Amy watches opening night from the back of the theater. Henry, Greg, and Ava have seats in the fifth row, in the center, but she doesn’t want to sit with them. She wants to watch alone. Timothy is watching from an undisclosed location so he can take notes to give for the following night.
In the few minutes before the curtains part, Amy scans the crowd. It’s a full house. She sees friends and strangers and people who fall exactly in between: two teachers from her department at the high school (friends), a man in oversize black-framed glasses who she was toldmaybe from theNew York Times(stranger), her old babysitting charge Holly, sitting with Joy Sousa and Anthony Puckett (exactly in between). Maggie, Joy’s daughter, is working as an usher. Maggie is flushed and busy, leading people to their seats. Every advance-sale ticket for the next eleven shows is sold, thanks to Sam.
The house manager makes the announcements about the fire exits and the prohibition of cameras and cell phones, and then a hush falls over the crowd. It’s the same hush everywhere. Amy has heard this hush on Broadway, before every show ofTo Kill a Mockingbird, and at the off-off-off Broadway productions she attended during college, and in her own high school auditorium, before each and every production she’s been a part of. She bets thehush is international, and it shows you that theatergoing remains a shared, universal experience.
The curtain opens, and instantly Amy is transported to sixteenth-century Messina, and the stone facade of Leonato’s Italian villa, with the wrought iron balcony and the tangle of vines down the front. The set is spectacular. The lighting is spectacular. The costumes are spectacular. Little old Block Island, which Amy used to think of as poky and remote, is bringing it.
When Gertie enters, along with Leonato, Sam, and the Messenger, the applause is immediate and thunderous. There are a couple of whistles; there’s a little bit of stomping. Everyone in the cast has been told to expect this. People go crazy when they see an actual movie star on the stage. They gocrazy!
Leonato holds for the applause, then holds some more, then at last it dies down, and he speaks the first line of the play:
I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon
Comes this night to Messina.
And they are off and running.
Somehow, even though she watched the costume fittings, and part of the dress rehearsal, and pored over the preproduction stills, Amy isn’t prepared for seeing her daughter onstage, in Hero’s costume: the Renaissance gown, square at the neck, cinched tight at the waist, with long, puffy sleeves. So accustomed is Amy to seeing her daughter attired in next to nothing—the shortest of shorts, the cropped-est of tops, her PJs, her bikini—that she almost doesn’t recognize her, especially under the lights, with the makeup, saying the lines.
Amy never puts on Shakespeare plays at her high school. To be honest, she’s not really sure why Shakespeare is still the go-to for high school nonmusical productions, with so many other wonderful playwrights to choose from. Why not Tracy Letts, ArthurMiller? Where’s Alice Childress, Lillian Hellman, Lisa Kron? Of course she’s read plenty of Shakespeare; of course she’s seen her share of the plays. But often she’s wondered: Why this one guy? Why alwayshim?
She starts to get it as she stands in the back of the theater and hears Gertie Sanger say:
It is so indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man:
But for the stuffing—well, we are all mortal.
Weareall mortal, thinks Amy. We are! And isn’t that just the crux of everything. And didn’t Shakespeare just know it. Didn’t he just know a lot back then that’s still true today: the weight of societal expectations, the lightness of love.
The Messenger:I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
Beatrice:No; an he were, I would burn my study.
When she delivers this line she tosses a sardonic look toward the audience.
Everybody laughs. It’s funny! It’s legitimately, even now, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, funny!Much Adois a comic masterpiece for a reason. It’s got everything. Witty language, a clever plot, the magic element of all romantic comedies, from Hughes to Ephron to Emily Henry, which is that everyone—except Beatrice and Benedick—including the audience, knows that Beatrice and Benedick are made for each other. Amy sees now too that Timothy’s direction, his own comic sensibility, his care with which way Gertie turns her shoulders when she utters a particular line, the body language between the two leads that he’s teased out, thread by thread, beat by beat, deserves its own attention and praise.
Then, of course, before the intermission the feeling turns more ominous, when Don John approaches Claudio with the lie aboutHero. Amy’s stomach clenches. She remembers everything Sam told her about what happened in New York, and why she came home, and how badly she wanted to hide.
During intermission, Amy herself hides in the lighting booth. She doesn’t want to see anyone. She’s too nervous for the second act, for Sam, for Timothy. From up here all she can make out is an energetic murmur, a buzz and a hum as people head toward the concessions or maybe even outside for a sip of nighttime air before returning to their seats.
“How do you think it’s going?” she asks Tommy, the lighting guy. Her feet are sweating: that’s her tell, that’s what happens when she gets nervous.
“Lights are working,” he says.
“But the rest of it...?”
Tommy shrugs and rubs his palms on his jeans. “My job is the lights,” he says. A Shakespearian, Tommy is not.
Amy sighs and taps her fingers on the spotlight casing.
“I’m going to stretch my legs,” says Tommy. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You’re makingmenervous,” she says right back, but too late, Tommy is gone.
Finally Amy turns on her cell phone and texts Greg, Henry, and Ava:Are people liking it.
She waits, and waits some more. Finally the answer comes, from Greg.
