I sat with Wendy on the Mach III to London. We were flying through darkness. I watched her as she slept, patiently waiting as her hair fell gradually over her face. I reached over to brush it away, lest it tickle her into wakefulness, and my hand lingered on the softness of her skin. It was only a few more hours to London and I knew she would sleep all the way, allowing me to keep this silent and peaceful, though pathetic, vigil.
Call me slow, but I did not really begin to be paranoid until they found a bomb on the plane to London. Until then the attacks on my life seemed no more than coincidence and misfortune. It was niggling at me, though, and that is why I took the precaution of booking the entire first class compartment for myself. This gave me some comfort, not just from that solitude and the luxurious seats, but because the first class compartment in contemporary planes is bomb proof against anything in the luggage compartment, or other compartments of the plane. It can also survive being separated from the plane while in the air, floating gently back to earth before depositing its charges into first class life rafts. The airline companies had found it too expensive to treat the whole plane in this way, so it was legislated that they do the next best thing and protect the compartment where the legislators would travel. So why should I worry, and why should such a bombed plane worry me if I was safe - especially since I had checked the safety and terrorist record of every airline, and chosen the safest? So why should I worry?
Because the bomb was in the first class compartment. It was under my bloody seat! Fortunately all flight attendants are trained in bomb disposal, and they managed to drop it out of the plane where it exploded in some relatively lightly populated region of Africa. Then they woke me up from my faint to give me a sedative. And just before, or just as, the hallucinogens in the sleeping pill were taking effect I realised that if the first class cabin is shielded from bombs in the other parts of the plane, then the other parts of the plane were shielded from bombs in the first class cabin. This meant something, but I couldn't grasp it and drifted into multi-coloured dreams, scanning through nightmares when my subconscious mind remembered its state of unease.
So I started feeling persecuted. I dreamt that people watched me while I slept. I was constantly turning around to see who was behind me. I kept my use of electronic equipment to a minimum to make myself harder to find. I even started carrying cash, though it was difficult to find a hotel, or even a street vendor, to accept it. Even beggars have come to insist on identification to verify the transaction, for even beggars must be choosers or face prosecution.
To London then, to relive the glory of my professional stage debut. That it was in Hamlet is a nice coincidence, since my first glory as an amateur actor was playing Hamlet in a high school production. It was pretty rotten, but we had a school's sympathetic audience, and although I remember glory readily, I suppress the memory of shame. Hamlet is acknowledged as one of the most demanding roles in English drama, as well as one of the longest of all parts, so can you blame me for forgetting some of the words? Forgetfulness can produce unforgettable moments. I was standing alone on the stage, frozen dumb with fear. It happens to many actors, I know, but how many have had to suffer five minutes of laughter from the audience because the continuity prompt shouted "To be or not to be, stupid," I'll never forget those lines again!
But we have no need to remember them now since everything is prompted by the control computer which displays the words for our eyes. I know of more than a few famous and not so famous actors who have surgical implants to feed the lines straight to their optic nerves, but giving your brain to a surgeon is asking for adventure. I just use soluble contact lenses when I'm working, or dark glasses if I'm not; either will display the words clearly for your eyes. I had started wearing dark glasses constantly now, and not just because a star needs shades. It was for safety; to protect my eyes in the event of unexpected explosions, and to remind me to be vigilant, for the reminder software was continually prompting me to be on my guard.
"Look behind you."
"Who served you that food?"
"Do you trust the barmaid?"
"Check all temporary fixtures rigged for the film set."
"Is there any password-operated, dangerous equipment nearby?"
"Check your coffee for foreign substances."
"Can you see any children playing with computer-operated equipment?"
