—as soon as the battery is recharged….
So, we were negotiating the Festival tour of Europe,with bilingual me hopping in and out of the meetings. They were all okay with one exception. I sensed hesitation and waffling on the part of one theatre—hard to translate but fairly easy to hear. I expressed my doubt in the report and sure enough, they reneged - actually they had run out of money, an embarrassing lack they were reluctant to admit.
Couple of sidebars, one jolly, one not so.
FIRST JOLLY
Our first stop was Denmark and we had to get over jet lag—with a Danish massage! Loverly. Bill had never had a massage , ever. I used to have them when my babies were tiny—good for the body and for the morale, and in those days—would you believe?—a massage cost FIVE DOLLARS! Same price as a hair-do. My first masseuse was, in fact, Danish. She taught me not to hold my eyelids up when putting on eyeliner—so as not to pull my face. You must never pull your face. Not that it makes much difference by the time you’re as old as i am.
But in Denmark ,Bills’s first masseuse was not Danish; she was Japanese, a tiny, beautiful woman, and she WALKED ON BILL’S BACK! He loved it. He never got over it. Literally. It was his first and last massage. But who knew?
SECOND NOT SO JOLLY
We had been warned about the water—surely everyone is—and we took it seriously: the farther into the Iron Curtain countries the more careful we were. In Poland we took the Black (expensive) Johnny Walker into the bathroom to brush our teeth, thus avoiding any contact with tap water. The scotch was only 75 cents (U.S.cash) there so we could afford it.
Bill’s Budget Controller was not so careful.. “It was just a few drops,” he protested as we put him on the plane to go home, “to wet my brush.” But he swallowed them. He had a vicious, debilitating attack of gastroenteritis that cut his trip short and kept him in bed at home for a couple of weeks. So we were warned. Later that winter when we sent off our brave little company on a tour that included Poland and concluded with Russia, Bill took the House Manager aside.
“Just bring everyone home,” he said, “Do not leave anyone behind.”
The House Manager remembered that when one of the company was horribly ill and the Russian theatre people offered to take the sick one to hospital in Moscow.
Niet.
He had to drop someone off in Montreal with an ambulance waiting at the airport (and another waiting in Toronto) but he brought everyone safely back to Canada and they all survived.
He remembered what Bill had said when he explained his actions: ’The boss would kill me if I lost someone.” He respected Bill’s words.
That was not the case with some of the staff nor of the local newspaper, The Beacon Herald, nor of many lay people in Stratford.