Shakespeare 2012 - Part I Read online

  “Oh Hermione, you are the fluffiest goddess in the pantheon of fluffy gods. ‘We’re all one, man,’” Leon jibed, making peace signs with the fingers on both hands. “Let’s make a daisy chain, man.”

  Hermione slapped Leon’s hand down. “It exists in the animal kingdom. There’s proof. A zoologist in the 1950s on a Japanese island with nineteen monkeys, taught one monkey how to wash potatoes one day. Soon, all the monkeys on the island were washing their potatoes. And this is the really weird part. Very soon after that, all the monkeys on the neighbouring islands began washing their potatoes. Spontaneously. With no direct communication between them. When one monkey learned on one island, they all learned on all the islands.”

  Leon picked up the bundle of papers on the grass beside him. “One actor once knew all these damn lines. I wish the collective consciousness would teach me them.”

  Paulina resisted the temptation to toss a barb in Leon’s direction. She was intrigued. “So Hermione, you think the whole Mayan 2012 mythology is connected to our collective consciousness?”

  “Not just connected,” Hermione replied, “I think the big change for 2012 is our collective consciousness. More people are choosing a less materialistic way of living. Less consumption, less money, more time with friends, more life. This year that awareness will go global. We will realize the awesome power we all share.”

  Leon drained his cup of wine and reached out for the bottle. “Well, let’s start with realising the awesome power you can share with that bottle.”

  Hermione spotted Tony walking across the park towards them. His tie was loose and the top two buttons of his shirt open. He carried his suit jacket in one hand, and in the other a bottle of Dom Pérignon. “Oh look! Speaking of higher consciousness! Here comes the City boy with his good old champers sidekick. Such a cliché, Tony!” Tony dropped his jacket and squatted down next to Leon. “Good day in the office, dear?” Hermione asked.

  “Not too bad, didn’t get sacked. In our company that’s always worth celebrating.” He undid the cap of the bottle and popped the cork.

  “Your boss still playing Britain’s Next Top Billionaire with all our money?” Leon asked.

  “He’s more into The Apprentice at the mo. One mistake and it’s …” Jones pointed his index finger to his ear and pretended to fire a gun.

  Chapter 08

  Later that evening Hermione and Leon were sitting in their lounge. Hermione had her laptop on her knees. She had granted Leon a short break from rehearsing. He was reading a copy of Timeout magazine that he’d found discarded in the park. Published weekly, Timeout lists all the concerts, plays, movies and other events going on around London. “I wonder if anyone sent in the details of our production,” Leon said. He turned to the theatre listings pages and scanned through it. “Yup, here it is,” he answered. “Someone has. Probably Paulina.” He continued scanning the listings. He turned the page and continued reading. “Oh my god! No way!” he exclaimed, counting something.

  “What?” Hermione replied, looking up.

  “Guess how many productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream there are in London tomorrow?”

  “No idea. Four.” Four was Hermione’s automatic response when someone asked her to guess a number.

  “Higher.”

  “Ten,” Hermione said, not feeling particularly interested in Leon’s guessing game.

  “Higher.”

  Now she was curious. “Twenty?”

  “Hold on ... Fifty-two!”

  “Fifty-two?! There aren’t that many theatres in London are there?”

  “There are if every school and amateur dramatic society in the city puts it on.”

  An idea flickered into Hermione’s mind. “The collective dramatic consciousness ...,” she intoned. “There’s power there. I wonder ... Hold on ...”

  She turned back to her laptop, opened a new tab in the browser. She ran a search for ‘midsummer nights dream 21 june 2012’. One of the top results was for ‘complete UK theatre listings’. She clicked the link and scrolled down the page.

  “Unbelievable ...” she whispered.

  “What?” Leon asked urgently.

  “Check this out. There are productions of A Midsummer’s Night all over the country tomorrow. Hundreds of them. What’s going on?” Hermione felt a soft shiver pass through her, instinctively picking up on something indistinct, like a subtle, unspoken hint, but it was too faint and abstract to focus on and it quickly faded.