But as nothing happened I began to ignore the warnings. I stopped looking around, and I no longer worried about identifying myself to electronic doors. I always looked suspiciously at my coffee, though, and eventually had reason to curse my addiction to caffeine. I insisted that my coffee be served in a transparent mug, and I diligently searched each for traces of foreign bodies. It made me feel better though, as I was to discover, many noxious things dissolve completely and tastelessly in coffee. It would have been so simple to test for, too, but you must understand that a person in my position is obliged to wear a watch at least as expensive as a Moon Rock Rolex, and you know that with increasing price watches become less functional. In fact I didn't even know that for less than five dollars I could have bought a Korean watch that not only told the time, offered a hundred alarms, a global telephone directory and satellite varivision built in, but being held over a cup of fluid such as coffee could spectrographically test it for every chemical substance known to science. But no; my watch cost over fifty thousand dollars and it still only tells the time.
You will remember that London was were I had my big break. After several years of hardship [see Chapters 102-113 of Victor: my varied life], which I had decided not to film because it involved physical as well as mental hardship and was therefore not interesting to see or be reminded of, I finally won a part as understudy to Kenneth ____ , who was playing Interactive Hamlet at the Garrick Theatre.
MONTAGE: The point of view is from a London Hansom Cab driving around London past the places of interest to Victor's life there. Mixed with the moving shot are black and white stills from Victor's own records, as well as recent stills of him standing in front of his old haunts, or their sites.
VICTOR (VOICE OVER MONTAGE) I had no family in London. My father's family seemed mostly to be remnants of forgers transported to Van Diemen's Land two hundred years ago in the 1840s, while my mother's parents had emigrated as ten pound poms after the Second World War. I had no friends in London either, for it was the year the Australians were cleared from their holiday camps in the West End. Nor did I have money in my pockets. My first priority was finding a job, so I lent my hand and muscle to the rebuilding of the West End, pulling the skeletons of my compatriots out ot the rubble of Earls Court pubs. It was lucky I was an actor, for I could easily put on a Jamaican accent and pretend I was from Lancashire. They were desperate times for me, but I was not alone in my poverty and hunger, and I moved from squat to squat and job to job with various other vagabonds and loafers. Friendships were formed and broken in a day, and I doubt that any of our histories have ever crossed since then, except in the sublimation of my essence through the unveiling of characters I played on screen.
MONTAGE (CONTINUED): The cab is finally at Trafalgar Square. Victor salutes the one-eyed pommy as the cab drives to the Garrick Theatre. The theatre displays "Interactive Hamlet - starring Kenneth Wong" in large letters.
The theatre displays "Interactive Hamlet - starring Kenneth Olsson" in large letters.
The theatre displays "Interactive Hamlet - starring Kenneth Däagsundssvej" in squashed letters.
VICTOR (VOICE OVER MONTAGE) After many years of hardship, carting bricks by day and acting in any part I could find by night, living on soggy outcast bread and sleeping in the coldest, dampest places, I had the break I was waiting for - I was to understudy Kenneth Däagsundssvej for Hamlet. To this day I regard it as providence, a stroke of God or Fate or whatever you want to call it. It was damn good luck and damn strange, for Kenneth hated me in rehearsal - he called me an Australian wag.
MONTAGE (CONTINUED): The camera tracks inside the theatre, through the audience to a close-up of Victor on stage.
VICTOR (REHEARSING HAMLET) "Vanity, thy name is ..." I forgot it again, damn it. What's the line again, Ken? Is that where I am supposed to make something up? Vanity, thy name is woman, man, god, preacher, nation, oscar, fame, fortune ... so much to choose from.
MONTAGE: Victor playing Hamlet, intercut with shots of rapture, acclaim and standing ovations.
