Waiting, she watched with fascination how the play was taking shape. This evening was the first time they had been allowed to run through the entire play from beginning to end. The first time they had tried it, everyone could see how much work needed to be done, how shaky the whole structure was. But this time, the second of the evening, Mal had already done much to establish character and to direct movement on stage, and the production was gradually achieving a vitality of its own.
It was late, and everyone was tired, but they had all decided to finish their second run-through of the evening anyway, feeling that they would gain more from doing it all at once. At the rate they were going, it would be after one o’clock before they were through, and two o’clock before most of them were in their beds.
Peggy heard her cue lines coming up, and she got ready. At the right moment, she entered the stage with a kind of athletic bound, swinging an imaginary tennis racket. She tossed the “racket” (she would have one in the play) at the “couch” (a row of three chairs, at present) and perched on the edge of a table.
“My travel agent said that this place was different,” she said contemptuously, “and I guess it is, if different means dead.”
“Don’t take it quite so heavy, Peggy,” Mal called out. “You shouldn’t be so much disgusted with the place as you are, really, with yourself. You know that no matter how good it really might be, it wouldn’t suit you, because nothing ever does. Make the expression more regretful than contemptuous. And for the same reason, tone down your entrance a little.”
Peggy nodded to show her understanding, and went back to the wings again.
The scene, when played, would last only about five minutes, but Mal was hard to please and would let nothing pass. By the time it was over, the rehearsal of it had taken forty minutes and Peggy was glad to make her exit and sit down on a box near the switchboard where she could watch the next scene.
This one would go smoothly, she knew. It was the scene they had worked on for the audition at Sir Brian Alwyne’s, and although they had not worked out their stage movements as yet, the cast already had developed pace and rhythm.
Paula’s entrance, bewildered, awkward and eager to please, was perfect. She was as graceful and appealing as a doe. One by one, the other actors came on, each in turn trying to find some point of contact with her, each trying to please her. And as each failed, he went off, to return again in another mood or personality. The pace quickened. Paula’s confusion grew greater. The tension she projected was communicated to everyone present, those on stage and those in the wings or in the orchestra seats watching, as it would be to the audience. The second act was approaching its emotional crisis, uninterrupted by Mal, who sat as if entranced, on the edge of his seat.
Finally, at precisely the right moment, when it could go on not one moment more without shattering, the tension broke in a flood of emotion. Paula dropped to her knees in tears, then sank in a heap on the floor, sobbing. The scene was over. The actors turned expectantly to Mal, waiting for his comments, his praise.