Jack takes the list back from him and adds their names to the bottom of the page.
“And Hanner. Everyone always forgets about Hanner.”
For the life of him, Jack can’t picture what Hanner looks like, but he dutifully writes down his name.
“What do I do about Nancy?” asks Jack.
“I think it’s safe to leave her off the list.”
“You think she’s really dead?”
“The Greens have looked everywhere.”
When the list is finished, they both sit there, staring at it. It is an impressive group of people. More than thirty men and women who have made the theater their life’s work.
“Were the men over there giving you a hard time?” Jack asks.
“No more than I deserve.”
“Who were they?”
“Investors.”
“What do they want with you?”
“They want me to sell the property to the city.”
“The theater?” Jack asks, surprised that anyone would want the burned-out shell of a building.
“What’s left of it.”
“I didn’t even realize you owned it.”
West lets out a bitter laugh. “Why do you think Placide and Green keep me around?”
“Oh, I see,” says Jack, and he finally does. West is a terrible actor, but if he owns the property the theater sits on, the managers have to make use of him.
“It was my parents who owned it.” West wears a signet ring on his right hand, and he twists it absentmindedly. “They were talented. Worked at Drury Lane and Covent Garden before coming to America, and when they arrived in Virginia, they went straight to work for the Old American Company, in Williamsburg.”
“The Old American?” Jack says in awe.
West nods. “They were there a few years, but the pay was terrible, so they got it in their heads that there was probably enough room in Virginia for two theater companies. Next thing you know, they’d moved to Richmond and set up shop.”
“Richmond is the better for it,” Jack says, although he wonders if this is true.
West reaches for Jack’s pencil and turns it over in his hands. “First place they leased was Quesney’s Academy, which they eventually bought. Did you ever see that place?”
Jack decides not to remind West that Quesney’s burned to the ground before he was born. Instead, he just shakes his head no.
“It was on the green, same site as the current theater,” he says, then catches himself. “Well, former theater, I suppose.”
“I knew what you meant,” says Jack.
“Quesney’s was too big. It was impossible to heat. But it had a large stage, with floor traps and generous flies, and the troupe started putting on the kind of spectacles we’re known for today—sea battles and cavalry charges. That type of thing.”
Jack’s heard more than one story about the time the company stagedThe Siege of Gibraltar, which included more than a hundred ships of various sizes, all equipped with live guns.
“Once they’d found success in Richmond, they expanded to Norfolk and then further south to Charleston. The Old American Company had the Philadelphia and New York markets cornered, but the South was open for the taking. Everywhere my father went, he built a theater, and by the time he died, West and Bignall had proper theaters in Norfolk, Charleston, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, and Alexandria.”
