1. Genevieve

1

GENEVIEVE

G enevieve Howard was pissed .

And not in the fun kind of way, either. Normally her anger, born from men telling her that she “just couldn’t do it,” and “oh that’s a wonderful idea, darling, but you just can’t pull it off,” or “I think you would do marvellously in the costume department,” spurned Genevieve on to push theatrical boundaries in ways that nobody thought possible. Ways that led to four Tonys and several hundred smaller awards besides.

Who the hell else besides her would have had the balls to stage Romeo and Juliet on a narrow walkway, suspended above a stage of thousands of bloodied knives? With no handrail?

That one had led to Hollywood knocking on Genevieve’s door. Not that she had answered, of course. Bloody camera-cocks, the whole lot of them. But even then , Daniel Davies in his horrendous column had said of her masterpiece that it was “the desperate work of a jumped-up girl thinking cheap metaphors would garner respect, when in reality it’s the clear cry for help of a menopausal woman who hasn’t yet forgiven herself for her own menses. What else explains the bloodied-phallus metaphor of the daggers?”

Misogyny and condescension, Genevieve could deal with. She’d been doing so for over three decades. Soldiering on through the voices telling her, “you can’t,” with a grim smile and several expletives.

But this. This was fundamental. This was personal. There would be absolute hell to pay.

“You can’t cut Macbeth from this season’s line-up! I won’t allow it.”

Sammy grinned at her, his veneers gleaming too-white in the stark white light of the minimalist office, the completely alabaster room empty, save for a chrome-black desk and three matching chairs. Supposedly his ode to the Royal Bard Company’s 1983 production of Henry V .

Pretentious git. Anybody with a brain knew that the 1996 version was far superior.

“Gen, darling , I’m the artistic director of RBC, I can do whatever I like.” He threw around the Royal Bard Company’s abbreviation the way he threw around his weight.

“But it’s Macbeth,” she countered, “do you know how long I’ve been waiting to do Macbeth ? Properly this time.”

“Ah yes.” Sammy leaned forward to prop his elbows on the desk, his tailored suit straining slightly against his softening body, “Twenty-twelve, was it? One of your mediocre visions. I hardly remember it.”

“ You were the one who made me do that god-awful Olympics theme! The whole of bloody London was obsessed with the damn Olympics.”

“The whole world, darling,” he said breezily, “and I won’t change my mind. We don’t have space in the winter slots and Macbeth is not a summer show. It doesn’t fit with the brand.”

“I can make it fit,” Genevieve forced out through gritted teeth, “deserts, heat, oppression that’s both mental and physical. Blood welling through the sand.”

“ Sand? Oh, how absolutely awful! You’re not getting sand anywhere near my theatre. The water tanks last year were bad enough. The insurance alone . . .”

“I made you five million!” Genevieve cut him off, temper steadily rising. “ The Tempest never makes five million.”

“My answer is ‘no,’ Genevieve.”

She leaned back in her seat, fists clenching, immaculately manicured nails biting into the skin of her hands. Years she had been waiting for a chance to do Macbeth . Years. The last time had been a complete farce built on lycra and entirely too much flexing. She had tried to compromise, arguing that an ancient Greek theme was still technically in keeping with the Olympics vision, but she had been trampled over in favor of some horrendous, post-modern tourist bait. All this time spent honing her craft and Genevieve still hadn’t risen to the terrifying legend of directorial dictatorship that would allow her complete control.

What was any of it worth if she couldn’t even get Sammy to sign off on a show? There would be blood. She would move to America this time, she swore. She could make a killing over there. They wouldn’t even think to question the whims of the towering English theatre titan. Then who would Sammy be left with to direct his plays? Peter Henshaw? Gary Wollenstock? RBC would be a laughingstock.

“I do have something else that might interest you,” Sammy interrupted Genevieve’s bitter musing in a smarmy sales voice, dripping with enough sugar to make her teeth hurt. She scowled at him, red-lipsticked mouth pursed and eyes narrowed.

“If you intend to try and persuade me to do a musical again, so help me God . . .”

“No, no.” He waved his hands in mock surrender, thin strands slipping from their meticulously gelled, combed-over position on top of his bald spot. “Not a musical. Tell me, have you ever met Alicia Pearson?”

“The author?” Genevieve replied, her voice dripping with thinly veiled disdain. What use was writing words on a page if you didn’t have the burning desire to see them lifted into a transcendent spectacle of raw human emotion? “We’ve met once or twice.”

“And what did you think of her?” Sammy asked, with a lewd wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Sammy, if you’re trying to set me up on a date to lessen the blow of ripping Macbeth from me, my next production will feature you as the lead. How do you feel about Frankenstein with a real-time vivisection?”

The maddening company director laughed, the sound high and reedy, and red spots appeared on his ruddy cheeks. “Oh, Genevieve, you’re too much! I can’t think of anything worse than the two of you in a relationship. After all, somebody needs to be ‘the woman.’”

Genevieve rolled her eyes with such commitment that they could have gotten stuck in the back of her skull. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I guess we could invite you to be our third, and then we’d be set.”

Sammy sighed and wiggled the fingers of his left hand in her face, wedding band glinting silver. “Alas, you’d have to fight off Thomas. But anywho, back to the discussion at hand.”

Genevieve pressed her lips together again and crossed her arms, the outrageously expensive fabric of her custom Chanel suit rustling slightly as she shifted in her chair. This had better be good , she thought.