The first night in London I spent with Wendy and Tim at the Coach and Horses in Soho, ostensibly to discuss what I disliked about Tim's meticulous screenplay for the montage, but really to defeat jetlag in familiar surroundings, and to let the fondness I have for aspects of the past surface and imbue my spirit; the better to relive my past on screen. I make it sound like an excuse for spending the night in the pub, and I suppose it really was, for I have dear memories of the warm, embracing pubs around Soho as it was there I spent my most desperate and most formative time. Here a famous actor such as myself could take a normal drink in a normal public place without fear of being mobbed. People that see you there will still tell their friends about it unceasingly, but they will not approach you, being either disdainful or timid in their inferiority. They needn't think anything, for I like to think that my years in Hollywood never lifted me so far above my roots that I cannot still remain, unlike the self-proclaimed and self-crowned royalty of America, within reach of those roots; or at least within call.
I allowed Wendy and Tim two pints of best bitter before I told them about my dissatisfaction with the script. Such dissatisfactions mostly were to do with the emphasis on criticism over acclaim during the montage. I agreed to leave in the criticism, in fact it was my idea to reveal all aspects of my story, but I would have preferred more shots of the standing ovations. But it doesn't matter what I wanted, since they chose to ignore my entreaties and instead started a long and involved discussion about the possible motives various people might have to murder me: Mary for abandoning her with child; Norry for suspected or feared cuckoldry; Betty for abandoning her with Norry; and one old radio announcer for murdering his career. Since they were intent on annoying me I ignored them, and with fatigue and alcohol slipped into day-dreaming.
I imagined sitting in this very bar in 2010, sipping exactly the same brew from the same glass, when a runner came to fetch me to the theatre. The great Kenneth was sick and I was on, he said. My heart raced, my fear grew and my relationship with hair replacement technicians began. I remember that night of triumph, standing in my bloodied princely uniform, deafened by the applause and dwarfing everyone that stood behind me, Claudius, Gertrude, Horatio, Warren and Liz - they all had to bathe in my glow that night. I took a giant swig from my pint glass then, and I remembered floating to see Kenneth on his sick-bed the day after my performance. I remembered his face, his smile, his ingenuous "Very good, Darling", and the eyes - those eyes. If looks could maim .... but I was woken from my dream as Wendy said to me "We've only filmed the first twenty of your seventy-year life, Victor. How many more enemies will we meet along the way?" I smiled and said "It's a good thing Kenneth isn't here," then fell asleep, smiling, with my head on the bar.
Since the 2010s I have not worked much in London so I do not keep a house there. I have always stayed at the insular international hotels, living in the expensive international luxury that is identical the world over. I have, though, taken many roles in films of characters from all aspects of life in all countries. I lead secondhand lives, sometimes richer than my own. I could never honestly call myself a British working-class man, but I lived with them; more to the point, though, some of the best roles I have taken in films have been as British working-class men, and those were created by people who lived those lives. Critics tend to underrate the truths that actors live, for they are usually academic and consider that we treat our craft as merely that - a craft, and not a role. It is to those people from whom I stole aspects of their lives that I have never paid my dues fully. I became wealthy on popular acclaim, but whom were the audience applauding if not themselves. Is a performer more than a vessel for emotions?
While the British and Australian crews prepared the Garrick Theatre for filming, Wendy, Tim and I toured London with a photographer. The scene would begin with a montage of stills of me standing in front of some of my old homes and haunts, while my voice tells of the early years in London. They took shots of me outside pubs, inside pubs, outside community theatres and some of the places I used to live, which I remember as being primitive, damp and perpetually cold. Most of those places have been renovated now, and outside them are parked expensive German cars driven by people from anywhere in the world where a country had been ruined, or at least irrevocably changed, by British imperialism or the American motor industry.
