My Time at Temple Studios, Part 18

Show #18

Saturday, March 8: 9 pm

After a quick burrito stop with Ben, Kate, and Hannah following the early show, it was back to the queue for the late. Actually, that's not entirely true. In point of fact, we instead headed for the essentially queue-less Studio entrance, because this time, we were going in with Studio Exec tickets.

Here's where I run into a bit of a snag: Studio Exec tickets, are, for all intents and purposes, the same as the now unavailable premium tickets (from October-end of February, anyway). I bought a premium ticket for one of my previous shows (#9), and in the write-up, I decided to treat the premium content like a 1:1, and skip over it so as not to spoil anything. This time, however, there are a couple of extenuating circumstances. First, Studio Exec tickets are available to, essentially, any returning visitor – so not quite as exclusive or secretive. Secondly, unlike last time, the premium content formed an integral part of my night, to the point I don't think I can really explain my experience without it. So – I'm going to remain vague on a few scripted things (you won't find many details of the prologue scene here), but I'm going to be very open about my interactions with the mysterious and wonderful Phoebe (Zoe Mills). To those who care: consider this the super spoiler warning. If at any point I say I went to the drafting room, it's time to skip ahead.

For now, though, let's start with precisely the thing I said I wouldn't describe: the prologue. It was, of course, the point at which I first met this version of Phoebe, who, as much as I hate to use the phrase, essentially had me at “hello.” In Zoe Mills' hands, Phoebe is nervous, a little twitchy, and very sweet. She's incredibly endearing, and within just a few words, I just wanted to give her a big hug. Beyond her performance, the intro also benefited from the fact that you're generally only going to see returning visitors in there – instead of sitting there anxiously while Phoebe went on and on about Punchdrunk and influences and how to watch a show like this, all the while just knowing that the first lift full of people were ALREADY INSIDE, we chatted with Phoebe about our previous experiences, what we liked/didn't like, favorite characters, all of that. It still took just as long, but felt more relevant, and Zoe's performance made her quizzing and her spiel surprisingly compelling.  I was completely happy just sitting in there listening to her.

Skip to the end of the prologue (told you), and we're all in the queue, getting ready to head inside on the third or fourth lift. To this point, I hadn't come up with a pick for my first loop, and the lack of a cast board at the Studio entrance didn't help matters. My choices were to either pick someone from the photos in the lift, or go in blind and see who I could find, completely unaware of the casting. I was not fond of the latter idea, so I tentatively settled on starting with a William loop, assuming that I saw Paul Zivkovich's face on the wall when the lift doors opened.  This despite certain reservations that I had. One thing I wanted to make sure to do during my six-show stint was catch Paul for a loop, as he is awesome and his departure from the show loomed ominously in the near future. I had followed his Fool back in September, but never his William, for reasons unrelated to him specifically. Here's where the reservations come into play: you see, the various performers who play each role don't generally mix and match willy-nilly; there's a pattern. The relevant aspect of that is that Paul's William is paired with Kate Jackson's Mary, and Omar Gordon's is paired with Laure Bachelot. As much as I wanted to follow Paul as William, I had, to this point, always been reluctant to do a William loop in which Mary was played by anyone but Laure. This is not in any way a reflection on Kate's performance – I've seen parts of her loop and she's quite good, particularly from the hoedown to the end. But I had such a tremendous loop with Laure a few months earlier that I wind up feeling weird about it every time I see another Mary. I know it doesn't make sense; it's one of those inexplicable emotional things that I'm incapable of sorting out. But there it is.

So I was rather pleasantly surprised to step onto the lift and see Paul and Laure's faces looking out at me from the wall. I don't know if this is the first time they ever performed together (surely not), but I'd never heard of it happening before, and it was certainly a very rare occurrence. Lucky break for Brian.

Immediately out of the lift, I found the hoedown just getting started, and confirmed that it wasn't just a cruel joke, Paul and Laure were indeed out on the dance floor. Another surprise: Miranda Mac Letten as Drugstore Girl. Not quite as rare an occurrence – after all, that was the role in which I had first encountered her, but not one she plays very often any more. I was briefly tempted to switch over to her before I had even started with William, but I couldn't pass up my crazy golden opportunity. Also, there was no Badlands Jack. Again.

