, ‘and aside from the fact that it’s evening in the first act, you’re a great technician,’ she said. I must say I think she was pretty sarcastic. I’ve been reading up, and I know I could build a cyclorama, if she didn’t want to run everything.”
“Yes and another thing, I think the entrance in the first act ought to be L.U.E., not L. 3 E.,” from Juanita.
“And why does she just use plain white tormentors?”cx
“What’s a tormentor?” blurted Rita Simons.
The savants stared at her ignorance.
III
Carol did not resent their criticisms, she didn’t very much resent their sudden knowledge, so long as they let her make pictures. It was at rehearsals that the quarrels broke. No one understood that rehearsals were as real engagements as bridge-games or sociables at the Episcopal Church. They gaily came in half an hour late, or they vociferously came in ten minutes early, and they were so hurt that they whispered about resigning when Carol protested. They telephoned, “I don’t think I’d better come out; afraid the dampness might start my tooth-ache,” or “Guess can’t make it tonight; Dave wants me to sit in on a poker game.”
When, after a month of labor, as many as nine-elevenths of the cast were often present at a rehearsal; when most of them had learned their parts and some of them spoke like human beings, Carol had a new shock in the realization that Guy Pollock and herself were very bad actors, and that Raymie Wutherspoon was a surprisingly good one. For all her visions she could not control her voice, and she was bored by the fiftieth repetition of her few lines as maid. Guy pulled his soft mustache, looked self-conscious, and turned Mr. Grimm into a limp dummy. But Raymie, as the villain, had no repressions. The tilt of his head was full of character; his drawl was admirably vicious.
There was an evening when Carol hoped she was going to make a play; a rehearsal during which Guy stopped looking abashed.
From that evening the play declined.
They were weary. “We know our parts well enough now; what’s the use of getting sick of them?” they complained. They began to skylark; to play with the sacred lights; to giggle when Carol was trying to make the sentimental Myrtle Cass into a humorous office-boy; to act everything but “The Girl from Kankakee.” After loafing through his proper part Dr. Terry Gould had great applause for his burlesque of “Hamlet.” Even Raymie lost his simple faith, and tried to show that he could do a vaudeville shuffle.
Carol turned on the company. “See here, I want this nonsense to stop. We’ve simply got to get down to work.”
Juanita Haydock led the mutiny: “Look here, Carol, don’t be so bossy. After all, we’re doing this play principally for the fun of it, and if we have fun out of a lot of monkey-shines, why then—”
“Ye-es,” feebly.
“You said one time that folks in G. P. didn’t get enough fun out of life. And now we are having a circus, you want us to stop!