The exception was in a street in Islington, which in 2010 was lined on both sides by terraced houses in almost irreparable condition after the memorable Council Incident of 2002, the only known case of a London site trying to get itself removed from the Monopoly board. All the houses were then occupied by squatters. Just one house remained in fair condition; the paint was less flaky than its neighbours and it still had a gate. There I lived as a rent-paying tennant of a junior Civil Servant who continually chastised me for not taking a proper career like his, for while he was going to be a secretary to the Prime Minister, I was going to the devil, and therefore needed to be hounded every hour of every day for the rent I owed. I discovered the house in a similar state to that in which I left it - with flaking paint and the gate falling off - but now it was the worst house in the street. All the others were immaculately restored, with expensive and fashionable Chinese cars parked in front. As I posed in front of it, trying not to lean on the fence, as it looked as if it would collapse next time one of London's 50 million dogs peed against it, an old man dressed in an antique black suit, complete with decrepit bowler hat and umbrella, came out the front door and said rather crabbily, "Oy you! You're Victor Lawrence, aren't you?"
I was about to answer yes and offer an autograph when I recognised the man as my very own junior Civil Servant, the one who was going to rise through the ranks to the very top, and since I could not remember his name I simply said, with the voice of a British Prime Minister, "hello there, Old Man. Rose to the top did we?"
"Don't you 'Hello there, Old Man' me," he said. "You nicked off without paying your last month's rent. You still owe me for a bleedin' month." He punctuated his words by whacking me on the head with his umbrella. The force so imparted, which was considerable - he must have been well over eighty-five years old - sent me reeling into the gutter where I sat holding my ear. In England, as in all Christian countries, debtors may only be forgiven in church.
"You haven't got the money yet, have you, so why did you come back, eh? I'll bet you turned out a bum like I said you would."
"But I'm Victor Lawrence."
"I know very well who you are. A no-good bum who owes me a month's rent. I see you turned out no good like I said you would. Didn't work hard like me, did you? You should have quit acting for a proper job. His Majesty looks after me now, you know. I just sit at home letting His Majesty do the work. But who looks after you, eh? Tell me that young lad? Who looks after you?"
"Haven't you seen any of my films?" I asked incredulously, but the question seemed to feed his smugness.
"Oh, so you made a few films did you? But you didn't make yourself any security did you? Look at me. I've got my house to lean on."
I was leaning too, but on the latest model satellite guided Euro-Rolls, and being attended by a dozen people while a photographer recorded every moment. I said, "Well be careful not to lean on the gate," and sat on the hood of the Rolls.
As the Euro-Rolls told me to get off the hood before it called the police, the man came at me again with his umbrella, which I managed to duck until he was subdued by my assistants who kept him away from me while I recovered. He took willingly the cash settlement they offered, but only after putting it through a pocket verifier which, curiously, he pointed at the sky as if to make the communication satellite's job a little easier.
Meanwhile Wendy and Tim had sat themselves either side of me. Wendy said, "We'd better protect him better don't you think, Tim? This man seems to have enemies all over the world. Is there anyone else in the script that we need to be careful of, Victor? Who else do you owe money to?"
Tim said, "Leave him alone, Wendy. He has difficulties enough coping with his fame."
Just then the photographer came over and said, "Well, I got some great shots. Do you want one of Victor and his old landlord together - after having made up of course." I groaned to think of yet another humiliation caught on film. At least this time it was only stills and in black and white. I stood and said to the old man, "I remember running out on you. You were a miserable bastard."
"I still am," he replied, smiling through what must be the last tooth-free gums in England. "Why not a picture of you giving me back some of the money?"
I laughed at that, knowing that my assistants would have recompensed him fully, so I agreed, and, smiling for the camera, gave him all the money in my pocket. And as I handed him that bill and thought smugly of my wealth, the new next door neighbours arrived home in their own envy-green, nearly impossible to buy, Rolls Lada - it even had a human sitting in the driving seat, not that the human would be allowed to control anything except the doors. The woman that the chauffer let out was so fat and laden with gold that it took her fully a minute to get up the stairs and into the front door.
I smiled, and thought of her as one of the "merely rich", though it was evident that she was one of the obscenely rich, and shared a wall with this poor man whom I cheated of a few Euroquid forty years ago. Would the world be different if fame was as easily shared as money? Probably not since fame, being more easily won, would be harder to part with; though what would the woman next door do with it behind her veiling chador?
