The Twist of a Knife

‘You look like a drowned rat!’ he exclaimed, enunciating every word as if they’d been rehearsed. He handed me a towel. At the same time, he noticed the knife. ‘I see you’ve picked up your opening-night prezzie.’ He produced his own and waved it at me. ‘Touché’. He was evidently in a good mood. As far as he was concerned, the performance had gone well and he’d already had plenty to drink. ‘Shall we go down?’

The Vaudeville is unusual among London’s Victorian theatres in that it has a green room where the actors can meet and relax. We went down the stairs and along the corridor to a door that opened into a small, square space where Ewan and Tirian were already waiting for us. As promised, Tirian had opened a bottle of Scotch. He was sitting at a table with a half-filled glass in front of him and a backpack resting against his chair. Sky had popped into her dressing room, which was next door, and returned with a bottle of vodka and a chocolate cake – both of them gifts from friends. Jordan, in the dressing gown that he always wore between performances and still holding his dagger, threw himself into an armchair with his leg lolling over one side. Ewan poured him a glass of whisky, spilling a few drops onto the carpet and adding to the stains from a hundred first nights, a liquid history of the Vaudeville. The room would have been shabby in any other context but here it seemed homely, with a battered table, chairs and a worn-out sofa. There was a sink on one side and an old fridge. The rain was hammering at the window, but inside it was warm and cosy, with a two-bar heater turned on full and a CD of Noel Coward playing in the background. Everyone was relaxed. Even Jordan and Tirian seemed at ease with one another.

When I look back on the London production of Mindgame, I think this was my only truly happy night. It represented the brief interval between believing that the play might have succeeded and knowing that it hadn’t. For that one hour in the green room, I was part of the company and during that time all the tension and the hostility that had accompanied the rehearsal process evaporated – as if we had accepted that whatever happened, we were all in this together. We had given it our best shot. We might as well get drunk and enjoy ourselves. We talked. We laughed. We retold some of the stories from rehearsals and the road. Tirian did an imitation of Ewan that actually caught him remarkably well. Jordan used his Scottish dagger to cut slices of cake.

At about half past eleven, Ahmet turned up with two bottles of Turkish champagne and – no surprise – Maureen accompanied him. She had dressed very smartly for the first night. Along with the fur and the jewellery, she’d had her hair permed so ferociously that it looked like one of those balls of wire you use to scrub pans. Ahmet was in an ebullient mood, smoking a foul-smelling cigarette even though it wasn’t allowed backstage. He had come from the party with compliments ringing in his ears. He was certain the play was a success and grabbed me with both hands.

‘You are a genius!’ he exclaimed. ‘A great genius!’ He sounded almost relieved. As if he had never believed it until now.

Everyone picked up their glasses and drank a toast to me. By now we’d all had too much to drink.

It couldn’t last long. And it didn’t.

It was at exactly twelve o’clock midnight when Sky suddenly looked up from her phone.

‘There’s a review online!’ she exclaimed.

‘That’s a bit early,’ Ewan said. He didn’t look pleased. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘Harriet Throsby.’ She gazed at the screen and we all saw the look that came over her face. ‘I can’t read this,’ she said, in a low voice.

‘Let’s see it.’ Tirian snatched the phone from her and laid it on the table. We all crowded round. This is what we read:

MINDGAME AT THE VAUDEVILLE

by Harriet Throsby

Is there any torment greater than the comedy thriller that is neither comedic nor thrilling? It’s so easy to fall between the two stools … and what you might call a theatrical stool, in quite another sense, will inevitably result. That, I’m afraid, is what Anthony Horowitz provides at the Vaudeville Theatre. Known for his Alex Rider series of books, which, to be fair, have encouraged a generation of boys to read, his talents fall lamentably short of what is required for an entertaining evening in the more adult arena of the West End and he must take much of the blame for what ensues. Having said that, I have to ask what it was that drew so much talent to this painful farrago.