Free Murder Unprompted: A Charles Paris Murder Mystery by Simon Brett Page B

ANSCOMBE
    presents
    MICHAEL BANKS GEORGE BIRKITT
    in
    THE HOODED OWL
    There was more writing beneath this, but it was printed too small to be legible.
    ‘I see,’ said Charles.
    ‘It’s a bit much. My name might just as well not be on it,’ objected the author.
    ‘Hmm. You see, what’s happened is that this is a big design for a poster. They’ve economised by reducing it for the handout. Your name’d be legible on the big poster.’
    ‘That’s a fat lot of good. No, I’m really annoyed about this. I think these handouts should be withdrawn. I mean, look at the size of Paul’s name – it’s as big as Michael Banks’s, for God’s sake.’
    ‘Producer’s perk. He decides what the poster looks like.’
    ‘Well. I’m furious. Who should I complain to about it?’
    ‘Under normal circumstances,’ said Charles gently, ‘you’d go to your agent and get him to complain to the management.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Malcolm Harris, realising, perhaps for the first time, the folly of the contract he had signed with Paul Lexington.
    ‘Good news about getting Michael Banks, isn’t it?’ said Charles, to cheer up the hangdog author.
    It had the desired effect. Malcolm Harris brightened immediately.
    ‘Yes, it’s wonderful. From the moment I first thought of the play, I thought he’d be ideal for the part. Though, of course, I never dared hope . . .’
    The run-through started. Charles could not judge George Birkitt’s performance, he was too close to the part to be objective, but there was no doubt that Michael Banks was going to be very strong as the father. In his first scene he established an unshakeable authority, which, Charles knew, was bound to strengthen the total collapse of the character in the second act. Alex Household had been excellent in the part, but, in retrospect, he seemed to have been giving an actor’s interpretation of a man fifteen years older than himself. Michael Banks actually seemed to
be
that man.
    But, after the first scene, the performance weakened. The power of the acting remained, but its flow was constantly interrupted. The actor just did not know the lines and, though he could manage the exchanges of dialogue quite well, every time he came to a big speech, he would dry.
    ‘Sorry, old boy. Sorry, loves. Prompt,’ he would say. The Stage Manager would give him the line, he’d be all right for a couple more sentences, then, ‘Sorry, it’s gone again.’
    The play tottered on like this for a quarter of an hour. Charles was sitting at the back of the hall with Malcolm Harris, and kept feeling the author tense as another of his speeches was chopped up and destroyed. Eventually, Michael Banks just stopped, looked out at the director, and said, ‘Look, sorry, Peter old boy, I’d better use the book. Not getting anywhere like this.’
    ‘I did want to do this run without books.’
    ‘So did I, dear boy, so did I,’ said the star lugubriously, and got a good laugh from the cast. He had managed to endear himself to all of them within the week, and they shared his agony as he groped for the lines.
    ‘We open in less than a fortnight,’ Peter Hickton continued to argue.
    ‘Don’t think I don’t know it. But, honestly, I think we’ll just be wasting time if I go on like this.’
    ‘You’ve got to come off the book sometime.’
    ‘I will, I will, love. I promise. Look, don’t worry about it. I’m usually pretty good on lines. Once, when I was in rep. I learned lago in three days. So it will come, just hasn’t come yet. So I think for this run I’d better press on with the book.’
    Michael Banks’s charm didn’t prevent him from being forceful, and Peter Hickton had to concede defeat. The play continued. With the support of the printed lines, Michael Banks’s performance regained the stature it had shown in the first scene and left no doubt that he was going to add a new excellence to
The Hooded Owl
. Charles found he was watching much of the play as if seeing it for the