Work over for the day, Wendy and Tim and I went back to the Coach and Horses in Soho. I was very weary still from the time-change, and I was smiling vaguely as my mind dipped in and out of conscious thought, sipping occasionally at the atmosphere and listening to Wendy and Tim talking about nothing in particular. There was an unstated and indefinable intimacy between them at that moment, and I moved myself closer to them, leaning towards Wendy to catch a piece of their warmth. I suppose I was feeling vulnerable, and I was not a little bit pissed, for I grabbed her arm and smiled, thinking she would welcome my gift of friendship. She brushed my arm away.
"Leave off, Victor," she said, and looked back to Tim, who I noticed was watching my every move, drifting with me as I breathed in and sighed out.
Another pint of bitter and a room full of synthetic, doping smoke; peacefully watching as Tim and Wendy talked; my movements were involuntary and Wendy was so young, so youthfully lovely; and away from her job, laughing into my pleasant mood she was simply joyful. I reached out to her and stroked her hair. She froze and turned vicious eyes to me, but they had no effect now and I stroked again. She clamped on my hand and twisted it away, now looking fearful.
I said, "I've learned to enjoy things I know I must later regret."
"You've never regretted anything the way you'd regret that."
"I'm pretty good at regretting. I practise."
"You act. I'll see you tomorrow Victor," she said, her face now passionless, perhaps drained. I don't know. She left quickly, pulling on her coat as she went out into the rain. I looked to Tim, whom I expected to follow her, but he avoided my eyes.
"Aren't you going with her?" I asked. He said nothing, and looked as downcast as me. He drank deeply from his beer, then finished that which Wendy had left.
"I'm going to meet the rest of the crew for a few King Lears," he said. "See you tomorrow I suppose," and he followed Wendy out, leaving me there alone with my pint glass.
We began filming at the theatre the next day. My part was simply to play
I left the pub. The cold, clear air blasted my face, and I closed my eyes to get my brain back in gear. When I opened them again I saw Wendy turn the corner into Shaftsbury Avenue, the opposite way from the hotel. I thought she must be going to the theatre to prepare for the next day's work. Naturally I followed her. We were both slightly drunk, and in such a state maybe, just maybe, she would thaw to my entreaties. I don't mean I wanted to seduce her. Well perhaps I did, but I was thinking with my heart; not with rationality or with lust, but with love; I assure you. I wrapped my coat around me and took a few steps in her direction, stopped, took a few more steps, froze, turned, went back to the door of the pub, froze, saw Victor standing to leave, turned, raced to the corner of Shaftsbury Avenue, turned after Wendy, looked, saw she was gone, cursed myself for a coward, cried to myself as an ugly, unlovable, drunken oaf, and finally ran to the pub where I knew the film crew were drinking. There I drank my heart full in the anonymity of drunken camaraderie.
As they were calling for last drinks I saw Wendy enter. I ordered her a pint, but she looked revolted as I handed it to her, though I didn't see that she was revolted by me.
I said to her, "I love you Wendy. I really, really love you," but she wasn't looking at me and it was too noisy for her to hear.
She waved to some of the others and turned back to me. "Did you say something?" she asked. "Come on. Let's join the others."
I followed desultorily, marvelling that even in badly cut jeans and baggy leather coat she looked overwhelmingly desirable. It was crowded, and I had difficulty squeezing through shoulders, turning from cigarette smoke as I tried to be next to her. When I finally reached her she had almost finished her drink.
"I'm inhibiting the crew," she said to me. She was the boss after all, and it was true that the others seemed more subdued since she came in. She skulled her beer and said, "See you all bright and early," handed me her empty glass and walked out. Later, as I was looking for a cab to take me back to the hotel, which, in my drunkenness I had not realised was less than two hundred metres away, I wondered where Wendy had been for the two hours between pubs. All the crew were out drinking, so there was very little preparation she could have done at the set. Maybe she was planning another surprise for Victor. But I forgot those thoughts for the time being, while I argued about payment with the taxi driver.
