Last Crucible day and night: Saturday, August 30th

Continued from here. At this point, although I still have extensive notes from the performances, I’m going to cut that piece down somewhat, because what was going on on stage was less important than what was happening inside me, but there’s still a lot of that here, I’m afraid.

***

After the stage door, Friday, LondonFriend and I chatted a bit further with the fan she’d found in the theater, the one who didn’t get an autograph, and we mused on the unfairness of things. The woman was considering whether she’d try to come back on a different evening, but seemed undecided — and with a mood, a little bit, as if the magic of the theater had worn off in the atmosphere at the stage door. We took our leave of her as the crowd evaporated, although a small group of fans lurked near the stage door, determined, apparently, to meet our idol. As we were crossing the street, I noticed the group of young women whom I’d passed a few nights earlier, standing on the corner to the Old Vic, and I said, “So, did you get your photo?” It turned out that they had stood in line for returns and gotten some again, and, indeed, the one whose favorite Armitage was had managed to have a photo taken with him; they had stood at the head of the line and they were quite happy, even if exhausted and already wondering how they’d have the energy to get themselves to their lodging and then to the airport. LondonFriend and I walked back to my hotel. She had planned to take a bus, but in the end she ended up sleeping over, which was just fine. She got us up in the morning for the hotel’s quite princely English breakfast, and we began to talk.

Konditor and Cook, near the Old Vic

Something crazy had started to churn in me over the evening, and in my sleep and in my dreams — something I had never expected — in line with the whole thought about exchange of gifts at the stage door the night before. I’d dreamt over and over that night about writing in its various forms, typing on a typewriter, keyboarding on my laptop, handwriting, blogging. I’d been watching people give Richard Armitage gifts for several evenings, and it had never occurred to me to do that. Suddenly, I needed to give him something. And the only thing I could think of to give was something I’d promised myself I would try never to do. To write a letter. One of the earliest resolutions I’d made, and one of the firmest, the one most built up with queasiness when I thought of giving up that resolution. And yet, somehow I felt that if I left London without having given him a letter personally, I’d have missed the purpose of the trip. [which seems silly in retrospect, but there you are]

I felt overcome by a strange mania. There’s no other way to describe it. I had to write a letter and give it to him. I had to. Had to. I’ve rarely felt so strongly about anything in my life.

Caffè Nero, near the Old Vic

We left the hotel, and I walked over to Konditor and Cook, a sort of boutique bakery / Konditorei (they had a lot of central European choices there, so the name wasn’t just put on) and I bought three brownies in a bag, not because I thought he’d eat them, but so I’d have an actual physical object to give to him. LondonFriend and I then walked over to the Old Vic — I needed to make sure that my credit card had been correctly credited for the lost Monday ticket, and for one of the tickets I’d given back for Wednesday’s performance. They offered to issue me a ticket to a replacement performance, but of course that was impossible, but I told them I appreciated the thought. And then we settled back in Caffè Nero, so that I could write my letter.

That morning is a blur — I wrote a first draft, and a second draft, and then a fair copy, and then a clean copy for Armitage, which I ripped out of the final pages of my notebook. The letter was both sides of one page and one side of a second, probably slightly less than a thousand words. Too long, I thought at the time. I don’t exactly remember what LondonFriend did, except for one thing — she spotted Richard Armitage walking down the street toward the Old Vic at around 12:05 p.m., wearing a grey/blue sweatery thing, backpack, huge headphones, jeans, no socks, and those greyish / neutral color shoes. I looked up, noticed that it was him, watched him past the picture window of the café, and then looked back down at my notebook. I had to keep writing. I had to tell him? What? My motivation wasn’t clear to me, although it was definitely triggered by the previous night’s stage door atmosphere.

At the end of the letter, I wrote, “because it is my name” and then I wrote my real name. I folded it together in another sheet of paper, creased it really well so it would stick together, and put it in the bag from the bakery with the brownies.

I thought that LondonFriend’s would take her leave, but she told me she wanted to hang around and see if she can meet up with a friend of hers, and that she’ll meet me back at the café after the matinée and have dinner with me, if I don’t mind. We parted ways, and at about 1:30 I went to stand in the lobby of the Old Vic to watch the crowd.

[What it looks like when I try to write manuscript these days. Armitage got a clean copy of my fair copy.]

Afternoon performance, penultimate visit. I am now seated at 180 degrees to my seat the last two evenings, or 90 degrees to my seat the first two days, in C18 stalls, again in the front row. On my right are a group of three people who’ve gotten some kind of discount and are fairly regular London theatergoers, two of them a little older than me, with their elderly mother, celebrating her birthday. We comment on various things (will Armitage appear? It’s a matinee? I assure that he will, if his pattern holds), how uncomfortable the seat is, how long until the pause, and so on. On my left is a couple probably a decade younger than me; the woman is more of a Cumberbatch or Hiddleston fan but she also likes Armitage — the tickets are a gift from her male partner.

