After months of nerve

Jennifer Crump

After months of nerve-racking backstage drama, the play is about to begin...

Alls Well at Stratford

Reader’s Digest, ©Jennifer Crump

        The stage is eerily silent, waiting patiently for the actors to bring it to life. The lights dim as the crew melts into the dark recesses behind the stage. In perfect precision, the doors to the Festival Theatre swing open to admit today's audience for the Stratford Festival's performance of Shakespeare’s All's Well That Ends Well.
        Moments before, the festival stage and the labyrinth of backstage rooms were still a hive of activity as stagehands, overseen by stage manager Nora Polley, scurried around making sure all the props were where they should be. But now everything is ready. Polley smiles at her assistants. "It's time," she whispers, then winds her way up two flights of stairs, pushes open a narrow door and is suddenly transported from the 16th-century Shakespearean world of the All's Well stage to something like a set from Star Wars.
        Polley navigates a maze of catwalks, ropes and pulleys, negotiating steps and turns in the darkness with the perfect instinct of someone who has spent 30 years of her life here. At the end of the maze is Polley's lair - the stage manager's booth some ten meters above the audience. She slips on her headphones and hears the words that will signal the start of the play. "Miss Polley, we have the house."
        Everyone from lead actor to stage- hand is referred to publicly and pri- vately, as Miss or Mister. This respect - an extension of Stratford's roots in the British theatre - is more than a mere formality. Everyone here strongly appreciates how critical each member of the cast and crew is to the success of the play.
        Polley speaks softly into her head- set, calling cues to the lighting and soundboard operators.

        Light Cue 3 is called and the house lights go out.
        "Sound Cue 3, go," and music begins to play softly, filtering out to the audience.
        Then it's "Light Cue 4 and Sound Cue 5, go." A blue light shimmers behind the balcony, and from somewhere offstage a rooster crows, signaling a country morning.

With the audience now seated, Polley turns off a cue light backstage and the players enter the stage.

It is opening night for this production of the Shakespearean drama. Fifty years ago the fledgling theatre company offered All's Well on a movable stage under a rented tent. Since that first opening night, the Stratford Fes- tival has evolved into one of North America's most respected venues for Shakespearean theatre.
    Today it draws more than 600,000 visitors each season and generates an estimated $170 million for the local community of Stratford, Ont.
    At its Festival Theatre, the company has pioneered a modem version of the thrust stage - basically a modified version of an Elizabethan theatre - in which the seating area surrounds the stage in a 180-degree sweep. Although the theatre holds 1,824 people, no spectator is ever more than 20 metres from the stage apparently prompting legendary Shakespearean actor Sir Laurence Olivier to mutter, "my God, there is no place to hide."
    And indeed there isn't, creating an unforgettable experience for the audience, but a challenging one for the actors - something Richard Monette, the director of All's Well, understands intimately. Awarded the Order of Canada in 1998 for his contributions to Canadian theatre, Monette has played more than 40 roles and directed numerous productions during his 31- year association with the Festival. This is his tenth season as the Festival's artistic director, and he takes all of his many roles within the company seriously.
    All's Well is known as a problem play for several reasons, not the least of which is that it boasts a very unheroic hero - a man who turns a blind eye to love and abandons his wife.
    The play tells the story of Helena, a country physician's daughter desperately in love with Bertram, the Count of Rossillion, a man utterly out of her reach socially. When Helena cures the King of France, he offers her any of his courtiers as a husband. She chooses Bertram, who is appalled. Though he marries her at the King's command, he refuses to live with a wife far beneath him in stature and departs for a post in the Duke of Florence's army. He tells Helena that when she carries his child and acquires the ring he never takes off his hand, he will become her husband in truth.
    Helena follows him to Florence without his knowing. There, Bertram attempts to seduce a young girl named Diana. Helena secretly takes Diana's place in bed and subsequently wins Bertram's ring and his child.
    Monette's main consideration was to cast a Bertram that the audience would actually like. He finally found what he was looking for in David Snelgrove, a graduate of Stratford's well-respected classical acting school. For the role of Helena, he chose 15-year Stratford veteran Lucy Peacock, the renowned William Hutt for the King of France and Domini Blythe as the Countess of Rossillion, Bertram's widowed mother.

After a long winter of reviewing costume and set designs, Monette was finally ready, on a bitterly cold morning in early March, to assemble his principal players.
        At Stratford, schedules are critical. "There are 135 in the company, generally playing more than 400 roles. Each actor is in two or three plays each season," says Polley. Monette, she ex- plains, is directing All's Well, My Fair Lady and High-Gravel-Blind and is also one of three actors playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Directors, costumers, wig makers and crew are all committed to several plays, too. Everything from voice classes to rehearsals to costume fittings must be carefully slotted.
        While the actors attend a warm-up class in the rehearsal hall, Polley passes out notes from Monette to the production staff. She informs set and costume designer Ann Curtis that the ruff for Hutt, the King of France, keeps pushing his wig up. They opt to go with Hutt's own hair.
        Polley chats briefly with the head props man, Ted Derry, and then heads for the stage, where lighting designer Kevin Fraser is working with the gobos, tinplate patterns that affix onto the front of lights. As he fits one, ivy appears to climb the walls of a country estate. A quick change and stained glass appears on the walls of a royal palace. As we watch, lights produce a cobbled street in Florence and then a stand of trees under a starlit night sky.
        Polley takes a few notes and then slips across to the rehearsal hall where Monette is conducting initial readings for an emotional scene between the Countess of Rossillion (Blythe) and Helena (Peacock).
        Blythe has a concern. Would a countess really toss a chair across a room in a fit of pique?
        Monette ponders her question for a few moments. "Yes," he replies.
        Blythe dutifully tosses the chair. It shatters. Monette calmly orders the chair back to the props department to be reinforced. Then he reassures Blythe. “If the audience perceives it as too violent during previews, we'll take it out."
        The next rehearsal block is a scene where Bertram (Snelgrove) attempts to seduce the innocent Diana (Sara Topham). Monette has envisioned the scene as pillow talk between two would-be lovers. The two are fitted for microphones so the audience can hear the near whispers. But when Snelgrove's love words reverberate loudly around the rehearsal space, everyone in the theatre dissolves into laughter. The microphones are taken away and the two actors jell almost immediately.
        The scenes with Parolles, a comic character played by Tim MacDonald, are also proving difficult. During one scene where Parolles makes a flourish with his hat, Monette becomes convinced that something is missing.
        "Saffron feathers," he declares. “His hat needs saffron feathers." Assistant director Dean Gabourie is dispatched to inform Curtis of the change.