Kenneth's production of Hamlet, or Victor's, depending on whose autobiography you read, was the first commercially successful Shakespeare done interactively, and afterwards Kenneth left in self-disgust at what he had been doing to the bard's words. I don't see why, since no one else has ever worried about screwing around with Hamlet. Victor, for example, by lightyears less squeamish, took over the lead role and made it his triumph. It was still early days for interactive theatre, though it had moved on since the experiment with Peter and the Wolf. The consoles in each of the audience seats included full alpha-numeric keyboards. The audience could then give detailed descriptions of the way the play should develop, suggest dialogue, or even criticise the performers or the computer's interpretation of their suggestions.
That would be hard enough for any play, but it was particularly difficult in Elizabethan English; but bad Elizabethan English gave the computer an excuse to dismiss much of the suggested dialogue and concentrate instead on plot. It made enormous demands on the actors, most of whom found they could only cope was memorising Shakespeare's entire output, as well as selections from his contemporaries. That way a natural-sounding Elizabethan iambic pentameter could trot from one's lips whatever the occasion. The computer was necessary, as its access to the database was quicker, and merely had to prompt the actor with a random line from any of the plays. It was found that, suitably adapted, a line from any of Shakespeare's plays would fool 98.7% of all audiences, that is all those who pretended to understand Elizabethan English.
They had to be careful with plot, too, for it could easily descend past farce into nonsense. Victor tells of one early instance when the computer let through the audience suggestion "Stab Claudius while he is praying." Those of you who know Hamlet will realise that this would end the play before the first drinks break. The computer didn't realise this and told Victor to do it, and before he knew it Victor had stabbed Claudius. He stood with a blood dripping dagger, and the prompters went blank. What happens next?
"I really shouldn't have done that while he was a praying," said Hamlet, and Victor muddled on talking to two ghosts instead of the one the play usually requires.
To save future embarrasments the computers were programmed with severe plot restraints imposed by interpretations of the play by contemporary critics. The computer would work around a unifing theme, such as the version Victor chose, which specifies that Hamlet goes mad thinking that everybody is trying to kill him. Technophiles said this was just a way to hide the fact that everything could be done satisfactorily by computer. The programmer's union, too, was adamant about the input of human critics. But when they were applauded for standing up for art their representative said, "Bollocks to the bard. We just want something to do."
Victor had some trouble with the wardrobe department, since his girth was more Falstaffian than that of a young prince, and unlike computer-controlled images of varivision and variflix, spontaneous costume changes are still not easy on a live stage. On filming day he walked onto the set, bubbling over with enthusiasm for the part he loved, but was annoyed that the film crew was not yet ready. They walked around the set like sluggards, and not even Wendy's chainsaw voice could move them to work faster.
I pulled him aside and said, "There's a little trouble on the set this morning, Victor." He had probably guessed that much, since it was only just possible to talk under Wendy's screaming. Coming closer to me he put his hands over his ears to block her strident voice, and I could see he noticed my eyes and the deep, black, lugubrious sockets in which they hid. I continued slowly, needing to think for every word, "The English film crew showed London to the Australian film crew last night."
"Well?"
"Evidently..." I was stalling, lost for a satisfactory lie.
"Evidently what?"
"Well the Aussies have discovered how cheap drugs are in London, and they went a little overboard ..."
"They what?"
"They're all stoned," I said.
The truth was obvious, once it was pointed out. The people charged with recording his life were walking around like zombies, except for two who were running around like hares as if trying to make up for the others, though their running was aimless and their actions ineffectual. I giggled a little, trying to hide my face from Victor, but he caught it. He grabbed my jaw savagely and turned me to face him. He looked again at my suffering eyes and said in a stage whisper, "Et tu ..."