First half. The lighting from this perspective gives us Armitage’s beginning pose full in darkness, with his eyes in shadow. Again, Proctor’s entrance is a single bound up the stairs. The violence of the dance around the round and Proctor’s evasion of Abigail is more scattered, but Proctor’s face is a bit slower, somehow — at the point at which he makes to leave and she accuses him, I see at least four facial shifts — recognition, shame, anger, and the realization that he’s caught. This afternoon’s Proctor is much more horrorful, much more prepared to defend Elizabeth, and Proctor’s denial — “we never touched” is truly anguished. The sorrow seems balanced with a sort of black humor of a sort I haven’t seen before. I wonder if he’s going for the laughter? The audience seems to be really invested in finding humor in his bitterness.

I muse while watching that this is the first time I’ve really seen Proctor’s religiosity indicated so fully. His anger about hell, the dangerous way his right eyebrow rises. This Proctor is not only explosive. He is also mean. I haven’t seen this before.

In Act Two — I find myself concurring with Guylty (this is the seat she had the night she came with me) that this is the best perspective from which to see Proctor wash himself, for its this glimpse of his back that makes him seem most beautifully sad, but in the tension of his shoulders as he washes, we see the intensity of his anger. I wonder how these combinations work for him. Tonight Elizabeth is noticeably more suspicious of him and really angry, while Proctor is simply sad. Not just his hand on the whip, but his face changes when he hears her singing the lullaby. he can’t pull out the mood, though ,and so when the subject matter shifts his anger is more pronounced, violent, and now it’s right in front of me, he’s facing me. This is the best view for seeing what he’s thinking when he’s speaking of his religion (“it hurt my prayer”) and his failure to recite the ten Commandments. It’s interesting because I think of Proctor after Act One as a skeptic — as he refused to speak on witches, it seems like his relationship with G-d is about ethics and not religion. But here, he suddenly seems very sincere, to embrace the faith of a farmer. He knows his commandments and he looks angry, or humiliated by Elizabeth, when she mentions adultery. His pause is long, long after the laughter ends.

This is the tenderest moment — his hands are shaking when he promises to “bring [Elizabeth] home soon.”

In the pause I have one of the weirdest conversations of my life that I’ve ever had with a total stranger. Perhaps there’s something anonymous about meetings in the theater that make people unusually free with their questions. I answer hers, which are about Armitage, but I find myself musing over that conversation for weeks later.

In Act Three, we finally see Proctor staring Abigail down. This isn’t a great perspective for much of Act Three, with the half of the actors’ backs to us — but we do see his anger at her more clearly. It’s odd because I don’t think of black humor and bitterness as a big emotion generator, but the line about the dragon gets the biggest laugh yet, and when he says that Elizabeth knew Abby for a whore, he is crying.

This is also the best perspective for the kiss, about which I will write later that evening. I collect a lot of data on this viewing.

The audience is the most enthused it’s been at any performance I’ve attended, and the applause is thunderous and immediate, everyone’s standing up, all at once — everyone except us. The people on my right probably find it too cumbersome to stand, and I’m not sure what happens on my left, but I am sure that we are the only people in that entire theater who are NOT standing and we’re right in the front row. I clap as loudly and as widely as I can. This time Armitage looks straight at me, and narrows his eyes.

Gulp.

It’s nothing, I tell myself.

***

POP Thorin checks out our dinner on Saturday night, August 30th.

In the break between the two performances — which really isn’t very long, I wonder how Armitage manages it — I meet up again with LondonFriend. She’s had lunch with her friend at Masters Super Fish, which had been on my London list this time (I never found time for it). We eat this time in the gyros place right next to Caffè Nero. POP Thorin, who came along with me but hasn’t been out of his bag very much on this trip — I’ve been too distracted by Richard Armitage — approves. She gives me a hug and tells me she’s enjoyed herself. I feel bad that I’ve spent this whole trip on my own issues. She points out that it isn’t the last time we’ll see each other. I go to stand in the lobby of the Old Vic, to smell the sage, for the last time.

The evening performance. For whatever reason, I’d decided when I bought the tickets not to buy a front row seat for the last performance. I regret this now, because it is a significantly different play from F19 stalls, on the aisle, although it’s placed so that Armitage is right in front of me when Proctor washes in Act Two and he walks right past me at the end of Act Two, only a few rows back. I feel much more detached from what’s happening, much less tense. It’s in general easier to get distracted when one doesn’t have to worry that the actors might be looking right at one. I am also growing tired — none of the seats in this theater were in the last comfortable for such a long play (how does Armitage push himself into one of these seats? I wonder) — and I have seen the play enough times that the parts of it I dislike actively (especially the beginning of Act Four) are starting to wear on me. In a way, I feel a sense of relief. I’ve seen this enough. I know enough, now, to remember it forever, to document what has been important to me.