I followed William and Andy (Nicola Migliorati) out into town and watched their fountain scene, which is very nice but didn't hit me quite the way I would have liked for two reasons -  a) I came in too late to really bond with William. This is a problem with the studio exec/premium ticket. Probably less of an issue for other characters, but when you hit the ground running with high tragedy, it's difficult to get into the swing of things. It's also probably my own fault for choosing to first-loop Mary and William, respectively, at my two premium shows. I may do a lot of planning, but I don't do it well. Anyway, there was also the matter of b) I had just watched this very scene about two hours earlier (same William, different Andy). Perils of the double.

Fortunately, once William reunited with Mary, things started to go more smoothly. Part of it was having more time to adjust, part of it was the sheer force of Paul's intense, end-of-the-rope performance, and part of it was my residual emotional attachment to Mary, which helped paper over some of the rough spots. By the time they were dancing to “Walking in the Sand,” I was fully on board. I was also very excited to see that, when mixing and matching W's and M's, the choreography travels with William. I vastly prefer Paul and Kate's tender, remorseful last dance and murder to Omar and Laure's more brutal and frightening version. Once again, the best of all worlds came together for me.

Once the murder was done, William ran off into the desert, shouting Mary's name with a voice so ragged it must have been agonizing. When he made his way to the studio gates, I was briefly transported back to Sleep No More, as he briefly faced off with a fellow veteran of the Macbeth clan, Leslie Ann Kraus. Then we moved indoors and things slowly reset to a more normal state.

At this point, the mood wasn't as beholden to the ongoing thrust of the story, so I was able to sit back a bit and just enjoy the scenes laid out for me as individual performances. William and Andy's desk dance and later tree dance, William and Mary's car dance – these are all tremendous displays of physical prowess and athleticism. I do tend to prefer diving deeply into the story, ignoring all real-world concerns as much as possible, but there is something to be said for occasionally stepping back and thinking, “Wow. Just look at what I'm watching.”

Then, of course, there were the bits that were less setpiece-y, but served to draw the storm clouds in around William, such as Conrad's (Ben Whybrow) cabaret, which is one of the scenes that really helps to humanize William, particularly in the case of Paul's version. Comparing it to to Rob McNeil's incarnation, which I saw during my Conrad loop at show 14, I was struck by how much nicer Paul's William was about things. Rob's response to Conrad's attention was near-horror – he wanted it to go away as quickly as possible, and was very clear on that point. Paul's William, however, while clearly equally uncomfortable with things, seemed to be trying as hard as he could to be nice about it, to not make trouble. That's really a microcosm of his life, and probably the source of his madness.

Earlier I gave one reason for not doing a William loop in the past, but there is actually another one as well – After all of the other loops I've done with other characters, I was pretty sure that I had effectively seen everything there was to see in the loop, just in fragments. This turned out to essentially be the case – the one drawback to an otherwise very enjoyable loop was that it was all a repeat, down to the fact that most of those scenes I had not only seen, but had seen with Paul's William specifically.

As it turned out, however, there was one new bit. A single scene which happened to fall right at the end of my loop, allowing me to wrap up my time with William on a high note. After his session with the Doctor (Anwar Russell, who I resolved to return to at some point during the show), William retreated to the deserted arcade and washed off the freshly drawn drowned lung from his chest. It's a small scene, almost insignificant in some ways, but I actually quite liked it. Once the story gets moving (in other words, outside of the reset), it's really the only time that William is actually by himself, not getting pulled one way or another by other people. It's a moment of quiet, the pause at the top of the roller-coaster before his descent begins in earnest. I really enjoyed being able to share that moment before departing. But soon the moment passed, and he was off to the hoedown and I was off to see Phoebe.

Or so I thought. I hadn't taken even two steps before I saw something odd – Tuttle (Matthew Blake), in his shop, alone. I certainly wasn't going to allow this sad state of affairs to stand, especially not with a Tuttle I hadn't yet seen. Besides, the drafting room probably wasn't open quite yet. So I trotted into the toyshop just in time for him to grab a paint can and leave. Back out again.

I've been told that Homer Simpson (no, not that one) served as the inspiration for Tuttle, and of all the Tuttles I've seen, Matthew Blake's feels the closest to it. He moves oddly, with a tight, closed off posture that seems designed to compress his fairly imposing size. He doesn't talk much, and when he does, he doesn't seem entirely accustomed to it. When the time came, shortly thereafter, for his 1:1, he didn't reach out to me, didn't say anything – he just walked past me, locked me into the shop with him, and crouched down behind the counter. It's an interesting performance, and one I'd like to see more of – but it was not to be. I was only doing Studio Exec one time, and I intended to take the opportunity to see as much of Phoebe as possible. Thus, when he kicked me out of the 1:1 room, my hand and mask covered with blood, I didn't return to the toy shop. I made my way down to the basement.

