Living Together

Costumes

C O S T U M E S “Those fingers of yours are rather like clever mice running up my legs.” All the while I was designing the costumes for Chekhov’s Seagull, I gorged on the anticipation of having my hands on Nicholas Kendell. Kendell is a legend and the most celebrated actor our Canadian Shakespeare festival has attracted. In photos he was the center of any gathering. People clustered around him, waiting, hoping for some grand gesture or fatal slip. He had run away to us from England, where last winter he passed out while being presented to the queen. The official explanation was that he had a virus, but word went around he was drunk again. I wondered if the queen just stood there while a footman saw to Kendell, or had she knelt down, perhaps brushing the hair from his forehead, and cradled him in her arms? Kendell wasn’t expected to last the season at the Glencarden festival. He argued savagely with Rennier, our artistic director, and worse, he disappeared for two days. Someone reported seeing him in New York, someone else had a story about his being sighted at the Mayo Clinic. It was only eleven in the morning, and I could tell he had been drinking. Kendell looked down at me, the famous green pupils caught in a red net of veins. Distracted into clumsiness by his one eyelid’s rhythmic twitching, I stabbed him with a pin. This time 3 0 his voice was cross. “Heavy tweed may be the thing for Russian steppes, but it’s going to be hell under the lights.” “It has to be authentic,” I murmured. “Authentic.” He made the word sound ridiculous, even impossible . “Then where are the stains? A little dried sweat and semen would be authentic. There were no dry cleaners, you know.” “I’ll dirty it up a bit and we’ll try it again.” I was miserable at having to let go of him and eager to make him return. “You can go into the dressing room and change,” I said. Still on my knees, I glanced up at the unruly hair, the high cheekbones, the downslanted Celtic eyes, the mouth that seemed out of control. He was a damaged sixty-six-year-old. I tried to match this Kendell with the notices of him in my scrapbook, scrupulously kept all through high school. Kendell in Jumpers, Equus, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern , Long Day’s Journey, Hamlet, and Heartbreak House. Pasted into the scrapbook were articles about his many divorces and his outrageous behavior. Not bothering with the dressing room, Kendell was trying to unbutton the fly on his trousers. “I don’t seem to be able to grapple with small buttons this morning.” He shot me a wicked grin. “I don’t suppose you’d give me a hand?” My imaginings had not gone that far. I didn’t move. “No, I thought not.” His authentic trousers slipped to the floor, revealing tattered shorts. He put a hand on my shoulder and attempted to step out of the tweed puddle. “A little shaky this morning,” he said. As he tentatively raised one foot, he lurched against me, knocking me over and landing on top of me. I scrambled to my feet. Everything I knew about Kendell sug3 1 gested that I should toss him his clothes and run. Living in Glencarden , I had seen every play Shakespeare had written. The great tragic figures on their way down were the ones to touch my heart. He sat there smiling up at me. “Low comedy. Farce actually. I’ll tell you what; if I show up like this at rehearsal, they’ll send me back on the first plane. I’m finished in England if I don’t stick it out here.” Tears rolled down his unshaven cheeks. I helped him up and asked, “When did you last eat?” I have always felt many of the world’s problems have come from statesmen sitting for hours at long tables with nothing before them but pencils and glasses of water. “You would find in my fridge nothing but cartons of yogurt with slimy fruit cowering on the bottom. Rosemary doesn’t eat.” Rosemary was the young actress playing Nina to his Trigorin in The Seagull. Kendell missed a button on his shirtfront. When I pointed it out, he stood there waiting like a...