Epilogue
Twelve Years Later
Olive Green, two-time Olivier-award-winning actress, is to star as Maggie in the Broadway revival ofCat On A Hot Tin Roof. However, this won’t be Green’s Broadway debut. She took New York by storm at the age of twenty-seven when she starredas Eliza Small inWhen The Curtain Fallswhich transferred from London’s glittering West End back in 2020. Back then she was loved-up with her co-star, Oscar Bright, but where are the couple now over a decade later? We can’t wait to find out when we catch up with Olive Green when she’s back here in NYC this Autumn.
Olive put down the magazine on the dressing table of hernew dressing room. Opening night still never failed to make her stomach somersault at any given moment. The clock on her phone said she had five minutes until she would be called to the stage and there was no turning back then. The show must go on. Olive felt like she needed a moment of calm amidst her new crazy life in the US. Yellow cabs honked their horns and people yelled outside her windowand she was sure she could see more city lights than stars in the darkness. But as she put her hand to the window, tracing the skyline, no star or light glinted as brightly as the diamond on her wedding finger.
Olive went back to the dressing table and picked up the magazine once again. She must have looked at it a thousand times already but she couldn’t help it. In the corner of the article,the journalist had used an old production photo from London’s version ofWhen The Curtain Falls. The young and chiselled face of Oscar Bright held a broody stare as he stood holding the revolver in his straightened arm with Olive draped across him in her burgundy dress. Olive automatically felt down the side of her body and wondered if she’d be able to get into that dress any more, but then sheshook the thought from her mind.I look better now anyway, she thought, and smiled. Her phone buzzed andLOULOUBFF4EVAflashed on the screen and Olive scrambled to pick it up, the phone almost slipping out of her grasp.
‘LOU!’ she yelled.
‘OLIVE, you big star, you! Tell meeverything.’ Lou’s voice instantly filled Olive with the urge to jump on a plane and fly back home. It was heraccent more than anything that made her miss London. Olive loved the sound of American voices but nothing made her feel more out of place than their unfamiliarity. People would say words to her that she thought she understood but it often turned out that she didn’t and what it meant to them meant something very different to her. Olive’s eyes stung but she tried to keep the sadness out of her voice.
‘I need to be on stage in like… three minutes!’ She laughed.
‘Well, then you have three minutes to tell me everything! GO!’ Lou started to make tick-tock noises with her tongue.
‘Arghh, the pressure. Erm, the apartment they’ve put me in is lush, the theatre is pretty nice and tickets are selling well so that’s… that’s good.’
‘How areyou? You sound stressy. No one likesyou when you’re stressy.’
‘Thanks!’ Olive laughed, wiping the single tear that had escaped. ‘I dunno. Theatres here aren’t quite the same as at home. There’s no…’ Olive twisted a bulb wondering if she couldmakeit flicker, ‘atmosphere. And I’m missing Mr Green, of course.’
‘Mr Green,’ Lou giggled. ‘I still think he should have taken your name. Sounds so much better!’
‘I know,but “Olive Green” is and always will be my stage name. A perk of being an actor!’
‘Is he going out there at any point?’
‘We don’t know yet. Just gotta wait and see how things pan out.’
‘Bloody actors,’ Lou muttered with sincerity which made Olive cackle until her eye caught the picture in the article again.
‘They’ve used this picture fromWhen The Curtain Fallsin thismagazine and I just can’t stop looking at it, Lou. It’s the one from the London version and it’s just… weird. So much has changed since then.’
‘Blimey, that is a blast from the past. Almost a decade ago now, isn’t it?’
‘Overa decade! We look so young.’ Olive touched Oscar’s face in the photo.
‘You were so young! You’ve had a lot of ups and downs since that photo was takenbut look! You’re in NYC, playing another corking role to add to your never-ending list, and you and your fella will be back together again in no time.’
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your act onebeginnerscall. This is your act onebeginnerscall. Thank you.
‘Listen, Lou, I gotta go – but I’ll call you when I’m back at the flat after the show because I need to know all about youand home! God, I miss home,’ Olive said, another tear or two escaping.
‘Oh shush, home is boring. You’re in the US of A! Blink and you’ll miss it! Stop thinking about him. I know you’ve never really been separated for this long but he’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it! SO MUCH LOVE!’ Lou yelled down the phone.
‘Love, love, love!’ Olive said back but Lou had hung up before she pulledthe phone away from her ear.
Olive ripped the article out of the magazine and pinned it to the corkboard at the side of her mirror. She slipped off her wedding ring, kissed it and put it alongside her necklace into a little pink ceramic jewellery dish she’d been given as an opening night present. With one more quick look in the mirror at her clean white dress, she turned her mirror lightsoff and then slid on her costume shoes ready for the opening scene. Olive took a slow and steady breath before opening her dressing room door and heading down to the stage for yet another opening night. As soon as the door closed, the light Olive had previously twisted turned itself back on.
‘Could I get an extra Playbill, please?’
‘Oooh, is that a British accent I hear?’ said the usher, handing over the Playbill. Oscar Bright laughed.
‘It is, yes.’ Oscar politely nodded his head but pulled his flat cap a little further over his eyes and quickly ducked away into the crowd that was filing into the auditorium, their chatter loud and their drinkssloshing to and fro. The nerves were starting to get to him. Ever since experiencing an opening night from the other side of the curtain, regardless of which side he sat now, everything inside him seemed to bubble. Although, ever since his West End debut, Oscar had stayed firmly off the stage and in front of the camera instead. A world in which he could redo takes until they captured the perfectone was much more suited to Oscar. These days, however, his role on British soap operaLove Lanewas far less talked about than his work on set playing the sidekick inIndiana Jane, the new sequel to Indiana Jones, in which Indiana’s daughter, Jane, takes over her father’s daring archaeological adventures. Oscar played a sweet librarian who was not only extraordinarily helpful when it came tohis extensive knowledge of history but also had a thirst for adventure himself, even if Jane was constantly digging him out of trouble. The first movie had been released earlier in the year and Oscar found himself on a small break before shooting for the second would begin.
He checked his ticket three times. ‘M fourteen. M fourteen. Ah, here we are,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Sorry, couldI…?’ Oscar did his best to awkwardly slide past everyone already seated who did very little to help him until he plonked himself down in seat fourteen next to a a smartly dressed elderly gentleman who, Oscar noticed, seemed to be alone.