"Brute," I prompted.
"I know the bloody line!" he shouted.
I had taken plenty of analgesics as well as sundry soothers that morning, so the physics of his shout didn't hurt me. I did feel partly guilty though, for I remembered goading the others last night, stoking their valour whenever it faded into weariness or insensibility. The energy of thwarted love is so easily misdirected into enthusiasm. To make up, or to get away from him for a while, I went to get us some coffee.
When I returned he rejected it, instead bidding me to come with him to talk to Wendy, so I put the mugs down and followed him.
He said to her quietly, "I want ..."
"Yes, Victor?" she said, also quietly. She was angry too.
"Blood!" he screamed. "I want blood, and it should be spilt soon lest I be not placated!" It must be difficult to talk normally when you're dressed as Hamlet. She screamed back that it wasn't her fault, nor could she get any sense from the crew as to whom to blame. They both looked at me.
"So fire me," I said, and I walked back to have my coffee, muttering, "if you can't love me."
They came to join me, after Wendy had screamed, loud like a Gypsy wedding, and called desperately for a break. We sat silently for a moment while Victor transferred his coffee to a transparent beaker and examined it for peculiarities, sniffing it like an airport dog.
Wendy said to him, "Don't glare Victor. It's not a very difficult job today. They should be able to do it."
"You should be able to get someone else," he said.
"It'll be all right Victor. You just get up on stage and pretend to be a young tormented prince."
We finished our coffee in silence, then he took the stage and Wendy got the film crew in order. Astonishingly, after a few minutes she seemed to have them under control and he began my monologue thus:
O! that this too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his cannon 'gains self-slaughter.
Suicide? What made him start there, I wondered? We had written an exact script to mimic an improvised, interactive Shakespearian play, and Victor had immediately abandoned it. My indifference, caused by the previous night's overdoses, gave way to curiosity then, and I watched breathlessly as Victor tumbled further and further into actual improvisation. Just then I noticed that a small light was showing on my wrist watch, which was resting next to Victor's empty coffee mug. There was enough coffee left in the bottom for it to analyse and it showed that somebody had spiked his drink - obviously with things that dissolved easily, so as to avoid his now traditional visual and olfactory inspection. Someone had slipped three tablets into his drink - one of E Zero, E621, and K621. E Zero I knew was just ecstasy, renamed when it was released as a food additive. E621 was monosodium glutamate, which made sense since we all got our drugs in chinatown the night before. But K621? It sounded familiar. I was told later that it was Jupiter, which was still a new drug at the time, and so called because it gave a feeling of omnipotence.
I sipped my coffee and watched. As Victor progressed through Hamlet, so the drugs coursed through his body, and although in the beginning he stuck steadfastly to Shakespeare's words, his acting strayed ever further from the merely academic approach to Elizabethan drama.
"What a piece of work is man," he declaimed with an insane grin, and continued through acts I to IV under the influence of a most malicious chemical demon. "Something is out of joint," he said, while rubbing his tummy with his left hand and patting his head with his right. Soon the Jupiter took control of his body and he ran around the stage like a madman, though too mad even for Hamlet. He reached act five in record time, ran off stage and grabbed a skull, climbed some scaffolding at the back of the stage and yelled for all he was worth, "Alas poor Yorick. I knew him Horatio," and after he dashed the skull to the floor, Shakespeare, iambic pentameter, and the remainder of his senses deserted him, except the one that reminded him that he was playing interactive Hamlet, and that Hamlet thought everyone was trying to kill him.
Hamlet Vice walks there with the loud poet
Whose art conceives fruit after borrowing
Gradual and respectful understanding of rancid means.
He breathed once, and crime ran amok.
Thou, poet and warrior. Thy sword creates ideas, then
parentheses localise them on living paper, forgetting
that, finally, life kills the spectator.
Oh that this ridiculous flesh would not care, but it
Cannot accept surrender - damn it, Ophelia, why are you trying to kill me?
