Free Alice in La La Land by Sophie Lee Page A

adrenalin rush was becoming more manageable and she anticipated it would be almost fun to ride.
    'Here, have mine,' offered the actor playing her copassenger, 'I've got a book.'
    'Thank you. What are you reading?'
    ' Psychedelic Jihad ,' he replied.
    The onstage cast made sure that they adhered to Conrad's direction throughout and went for the 'energised ennui' he had spoken about so rigorously in rehearsal. So far it was going well. She felt it was their best run of Act One to date. Sometimes things could go haywire on opening night, but in light of an abysmal dress rehearsal the previous evening, everyone had banded together to focus with grim determination.
    At the conclusion of Act One, head down in the brace position with an oxygen mask clamped over her mouth, Alice's character realises her fellow passenger is a terrorist. Alice could hear the sharp intake of breath from the audience as the lights went to black. Act One was a winner!
    Alice shifted in the bath and checked under her buttock to see if the swelling had gone down. She could still feel the welts but told herself they were a tiny bit smaller. Her breath felt as though it were being delivered
to her via a rubber tube. She licked her lips but didn't manage to moisten them at all. Closing her eyes again, she focused on submerging her body parts. She tried to imagine her breathing slowing and the rash disappearing. Her fingertips tingled and she put them under the water.
    Alice had felt they were losing the audience about ten minutes into the second act. The goodwill they had extracted with the pithy dialogue and clever plot twists in Act One had evaporated by the middle section of Act Two.
    In this act, Alice played a completely different character called Shoshanna. She was a limb-impaired sex worker. Alice had a lengthy monologue and had hoped for at least a few laughs. She was greeted with audience indifference, especially in the pole-dancing segment. At the end of that portion of the performance, when a crooked cop was forced to eat falafel by a Lebanese drug-dealer, there was a palpable shift . . . toward the exit.
    The tough third act was entirely in verse and set in a dystopian landscape. Even the ironic dance to the Spice Girls in the curtain call couldn't revive any of the initial warmth. The final applause sounded wildly uneven, like friends and family clapping overly enthusiastically to mask an icier response from industry guests. There hadn't been a single encore, unheard of on an opening night.
    After the show, the cast huddled backstage, trembling and tearful, for a postmortem.
    'Did they hate it? They hated it!'
    'Did you see them get up and leave? How many of them left?'
    'They didn't laugh at any of the gags in Act Three . . .'
    'Rubbish, they laughed at your monologue! Oh wait, that wasn't meant to be funny.'
    Conrad had appeared. His face was grave but he was full of admiration for the cast. 'You guys were wonderful. That was the best you've been and I'm really proud! Let's party!' He caught Alice in a big hug. 'Who wants Sambucca?'
    Once the postmortem was complete, Alice took a deep breath and marched out through the stage door and into the opening night party. Her mother was the first person she encountered and her pasted-on smile may as well have been a soliloquy on how awful the play was.
    'Well done, dear,' she said stiffly, and gave Alice a peck on the cheek. 'Thank you for your work.'
    Alice had instructed her mother years ago on foyer etiquette for opening night audience members. She told her that even if you had loathed every moment of the opening night performance and could not find a single positive thing to say, you could still thank an actor for their efforts. Her mother seemed to have forgotten that it was Alice who gave the advice.
    'Thanks, Mum, thanks for coming all the way to see it,' she replied, giving her a clumsy hug. The static-charged fringe of her dress clung momentarily to her mother's cardigan.
    'Well, Dad and I are