Tonight, we’re back to the sadder, more propitiating Proctor. The peak of the weak seemed to be either Friday night or the matinee this morning. I think it’s not just me, the actors are tired, too, although Armitage is making a valiant effort, and when everyone else is tiring, he seems to be the one who moves, provokes, relentlessly moving around, expanding the amount of space he takes up on stage, snarling heavily for reaction. New tonight is Abigail’s flirtiness — we didn’t see this before. Danforth, played by Jack Ellis, who has been less than on for a lot of this week, actually drops a paper in Act Four, and pulls himself together to make a supreme effort, giving a last second surcharge to Act Four.

What does distance from the round give to this play for the viewer? On some level, the scene changes are even more atmospheric, ephemeral and more dancelike, although this was one of the performances with the most visceral violence between Abigail and Proctor. And the refused kiss between Elizabeth and Proctor in Act Two works better from further away.

At the end, there’s a pause before the applause begins, and this time, I am the first to rise. Not because I think this is the best performance I’ve seen, but because I am so ridiculously grateful for everything. I don’t clap. I simply stand in acknowledgement. I cry my own tears, now.

I admit, though, that my mind is now much more on the stage door than it has been on any other night. Before I’d hoped to see something, but had not been especially invested in the possibility that I wouldn’t see it. Tonight — I am. Tonight, I want something. But I can’t tell you what.

***

I rush out, again to the familiar exit, and I find myself slightly further back in line, this time behind the stage exit. No matter, I know from several nights of watching this that I am close enough. There are autograph merchants there, and some loud fans in line, and the line is the most boisterous I’ve seen it, which is to say, not very boisterous from my perspective, but I read at least one account of the evening later from someone who was there that describes the atmosphere in the line as volatile and Armitage’s fans as pushy. Not from my perspective. There’s a fan behind me who asks if I will take a picture. Shoot, I think, not tonight. Tonight I need, need to give him this stuff. I tell her I’m not good at it, which is true, and say she should ask someone else. She does, and the person next to her agrees. I’m really tense for the first time.

Armitage comes out. He makes his progress down the line, pictures, signatures, he seems aware that the line is longer and seems to be moving more quickly. He comes ahead of me, abreast of me, is now behind me, and I’m caught in a group of people who want autographs. If I don’t say anything it will be too late. I grasp my “woman in authority” voice, the one I use in classrooms, and say, loudly, “May I give this to you? And thank you for one of the most meaningful weeks of my life?” He raises his head, it seems he was caught in a blur of signing, and in a split second he looks at me, and pauses narrows his eyes for a second, and looks a bit dazed, and then there’s a split-second of recognition, maybe? or something? I hope it’s just that he recognizes my face from the front row of a week of plays. I am still not sure of that, as I replay it in my head, and he says “bless you,” and the security man takes the bag with the brownies and the letter, and he moves on, signing and posing.

It’s over. The woman behind me tells me, annoyed, that when he moved to respond to me, he moved out of her picture, and she rushes back further in the line to try to recover it. This is, indeed, how this line is, if I am in it for any reason, I am hurting someone else’s chances. No matter how important my reasons are, no matter how important someone else’s reasons are. There is little democracy here, only competing desire, satisfaction and dissatisfaction only a hair’s breadth apart.

I gulp. I go to stand across the street. I see that the woman whose picture I’ve disrupted manages to get her picture with him, and am relieved. I hope it turns out. As on the previous evening, Armitage doesn’t make it all the way to the end of the line — he stops, again, just a little past the traffic sign, and turns around and returns to the theater. The crowd fades away. I watch him walk in, and watch the crowd go away. I look at the lights in front of the Old Vic and see what I assume is the last bus pass.

I gasp out a sound from myself I don’t recognize. I lean against the corner, and try to catch my breath. A passing fan (I assume) stops to look at me, and says something in Polish, and I smile and wave at her. When everyone is gone, I turn back toward the hotel.

***

As I walked back, I was lost in my own thoughts — what have I done? I kept asking myself, what was I thinking? I broke my most basic rule, the thing I always believed, what for? — I took my usual contemplative pace on the direct route to the hotel room. And again, just slightly before I made the turnoff, I saw a tall man in a greyish cardigany thing, with a backpack and baseball cap, cross the street in front of me at a rapid pace and hit the turnoff ahead of me. As on the previous evenings, I don’t change my pace. I just wonder. I pause a bit, slump. He’s doing what he’s always done. And I respond the way I have always responded. But what about me, I wonder. What I’ve done, what has changed, how this whole thing has changed me, will keep changing me. What, what?

Because it feels that night like everything about me has changed. And that impression hasn’t substantially changed since then, even though I feel somewhat differently about some aspects of that week now than I did at the beginning of September.

I go back to my hotel. I admit where I am. I write another post. I still can’t believe I wrote Armitage a fan letter, and gave it to him. I slam my stuff into the suitcase, and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow I will have an early start.

~ by Servetus on March 17, 2015.