Not So Private Lives
by
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Do not get the wrong impression. Perhaps I am jealous. She is personable, polite and rather dull; unambitious and most uninterested in world affairs – but very pretty. She did not have a car and was too lazy to use a bicycle and so we all saw something of her current male companion, Tony Everington, whom she called ‘Tone’. He ferried her to and from rehearsals. He was also without a car but appeared to have the means to acquire a huge Harley Davidson motorbike. She looked at her best when perched on the pillion travelling at sixty miles per hour or more with her long blonde hair streaming behind her. Sometimes this was eclipsed by a scarf that Isadora Duncan would have been proud of.
She could do no wrong in Ambrose's eyes, but by the time the curtain went up on the first night, his inconsistent tolerance had been stretched like a fully extended rubber band. It was fascinating to see it get tighter and tighter until an explosion seemed inevitable but, as I shall record, she was by no means the epicentre of the troubles.
“Now, I presume you have all taken a glance at the text, well at least your own parts. I do not address these remarks to you Roger. You probably have your lines to heart already, but for the less experienced, I must at this stage emphasise that words are king. No moves, only the lines. Alison.”
“Yes Ambrose, or do I have to call you Herr Director?”
She was not without spirit on occasions.
“Ambrose will do very well my dear.”
“I’m Sibyl, aren’t I?”
“Yes. If you do not know which of Mr Coward’s delightful characters you are to depict, learning lines becomes somewhat problematical.”
“So it is Sibyl?”
“Yes, darling.”
“How old is she?”
I whispered in the ear of the charming lady that she was around fifty, but Ambrose patiently told his protégé to look at the stage instructions at the beginning of the play.
“Alison. This is a read-through. Please sit down and read. You are on at the opening of the play.”
Alison muttered, then looked at the book, obviously for the first time.
“Is it a big part?”
“Yes. One of the main ones.”
Roger leans over towards her.
“You and I, young lady, are married. We are on our honeymoon. Are you ready for that?”
Alison looked astonished at this information. Ambrose tried to move things on.
“Thank you, Roger.”
“Do I have to kiss him, or anything?”
“Alison. What
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About the Book
Amongst others, Noël Coward is said to have told aspiring actors that all they need to do is: ‘To speak out the lines and do not bump into the furniture.’ The amateur thespians in Alan Shelley’s amusing new novel, Not so Private Lives, find it rather more difficult than the Master suggests. For their 25th Anniversary production, the Great Selsdon Amateur Dramatic Society decides to give their audience Noël Coward's Private Lives and the progress of this is recorded from the choosing of the play to the last night, through the process of the casting procedure, the first read-through, rehearsals, technical matters and a fateful dress rehearsal. The narrator describing these events is May Twining, a young lady with a passion for the theatre even though she suffers from a severe case of stage fright. Her account is a mixture of what actually happened together with a considerable amount of embroidery as she reveals the strengths and weaknesses of a fascinating cross-section of the members of the Great Selsdon Amateur Dramatics Society These include the Director, the mercurial Ambrose Percy, the society's two leading stars, Roger and Brenda Scotland, the Thurston Browns, the demure Ruth and the precocious Alison Street, who achieved the little fame she has because of her performance as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
The novel is also, in part, a tribute to the genius of Mr Coward.
About the Author
Alan Shelley, born 1931, is the author of two novels, The Colour was Red and I Never Met Ernest Hemingway, and also a textbook on the South African dramatist entitled Athol Fugard. His Plays, People and Politics. He is a Chartered Surveyor and retired in 1993 as the Senior Partner of international property consultants, Knight Frank. He was awarded a PhD in 2006 and lives in
The Colour was Red is partly autobiographical and concerns the massacre in