  “Dunno,” Leon responded. “But it looks like I’ve got competition.”

  Chapter 09

  Wednesday 20th June 2012

  Leon woke up with the 4:00 am pre-solstice sunrise. He’d not slept well, fretting about his performance, and feeling riled after discovering there were hundreds of other Lysanders hitting hundreds of other stages that evening. Even though he couldn’t see them, Leon still felt a competitive edge. Now he wasn’t just competing against the other actors in his own production, he had entered a national acting contest, to identify Great Britain’s Greatest Lysander 2012. Whilst lazy, Leon was also competitive, believing competition was good for a man because it spurred him on to excellence. Those with talent like his should welcome a challenge – provided it was against worthy rivals.

  He lay in bed picturing in his mind how he wanted his performance to go, and silently running through the lines he’d struggled with several times. Satisfied he had them logged securely in his memory, he indulged his current fantasy of stealing the show and afterwards being passed dozens of business cards from slavering agents. He would rise to and above the occasion and show everyone, believers and doubters, that he was on the swift elevator to feckless superstardom.

  He got up just after 6:00 am and slipped quietly out of the flat, leaving Hermione a soppy note from Lysander. He anticipated spending the day at college ensuring everything, absolutely everything was ready for the show. He took his bike from the hall out with him. The concrete corridor outside the flat ran along the exterior of the tower block to the lift. Leon took the lift to the ground floor, passed through the heavy metal security doors that the local council had recently installed and set off for his half-hour-long cycle to college.

  Leon loved cycling in the sun along London’s quieter roads listening to his MP3 player. His route took him back through London Fields, Broadway Market, and along the Regent’s Canal. He’d worked out an efficient route through backstreets which had little cars and few other cyclists. On Winchester Road near the college, he was pedalling quickly along the street. Suddenly a middle-aged gentleman stepped out into the road at a pedestrian crossing right into Leon’s path. Leon braked hard, but marginally too late. The gentleman turned and saw Leon’s approach at the last second and dropped the briefcase he had been carrying. Leon’s brakes were fast-acting and the bike skidded as it slowed to a halt, ramming into the man’s outstretched hands and then bumping against his legs. The bike stopped with the gent’s groin perched up against the front stem, his legs had opened to allow the front wheel through, and his hands pressed on the handlebars. He hadn’t fallen over.

  John Venison untangled himself from the bicycle and picked up his dropped briefcase.

  “Bloody idiot! This is a crossing! Why don’t you look where you’re going!”

  Leon was unapologetic, considering he hadn’t done anything wrong. “Why don’t you look before crossing?”

  There was no other traffic passing and the guy seemed ok, so Leon cycled off. He glanced back to hold the guy’s eyes, hoping he was returning an equally vicious look. Venison adjusted his shirt and jacket, crossed the road, and continued on towards the Underground station.

  Chapter 10

  Backstage that evening, Leon was changed and ready. There was half an hour until the play started and he sat apart from the other actors going through their own pre-show preparations. He acknowledged the butterflies in his stomach but didn’t dwell on them. ‘Nerves fuel performance’ was Leon’s maxim. He knew that even s
easoned actors and stand-up comedians and singers felt nervous before each show. The nervousness wasn’t the issue, it was how you channelled the energy that mattered. Leon let the butterflies rise and then focused their energy in his mind into the persona of Lysander. It was Lysander who was nervous, not Leon. Leon breathed in deeply and slowly, hypnotising himself into becoming Lysander with each breath. “I am Lysander. This is my story. I am Lysander. This is my story.”

  Paulina was also in costume, but she preferred t o handle her nerves by chatting with another actress, each consciously trying to distract the other and herself with shallow chitchat. Whilst she didn’t mention Leon nor voice her concerns over his readiness, Paulina was secretly, fervently wishing that Leon would, finally, perform.