Several weeks later the cast and crew meet for the play’s first full run with costumes. Polley and Gabourie write copious notes as Monette makes comments. The King (Hutt), framed by his white hair and silver clothing, can’t be heard during the scenes where he is supposed to be ill, decides Monette. He also suggests a change of colour in his cap to better frame his face.
        In another scene, Helena has always exited to the tunnels while the King comes onstage from behind. Monette thinks that is too much downtime. He decides to have Helena exit by passing the King as he comes onstage. “It’s like volleyball,” explains Gabourie. “There always has to be something happening. You have to keep the ball in the air.”
        Finally, the full rehearsal wraps up, and the actors are excused. “Light walkers” appear on stage to stand in for the actors where scenes need to be lit. Then there is a cue-to-cue rehearsal, and then the sound is matched to the lighting. Everything appears to jive perfectly.
        But there is one critical element still missing – the audience. The week of preview performances before opening night (where people pay less for tickets) are probably the most intense for everyone involved. It is during this time that the need for major changes can become apparent.
        Shortly before the first preview begins, Polley heads for a small rehearsal room, where the actors involved in the fight scene – one of the most brilliant scenes of the play – are waiting. Faced with a limited cast of soldiers and a limited time frame – a mere 30 seconds – in which to show Bertram as the victor and Parolles as a coward, Monette came up with the idea of doing the scene in slow motion. Fight director, John Stead has carefully plotted each movement, adding one actor at a time during rehearsals. Strobe lighting and echo effects (the stamping of feet over microphone-equipped tunnels) help create an illusion of a large battle on a tiny stage.
        Polley perches on a table and pulls out a stopwatch to bein counting down the complicated fight scene for the actors. She will do this before the first performance each week through the season. The actors begin to move in perfectly choreographed slow motion. “Ten,” she says, counting the seconds on her stopwatch. The fighting moves slowly across the stage. “Twenty,” she says, as Bertrams cowardly friend Parolles slips away from the fight. “Thirty,” she concludes, as Bertram emerges as the victor.
        Satisfied, Polley heads backstage.
        Despite concerted efforts to make life on, and behind, the stage flawless, things do go wrong. During the first preview, a fog that is supposed to cover the battlefield puff up into the first row in tiny wisps – and never reaches the stage. Watching the performance from her booth, Polley makes a note to have props man Derry cut more holes in the piping to allow the fog to escape.
        When Hutt misses a cue and fails to tell a courtier he may go, the courtier doesn’t miss a beat. Polley holds her breath, but the courtier exits the stage anyway. How actors deal with the unpredictable is the true measure of their professionalism.
        The preview performance wraps up, and Polley clicks her stopwatch. She tells Monette the bad news. The performance is perilously close to the three-hour mark. With afternoon and evening performances and as many as three plays sharing the same theatre time for takedown and setup is critical.
        The next day Polley finds that Monette has decided on several changes. The first is to cut an entire scene. Assistant director Gabourie is given the unenviable job of informing the actors involved. He has also has to tell head designer Ann Curtis that Helena must wear a head-to-foot veil in the final scene of the play.
        Monette, having gauged audience reaction during the preview, has decided that Helena’s descent into grace, when she wins both love and respect, isn’t clear enough. He wants a redemptive ending, and he thinks that the veil will help. Helena will enter wearing the veil, walk down the long steps onto the stage, and then it will be removed and she will be redeemed.
        Because Peacock is busy in rehearsals for another play, Polley finds a stand-in so Curtis can fit the new veil. Polley manages to squeeze in time for a single morning rehearsal so Peacock can practice walking down the staircase in the long veil before the opening night performance.

Finally it is opening night. There is no more time for changes. Monette takes him place among the audience. Polley retreats to her lair high above the stage. The backstage crew falls silent. In the distance a cock crows and the Countess of Rossillion enters to deliver her first lines.
This time, when a handkerchief inadvertently dropped by the countess flutters to the ground, a courtier gallantly picks it up as he exits the stage. Trumpets blare to replace Polley’s countdown during the fight scene. The actor’s timing is flawless. And Helena, despite the encumbrance of her long veil, gracefully glides down the stairs to stand proudly before her husband and the court. As the King steps forward to speak the final lines, it is obvious the many weeks of rehearsals and emotion have been well worthwhile.

The King's a beggar, now the play is done.

All is well ended if this suit be won.

After the King finishes his closing epilogue, the actors take their curtain call and depart, leaving the stage empty and silent. The lights come up and the audience reluctantly leaves. As the last patron exits, the doors swing close and an army of stagehands descends to transform the stage from the 16^th century France of All’s Well to the decades earlier Venice of Romeo and Juliet.

And all is indeed well that ends well.