When I got to the drafting room, I found things already in full swing, with a half-dozen white masks already in there. Phoebe was deep into some sort of interaction with one of them, so I quickly knocked out a bit of research I had been planning to do, reading through Miguel's and Badlands Jack's dossiers. By the time I finished, the reset music was playing and she rushed to the typewriter, typing out “It is starting over again.” She then began moving tiny character figurines around a map, mirroring the events outside, all the while mumbling frantically to herself. When she's at work, Phoebe is constantly just this side of sheer panic, holding things together by the skin of her teeth. She's just so instantly sympathetic, I wanted, yet again, to give her a hug and tell her everything would be okay.

While she worked, I noticed a stack of headshots on the desk. I've been mildly fascinated by these ever since I noticed that the National Theatre website and the Temple Studios website use different photos from the same shoot for some of the performers. I was curious which set were in use, so I started flipping through them, only to see that this stack included, in some cases, yet a third variant. I'm sure this is a riveting development for many of you - evidently I'm easily amused. Anyway, I eventually noticed that Phoebe was standing beside me, entranced by the photos. I stepped aside and she grabbed the stack, flipping through it until she found Dolores and Marshall. She grabbed the pair of photos and rushed to the desert model in the back of the drafting room. There, she poured handfuls of sand into a small bible, which she used in turn to pour the sand on to the photos, covering all but their eyes. A tiny piece of paper fell out with the sand, and she unfolded it to reveal. . . er, some sort of brief, ominous poem that I can't remember. By this time several white masks had gathered around her. She began, in her nervous, halting way, to narrate Marshall's initial meeting with Dolores, but stopped after a couple of sentences. She stared down at the photos and told us it was happening right now, outside the trailers in Studio 2.

No one moved. I don't know what everyone else was thinking, but I really wasn't sure who she was talking too. Plus, I didn't really want to go. I wanted to watch her some more. But then she turned directly to me, said, “It may already be too late,” and led me to the door. Guess I win. Or lose. Or both.

END OF DRAFTING ROOM INTERLUDE

Well, I had no intention of following her instructions. I had things to do. If I wasn't going to be watching Phoebe, I'd go back to checking off my list. Next up: the new Doctor. I found him on his way back up to his office from Dancing in the Dark. There, he puttered around for a few minutes, rearranging chairs, before heading right back downstairs to Studio 2. Amusingly, by going my own way, I wound up right where Phoebe was sending me. As we walked into Studio 2, I saw that Andrea (Fania Grigoriou) was on top of the caravans. This was exciting news – I love Andrea's caravan dance, and I had not yet seen Fania do it. Sadly, I have still never seen her do it, because almost as soon as we arrived, she hopped down and headed for her audition. So instead, I watched the Doctor watch the end of the birthday party. It's kind of hard to get a read on Anwar's Doctor. The best description I can come up with is that he feels like a Doctor. That probably sounds facetious, but actually, it stands in sharp contrast to many of the others, who tend to emphasize the weird, or creepy aspects of the characters. I would not trust any of the doctors I've seen in that building – except for Anwar's (though I'm sure I would live to regret it if I did so).  After the party, he brought Wendy back up to his office for her examination. I was struck by how much more imposing Stanford (Sam Booth) was than usual, owing to Leslie's diminutive stature. I can only imagine the contrast if she were ever paired up with James Traherne's Stanford.

Soon Wendy was gone, Alice (Emily Mytton) came and went, and all of the other white masks went with them, leaving me alone with the Doctor. He shuffled some more chairs around and went into his office, where he started examining some inkblots, eventually selecting one and slipping it into an envelope. Meanwhile, off in the distance, I could hear. . . is that. . . could it be. . . yep. Bulldog. It called to me, demanding my presence, but I couldn't just walk out on the Doctor when I was the only one there! I gritted my teeth until the urge passed, and soon I was rewarded. The doctor stepped forward and looked at my mask, concern etched across his face. He took my hand and examined it, then finally said, “I'm going to need you to come with me for some tests. You appear to be covered in blood.”