  In the college foyer, guests were beginning to arrive. Hermione arrived with Tony fifteen minutes before the curtain raised. She paused when she noticed the poster for the play outside the college entrance. She tried to imagine how many hundreds of other posters were pinned up at that moment outside real and makeshift theatres all around the country. How many people in London and all across Britain were gathering on this midsummer night to become enchanted by Shakespeare’s surreal midsummer trip? Thousands, many, many thousands. All those minds and all that consciousness tuned into one magical tale on such a mystical, astronomically significant night. Hermione felt a tingle of excitement bubble up from where she considered her muladhara root chakra to be. She felt kundalini awakening. She had read that kundalini is the powerful psycho-spiritual energy in the body that is normally dormant, but can be woken, and that it is the aim of some yoga, tantra, and meditation practices to awaken kundalini to bring experiences of transcendence and enlightenment. As she entered the college and the theatre, Hermione meditated on using kundalini to beam positive, performance-enhancing energy out to Leon. She focused on sending him all her love and support and faith as Tony bought a programme and two plastic cups of white wine. Whilst they walked through into the theatre and found two seats in the front row Hermione concentrated on using kundalini to draw Lysander up into Leon. Minutes later the lights dimmed.

  When Lysander first walked onstage and started speaking, Hermione instantly felt a powerful surge of energy flow up through her body from the base of her spine to her crown. Her head was suddenly buzzing, crackling with massively increased perception, like her mind was exponentially expanding out into the universe. Every cell in her body was tingling, feeling like they were full of light. She had tried MDMA numerous times but this strange new awakening felt infinitely more intense than the strongest, pilled-up, euphoric rush. She instinctively knew that what she was feeling wasn’t chemically-induced. She knew what was causing it: she had become utterly consumed with the power and passion of her love’s dazzling metamorphosis into Lysander in his own midsummer dream. Hermione had seen her love onstage before, she had never seen him like this.

  Lysander in his turn intimately felt Hermione’s presence. No matter where he was on the stage, no matter what direction he was facing, nor who he was talking to, he was oriented using Hermione as the source of his bearings. He felt her power radiate out for him, and envelop him with layers of what he conceived as quantum positivity. The fibres of his being were interlaced with Hermione’s and vibrating on a subliminally shared wavelength. Lysander and Hermione had become connected from stage to stalls, and were symbiotically fuelling each other, sparking conflagration upon conflagration inside each other. Lysander became supercharged. Slowly channelling the nervous energy had turboed Leon’s switch of identities. He felt a strange detachment from himself, he now believed that he truly had become Lysander, and that Lysander was leading the performance. Paulina too had felt the allure of Lysander’s presence beside her and her own transformation into Hermia was stronger because of it. The whole play took on an acutely electrifying buzz, as Lysander trailblazed and submerged a deeply enraptured cast and audience into the irresistible magnetism of his aura.

  As in the Central College of Speech and Drama, so across theatres in London, and all around Britain. It was as if shockwaves were radiating out from the college and Into every other Midsummer Night’s Dream, as if the spirit of Lysander was being broadcast through the actors’ ether, and every other Lysander was receiving the transmission before adding their own energy and rebroadcasting it out into the midsummer night network.

  When Lysander approached the lines which Leon had fumbled so miserably during the dress rehearsal just the day before, he strutted forward commandingly to the front of the stage. He felt he was aflame, burning wildly with barely controllable passion. The stage lights dimmed, leaving just a solitary spotlight on him. Hermione closed her eyes and felt her ecstatic rush surge up to a whole new level. She opened her eyes and observed how Lysander appeared to shine in the spotlight.

  “Making it momentary as a sound …”

  Hermione and the entire audience held their breath, completely rapt in the majesty of his oratory.

  “Swift as a shadow …”

  Hermione had become pressed back into her seat by an unseen force. Her hands had subconsciously lifted to her heart.

  “Short as any dream …”

  Hermione felt she was going to burst, overcome with the joy swamping her person.

  “Brief as the lightning in the collied night …”

  Lysander gestured up and Hermione and the entire audience swooned, mesmerised.