In one swoop I am fell'd closer to invincibility.
And kept on record inerasable, the ineluctable past
Keeps its pace with my indom'table nature.
Sweet comfort in that.
What less-than-glorious nonsense. He was prancing around as if he owned the world. He was changing costumes every minute, sometimes matching, and sometimes clashing with, the background. And his gymnastics! He twirled his arms, as if trying to match the swirling colours of his cloak which went around and over the top and sometimes back down again. So he recited his pompous, ridiculous imitation of poetry and twirled his arms around, wrapped himself in his cloak and jumped from high in the rafters to join Ophelia in her grave as thought the minstrel lord on high sang his commandments through the vivisecting muse that encircled Victor's words. Emphasis, clamorous diction of Empires lost, took root and sprouted in his throat where the silks of lost deserts circumnavigated themselves within the writhing colours of time itself...
I was wonderful. Typically wonderful. The magic of my debut came to infiltrate my being, and the longer I was on stage the more I felt my old spirit come back to haunt me, as if it had waited in the wings for this very moment. I was King. I was God. I was the emperor of stage, commanding the audience with my very being, enchanting them with my words, my glorious words, my commanding being. I was a star. I was indomitable. I was Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Bond and Blake. I was Victor. I was everywhere. My incredible words rang out. My actions spoke with their own particular eloquence, as if as an actor I had not only prepared - I simply was. It was a perfect manifestation of existentialism, physical harmony, intellectual beauty.
Victor was out of his tree. He was speaking nonsense; garbage verse he thought sounded Elizabethan. He said something about Ophelia, then to join Yorick in his grave he jumped into it from his perch high in the scaffolding. Unfortunately it was too high, and the boxes he landed on were too fragile, for they burst as he hit them. He lay unconscious on the set amid the rubble of his landing.
Tim and I sat near him as he was being revived. Rather, I sat, Tim swayed. He was talking quietly to himself, looking characteristically prepossessed, though that may have been the coffee. He likes to think of himself as a bit of a wild lad, a hard-drinking jackaroo blended with hispanic macho, but he could not help looking, and behaving, like a maudlin poet. He was cute, but occasionally such a pain. He had mumbled to me that Victor was high on something, which surprised me; I knew little and cared less for his chemical habits, but this project was so important to him that I doubted he would jeopardise his already minute chance of success with a little brain fun. Of Tim I had no firm preconceptions, and it was no surprise to see that he was at least as far off world as Victor.
But there was work to do, and I decided to use Victor's revival time to film the standing ovation, for a crowd of extras was arriving. I should have plenty of time before Victor was fully recovered - he was conscious again, but rolling about in pleasure and pain. So violent did his rolling become that the dark glasses the nurse had put on him fell off his face into the stalls where Tim sat. Victor insisted on having a doctor and a nurse nearby now, though he called them his personal assistants so we wouldn't think he was paranoid.
Tim held up the dark glasses, and I laughed to see that they were reminder glasses, but before he could read the message that was flashing on the interior face of the lens, I grabbed his arm. He immediately responded to my touch, for the poor boy's eagerness shone through any drugs, making him forget what was going on outside us or inside him. He looked at me but I turned away. He was too stoned to share with and I was in a funk, in case you hadn't guessed. It was a bad morning for filming. I took the dark glasses away from Tim, thinking to put them on myself, partly to hide from everybody, partly to hide from my work, partly to hide my shame from everyone present, though none of them was in any condition to see it.
One of Victor's personal assistants came to tell me that Victor would survive. I sighed then, knowing it would be safe to pity him. I was about to call for order, to begin work again, but I looked around and saw nothing but chaos, disorderly chaos, the chaos of people that science, despite its claims, can never control. I sighed again, sat, and waited, and I put on Victor's reminder glasses. The message, flashing over and over in front of my eyes, was; "To be or not to be, stupid!"