After a somewhat embarrassing stab at a talky 1:1, I found myself ejected back into the corridor, alone. Seemed like the perfect time to return to Phoebe, so off I went back to the drafting room. Inside, I found Hannah standing right by the door, reading a character dossier. I took a moment to point out Romola's dossier, because it is in many ways the most interesting of them. She, in turn, pointed at the dossier in her hand.  I pointed again, emphatically, and she, just as emphatically, pointed at hers.  I give up.  Turns out, she'd already read the Romola dossier anyway. Of course.  I should never have attempted to out-maneuver Spoiler Mum.

Turning my attention back to the room, I found Phoebe moving the Dwayne, Faye, and Miguel figurines around. When she saw me, she quickly motioned me over, slipped Miguel and Dwayne into my hands, and led me to the desert model. There, she took the figures from me and set them down, along with Faye. She told me to wait one moment, rushed off, and returned with a bottle of water (at least, I hope it was water. Clearly meant to represent some form of liquor, but the way she was throwing it back – yeah, it better have been water).

She then proceeded to take my hand and narrate the story of the desert dance, all the while drinking haphazardly and half-dancing with herself in tiny little circles. She explained what was happening, why it was happening, what everyone was thinking, and let me tell you: it was phenomenal. I got to see a very different side of Phoebe – sure, she's nervous, overwhelmed, and barely able to keep it together. But when you get down to it, her job is to tell stories. And she's clearly a born story-teller - because she LOVES doing it. And I love her for loving it. Her mounting enthusiasm was infectious. It might actually have been more compelling than the scene itself, and I don't say that lightly. Three minutes of pure magic.

But then it was over, and she sent me away to see the real thing. After her usual spiel at the door (“stairs are to the right, up to the top floor, etc”), she added a little extra bit, however, asking me (with pleading eyes) if I was going to come back and see her again afterward. Once again, I had to suppress the hug reflex. Instead, I nodded, trying my hardest to smile with my eyes. Poor Phoebe, all alone in the basement. Thinking back on my first time, with Sarah Sweeney's Phoebe, I got essentially the same feeling from her – a yearning loneliness. In that case, though, I kind of had to tease it out of what I saw, whereas here Phoebe was pouring her whole heart out all over me. I can almost see Zoe's Phoebe as a progression of that character rather than an alternate interpretation of her, where the additional months of isolation have driven her nearly to the breaking point.

END OF DRAFTING ROOM INTERLUDE

Well, once again, I didn't really want to go see the scene she was sending me to. The night was drawing frighteningly close to its end, and I still had one other thing I really wanted to do – so I rushed up to the town for some Drugstore Girl time.

I found her in the arcade, dancing in roller skates with the Barman (Jude Monk McGowan). I also, unsurprisingly, found Ben in the arcade, watching her dance in roller skates with the Barman. The timing didn't wind up really working in my favor, though, as I only managed to catch the back half of that single scene before she joined everyone else for the hoedown, which I had already seen earlier in the show. On the other hand, well, it is the hoedown after all, so I stuck around to watch. In the absence of Badlands Jack, the Barman remained behind the bar again, but apparently couldn't help letting loose with a bottle of champagne. I'm not really sure what that was all about.

Then it was back down to the drafting room to fulfill my promise to Phoebe. I found her alone, with no other white masks. When I entered the room, she immediately rushed to my side and took my arm. I don't mind saying I felt just a touch heroic. But then I saw the look on her face. Some thing was different. She had spent the whole show just on the safe side of panic, but something had pushed her across the line. “You can't stay here,” she said.

W-H-A-T?!

I stood, rooted on the spot. What did she mean? The only thing in the world I wanted at that moment was to stay there and keep her company. Especially with the state she was in. If only I could talk, and ask her why. She clearly picked up on my consternation. “I wish you could stay,” she said, slipping her hand into mine and giving it a squeeze. But there was nothing to be done. If I had to leave, I had to leave. I slowly turned toward the exit, but then she pulled me back.

“Listen,” she said. “Go to the party.” Ah, an instruction. Go to the – wait, what is she talking about? My mind raced through parties in the show. “Walking in the Sand” was playing in the drafting room, did she mean that? Not much of a party. The hoedown is a party, but that just ended. The birthday party? That's just ridiculous. I thought for a moment that maybe she was somehow confused. I'm sure anyone reading this who's been to the show knows exactly what she meant, but I was slightly emotionally overwhelmed and even a little bit panicked at that moment, so I came up blank. I realized I was going to have to do something stupid.

