Free Sicken and So Die by Simon Brett

this particular troupe of travelling players are. Shakespeare always knew what he was doing. If he’d intended
Twelfth Night
to begin with a dumb-show, he’d have specified a dumb-show.’
    He didn’t look directly at Alexandru Radulescu until the end of this speech. What he then saw was chilling. The Director’s black eyes were two focused pinpoints of hatred. Up until that moment their relationship had been wary but polite; now Charles felt he had made an enemy for life.
    â€˜God, that’s all I need,’ Alexandru spat out the words. ‘Actors who think they’re experts on Shakespeare. Listen,
I
do the thinking round this production. All that’s required of you is to say the words the way I tell you to.’
    Charles felt as if his face had been slapped. He wanted to come back, fierce and hard, with the fact that he
did
actually know quite a lot about Shakespeare, that he’d got an Oxford degree in English to prove it, that . . . But he restrained himself. Time enough. No need to go out on a private offensive. Soon the rest of the company were bound to join forces in resistance to Alexandru Radulescu’s fatuous innovations.
    But no other members of the cast made any complaint about the idea of the dumb-show. It was understandable that the youngsters like Benzo Ritter and Talya Northcott might eagerly lap up Alexandru’s suggestions, but the more mature cast members also seemed placidly content to do as they were told.
    Charles often marvelled at the ridiculous hoops actors will go through at the bidding of a forceful personality.
Twelfth Night’
s assistant director, whose ideas were actually rather good, could not command obedience; while Alexandru Radulescu, whose ideas were clearly crap, could lead the entire company by the nose. Sometimes Charles could empathise with Alfred Hitchcock’s well-known view that ‘actors are cattle’.
    The only objection that did arise was when Alexandru Radulescu announced that for the opening of the play the stage area would be converted into a huge double bed. And the objection came, not from a cast member, but from the Asphodel representative, who had appeared to see how rehearsals were going.
    â€˜No,’ he said, quietly but firmly.
    The Romanian whirled furiously round at him. ‘What!’
    â€˜No room in the budget for more scenery. You’ve got to work with the sets as built, and with the costumes as already made.’
    â€˜But how am I expected to express my vision of the play if I am saddled with unimaginative sets and traditional costumes?’
    The Asphodel accountant shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s your problem. It was made perfectly clear in our agreement that you had to work with the existing sets and costumes. There isn’t the time, apart from there not being the money, for any changes to be made.’
    â€˜But this means I will have to compromise my entire artistic perception of the play!’
    The accountant shrugged again. ‘Well, there you go,’ he said coolly.
    Charles Paris wished some of the cast had the nerve to take that approach to Alexandru. Because it clearly worked. Faced with a will as strong as his own, the director could only huff and puff petulantly.
    â€˜I thought you employed me because I would bring something fresh, something radical to this production. People who employ me do so because they know they will get a play that has the Alexandru Radulescu stamp all over it!’
    â€˜I’m not interfering with your stamp,’ the Asphodel man replied without changing his lazy intonation. ‘I’m just saying that that stamp will have to appear with the existing set and costumes. That’s all. I’m not going to interfere with what you do artistically.’
    â€˜But for a director like me, the art comes in the
total
look of a production. It is not just the acting – it is the movement, the music, the setting, the clothes the