  “That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth …”

  Hermione was glowing, the rush of energy had built up into an unbearable pressure. She felt like a nuclear explosion of ecstasy was about to detonate in her brain, and in the theatre, and she was going to scream euphorically.

  “And ere a man hath power to say …”

  The entire audience sat higher in their seats and gasped.

  “’Behold!’”

  Hermione’s entire body suddenly quivered. She’d felt something resonant stir deep inside her. What was that? Something profound had just transpired. Had no-one else felt that? She looked around, confused, but everyone was focused on Lysander, their faces glassy with delight.

  Hermione couldn’t know, but at the precise moment when Lysander had proclaimed “Behold!”, two hundred and fifty-nine other Lysanders across the UK had proclaimed the exact same word.

  Chapter 11

  Before the play, Leon had suggested to Hermione not to wait for him at the theatre, as there would be hours of post-production post-mortems, followed by celebratory backslapping and hobnobbing with agents. Therefore after the play, Hermione and Tony went to a nearby pub for a drink. Leon and Paulina mingled happily with the agents, accepting the congratulations and compliments with exaggerated displays of modesty and surprise. Leon knew he’d nailed it, and he knew Paulina was thrilled with his performance, and he was allowing himself to be carried off on the intoxicating adrenalin rush. The play’s cast and crew stayed to finish off the litres of wine that had been brought in for the post-show bash. When the wine finally ran out, someone suggested moving on to a late night bar, but Leon declined, as he wanted to take the tube instead of have to pass hours on night buses back to Hackney. Drunk, elated, and wallowing in his success, Leon inadvertently wandered onto the wrong underground train. When he realised his mistake, he laughed and shrugged. He knew east London well enough to quickly work out a new route home: get off at Monument and catch the #48 bus to Mare Street. It would only add twenty minutes to his journey.

  Leon exited the underground station into a warm night. The plaza around Monument was deserted at this time, all the City workers had long departed, and the tourists would be off seeking entertainment elsewhere. Leon turned left and crossed onto Bishopsgate, the old Roman arterial road that extended from London Bridge through the City of London, heading north to Lincoln and York. A whimsical vision of Roman soldiers marching in unison along Bishopsgate past the deserted offices of traders and bankers floated into Leon’s mind. Images from the opposite ends of two thousand years
of the same road, one now buried under layers of concrete and bitumen paid for by the other.

  Leon ambled contentedly along Bishopsgate, now imagining a massive ticker tape parade just for him, as he was driven along in an open-topped car, his heard adorned with a laurel wreath. Crossing the narrow entrance to Great St Helen’s, he paused to look up at the Gherkin; the super sleek curves of the glass and chrome tower always caught his eye. It was, Leon considered, the most beautiful building in all London, and quite possibly, in all the world. He walked a short distance into Great St Helen’s to gaze up at it. His eyes started at the top of the building, then panned carefully down along it’s ribbed outline. An old church, St Helen’s, was directly in front of Leon, and offered a striking contrast with the smooth modernity of the Gherkin, just another example of London’s familiar architectural pile-up.

  A body was lying sprawled on the ground in the courtyard in front of St Helen’s church. The person tried to sit up but fell back down again. “Hey! Are you alright?” Leon called out. The person didn’t respond. “Excuse me! Hey! Are you ok?” Still no response. Leon walked across the courtyard and kneeled down beside the person. “Hey. Are you alright, mate?”

  The person rolled over and sat up awkwardly. He looked at Leon, eyes wide with fright, and then shuffled away in a sitting position, collecting the papers that were scattered around him on the ground. He was bald on top, but had long hair around the side and back of his head which fell to his shoulders. He had a scraggy beard, and Leon noticed a large hooped earring in his left ear.

  “It’s alright,” Leon said placatingly. “I was only trying to help you.”

  The person looked up at Leon with blazing eyes, and spoke ...

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  END OF PART I

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  Shakespeare 2012 – Part II

  Cathal