“Which party?” I asked.

“Mr. Stanford is having a private executive party,” she said.

Facepalm.

I nodded. She led me to the door, and again stopped me as I started to leave. “Go to the party. When Wendy leaves. . . .come back to me.”

A-ha. Buoyed by the knowledge that Phoebe and I weren't through with each other yet, I strolled down to the orgy. I have to admit, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it, I was just marking time until Wendy's exit. Frankly, it seemed to take FOREVER. But eventually she left, and so did I.

I ran back to the drafting room, shoved my keycard in the lock, and rushed in. I do have to wonder what the black mask guarding the door was thinking at that moment. Inside, I found Phoebe, now much calmer, standing in the middle of the room in a sparkly evening dress. She was holding a polished wooden box in her hands. Upon seeing me, she smiled, thanked me for coming back, and latched the door. No interruptions.

She brought me back to the desert model again and opened the box, removing a pair of scissors and two paper dolls. One had a red line across its neck, the other had a red smear on the abdomen. Mary and Marshall. She picked up Paper Mary, pressing the blades of the scissors to its neck, but not cutting. She wrapped my hands around hers – if there was to be any cutting, we would do it together. All the while, she described the scene, explaining what William was thinking, and then – she stopped. She stared sadly at the paper doll, unmoving. After a long pause, she took a deep breath, as if to steel herself, then said it. The words that had meant so much to me last time, now given a new and much more horrifying context.

“If I do nothing, nothing will ever happen.”

Back in December, it was a philosophy.  A statement about life, reminding me to go experience things rather than hide away in the basement looking at models of them.  But I must have gotten it wrong.  It wasn't actually about that at all.  It was Phoebe's sad resignation of the power she wields over the show, and the responsibility that comes with it.  Something deep inside of me died a little bit.  How could I respond to that?  Was it an instruction? Was she asking me to make her do it? I tentatively applied some pressure to the scissors, but her hand held firm. Then she looked me in the eye, with just the hint of a sad smile, and in one quick motion, without even looking at it, we cut the doll's head from its body.

The second one went much faster, but felt just as difficult. Then, she shut down the drafting room and we left (through the front door!  Crazy!). Instead of heading straight up the stairs, she led me down the long corridor that went past Stanford's room. As we passed the reel-to-reel room, Stanford's pre-recorded voice echoed faintly around us. Phoebe stopped to listen to it, overwhelmed with shock and perhaps a touch of horror. After a moment she shook off the effects, told me “we have to go,” and led me up to Studio 2 for the murder. We made it there before most of the crowd and got a prime spot right at the base of the mound. Then: the murder. Unlike pretty much every character I've ever watched the murder with, Phoebe wasn't really getting into it at all. In fact, it was clearly freaking her right out. When Stanford's voice called cut, the room erupted into cheering all around us, but Phoebe didn't join in. “We are Enough” began to play, and everyone headed over to the stage. But not Phoebe. She just stood there, staring at the mound. I can't even begin to describe the look on her face – shock? Horror? Confusion? Sadness? All of the above and then some, plus a definite hint of denial. It wasn't long before we were the only two people at the murder mound, standing alone in the dark. Still she stared. Finally, in a daze, she took my hand and led me to the stage, dropping me at the front with instructions to wait for her. She stumbled up into the action, agog at all of the people around her, until finally she came across Tuttle. They spoke, briefly – near as I could tell, he was introducing himself, but who knows for sure? They shook hands. . . and it was like switch flipped. Dull shock gave way to rapturous joy. Phoebe ran around the stage like a lunatic, “meeting” as many characters as she could before the dance began. It was quite cathartic after all the time I'd spent worrying about her and wishing I could somehow ease her pain.

After the finale, she came back for me and led me into the opium den. She reached for my mask and then stopped, asking, “May I?” No one else has ever asked. When the mask came off, she smiled (such a warm smile, so unlike her) and said, “There, that's better.” She took me by the hand again and led me out the other end of the opium den. Along the way, she asked me how it was. All I could say was “Wonderful.”

We paused at the threshold, and she thought for a moment. “Yeah, it was,” she said. “I can't tell you how much it meant to me.” Then, with a kiss on the cheek, she was gone - and my penultimate show drew to a close.