On her hour of daily exercise Ronnie ran up a handicap ramp. Frustrated, she pushed against the obviously locked door. That opened.
After a second of stillness she stepped inside, crept across the noise-cancelling carpet, past the men’s room, and into the oddly-shaped lobby that envelops the Lyttleton, the second largest of The National Theatre’s three auditoriums. She’d been a priority ticket holder for 11 years so this space, empty but still electric, comforted her.
She entered the stalls through doors across from the ladies loo, no usher to check her non-existent ticket. She’d learned from these knowing/rude/helpful/ melancholy ticket-takers that serious ‘theatre practitioners’ rarely called it The Scottish Play any more. According to NT ushers, only am-dram-ers clung to the superstitious pet name for The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Ronnie shared her office pod at County Hall with Audrey, an effervescent woman who ‘adored treading the boards.’ Audrey had never been to The National Theatre but founded The Crystal Palace Players. She gently hummed The Music of The Night under her breath, and at the end of the day often quipped, “exiting stage left, see you tomorrow.”
Audrey called it The Scottish Play.
Ronnie slipped through another set of doors, up some stairs, into the wings – stage right as it happened – and onto the salient space lit by a lonely standing lamp topped with a blinding bare bulb.
Surveying the unseeable seats she was a Touchstone, lamenting truth, “um, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it’s a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it’s tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humor well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach -”
A deafening interruption – CLAP/Clap/clap – frightened her silly.
“Oh God, I’m sorry. The door opened -” Ronnie blabbered, pointing, stepping sideways.
“Don’t worry,” interrupted the booming voice of a security guard who slid from dark row to lit aisle. “You’re not the only one. That comedian? The one who’s doing Shakespeare lately? He starred in the thing with the twins -”
“Comedy of Errors,” she offered.
“That’s the one! He was up where you are – yesterday. Crying.”
“Shame.”
“What was the last show you were in?”
“In -”
“That weird experimental thing. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Weird.”
“I knew it — you really missing this place?”
“Really.”
“We’re missing you too.”
Then he wandered out. She did the same soon after.
On her way home Ronnie came to understand that sandwiched between the heady lock-down days of sensibly-insane social distancing that she’d been practising long before the detonation of a heartless pandemic stood the single best moment of her life.
– by Anmarie Bowler, Ryde
Brevity 