Who: Rose and Bethan When: Wednesday, July 11th, 5-ish Where: The stage entrance of the Broadhurst Theatre What: Rose is surprised leaving work
Wednesday was one of the matinee days. Usually, Rose would've come off stage at the end of the show, eaten something, changed her wigs around, fixed her makeup and be ready to go back on stage for the 8'o'clock evening curtain, but she just couldn't. She kept telling herself she'd worked through worse, but she knew better than anyone that this afternoon's performance had been subpar. Not bad, the audience had left happy, she'd got a standing ovation and everything, but Rose had pretty incredibly high standards when it came to her work, and she knew.
Anyway, around the midpoint of the play, where she had to cry over the slow fading of the White Knight, something had cracked. It had taken every ounce of willpower she possessed to call the real, genuine, gross sobbing back and get on with the scene. It was just lucky that that particular scene was right before the interval. Saved by the curtain, she'd been able to compose herself, fix her makeup and work through the second act without a flicker.
She went to her director almost the moment the curtain fell, still wearing her long blonde wig and blood-stained blue dress, and managed to explain the situation to him with as much composure as she could manage. Her father was in the hospital, she'd had some distressing news over the last couple of days, and awful as it was, she just couldn't handle the second performance in this state and could she maybe go and see a friend before the next show?
She had a good record. He knew she wouldn't be crying off any part of the routine if she wasn't desperate. After all, she was the girl who had brought the house down and then actually passed out from illness offstage afterwards, not just once but twice now. And she was so very distraught. Despite her protests, he insisted that she go home for the night.
It took some battling, but with the help of her costar and understudy they'd got her bundled into her street clothes and prepared to leave, with insistence that she stay with a friend and with money for a cab. They might be a fairly seriously high-level theatre group now, but they still pretty much saw each other as family. They looked out for their own, and most of the Guild liked Rose. She worked hard and was always sharply humorous when it was needed.
So it was that Rose shuffled out of the theatre, hands shoved in the pockets of her bulky leather trench, eyes pink and tear tracks still faintly visible on her cheeks.