No Great Magic

MP3 Audio CD. No Great Magic

I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys' half of the dressing
room and there was Sid sitting at the star's dressing table in his
threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet but
staring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror and
experimentally working his features a little, as actors will, and
kneading the stubble on his fat chin.

I said to him quietly, "Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? Maxwell
Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen or Shakespeare's Macbeth? It says
Macbeth on the callboard, but Miss Nefer's getting ready for
Elizabeth. She just had me go and fetch the red wig."

He tried out a few eyebrow rears--right, left, both together--then
turned to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does when
a gal heaves into hailing distance, and said, "Your pardon, sweetling,
what sayest thou?"

Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes
wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred
and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen
hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat
part in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal and
inspired affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobody
else in mind but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham,
please.)