“As I’m sure you know, the Company has been accused of being somewhat . . . elitist in recent years. We just aren’t attracting the young people anymore—and that’s an issue, my dear. Our audience grows ever more silver-haired.”

Genevieve resisted the urge to smooth back her own silver-blonde hair, perfectly styled in a neat bob. Her own creeping age was only a thorn in her side when she read “has-been” or “tired” in the reviews, the blatant sexism grating. After all, at fifty-six, she was one of the youngest directors in the company?and she was surrounded by increasingly sagging men. Genevieve was in her prime and nothing would convince her otherwise.

“And how do you suggest we bring in the children? Perhaps you’d have me selling sweets on a street corner?” she said with a sneer.

“Not at all, not at all.” Sammy chuckled and gave a placating flick of his hand, apparently oblivious to her waning patience. “We just need to start thinking outside the box. Bring in some fresh new voices. Wipe off the cobwebs, so to speak. RBC is an ancient beast and slow to change, and I’ve been given the opportunity this season to prove that progress is not only necessary, but immensely profitable.”

Genevieve’s brows knit together. “But we do Shakespeare . . . . That’s just it. There’s always a demand for Shakespeare.”

“I couldn’t agree more, darling,” Sammy replied. “Couldn’t agree more. We just need to shake things up a bit. That’s why this season, we will be including several new works written within the worlds that dear William Shakespeare created. We stay true to our roots, but also show the world that we can evolve.”

Genevieve laughed, slowly and mockingly. “Your grand idea is to do stage retellings? That idea was old by the seventies. Just put on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and be done with it.”

Sammy pouted slightly, steepling his fingers and sighing far too dramatically for Genevieve’s liking. “Oh, I do wish you would take this seriously. It’s a big opportunity, darling. It’s how we convince the stuffy dinosaurs on the board that there is value in branching out. I want my legacy to be meaningful. I want to show the world that Samuel Davidson was the one to drag RBC kicking and screaming into the new age. We need new blood, Genevieve. New approaches. London Shakespeare Society worked that out a decade ago and they’ve flourished over the past years, whilst we’ve remained merely stagnant. Something needs to change.”

She bit back a groan. How she detested the London Shakespeare Society and their ideas about revolutionary theatre. Rapping a sonnet was hardly ground-breaking. She had been trained as a classical theatre director and she knew their history. Genevieve would be damned if she was going to stand by while RBC fell victim to unnecessary posturing.

In her opinion, diversity in theatre was a glorious thing—as long as it didn’t continually bash its audience over the head with its “so-called” messages. How many angry emails had she sent over the years, telling journalists to stop describing her as “that lesbian director” in all their comments? It was just as bad when they called her “that female director.”

She was just a director, plain and simple.

A director who was talented enough to recognise that Shakespeare could be modernised and diversified, without the need to sully the great writer’s work by reimagining it as some god-awful, modernist crap. Or worse. Genevieve thought of the script writers who’d insisted on rewriting “in the style of Shakespeare,” and she shuddered at the mere thought.

“Can’t we just incorporate more modern technology and market the hell out of it?” she asked, picking at a non-existent piece of lint on her sleeve.

“Oh, Genevieve, I haven’t even told you the best part yet.”

She scoffed, “And what might that be?”

Sammy’s grin was smug enough to make Genevieve nervous. Nightmarish visions of more lycra danced through her skull. “The board has agreed that if some of these new writers actually prove profitable, then they’ll consider green-lighting your little pet project.”

Genevieve froze. Surely not. There was no way. She’d been petitioning for years for them to finally take her proposal seriously. She’d grasped at every meagre inch of freedom they’d granted her.

The thing was, loathe as she was to admit it to his face, Sammy was correct. RBC was ridiculously elitist. They typically only accepted performers and creatives who had been to the country’s top theatrical schools. It was nigh on impossible to get one’s foot in the door without those credentials.

For close to a decade, Genevieve had raged against the restrictions, arguing that hardly anybody had access to the money to attend those schools. That the company was missing out on valuable talent for the sake of status.

She wasn’t an idiot. She knew that simply arguing would do nothing, so she had developed a plan. A part-time programme, fully funded by RBC, where underprivileged actors could learn the art directly from the company over the course of a year. Genevieve had appealed to the board’s desire for creative control and uniformity, pointing out that by supervising their training, RBC would be ensuring the quality of “the holy brand.”

It hadn’t worked, of course. The best she’d gotten was a quota allowance for the number of people on her team who would not be from one of the big three schools. And it was a tiny quota.

“You’re joking,” she said now, not letting her hopes rise even for a second. “Don’t screw around with me, Sammy. It’s not funny.”

Sammy shrugged. “They know they can’t control the writers and they don’t want other companies to poach the talent because those young actors may get more freedom elsewhere. The idea is that you can have your programme—for actors, writers, and creatives— if this little venture works out. That way, we can look more appealing to the public, but the board can keep its tight grasp on the brand.”

“How many?”

He checked his sleek, black phone. The latest model, of course. “Twenty actors, twenty creatives, and three writers.”

The increasingly excited director pursed her lips. It wasn’t many, but it was a start.

“And who would choose them? I don’t want it to be the case that they would have needed to have gone to one of the theatre schools anyway. I want this to be a genuine opportunity for people who need it.”

“They said you can direct the programme, complete control. If . . .”

And there it was. The bloody caveat. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but Genevieve was already far too irritated to pay it any attention.

“If what?” she asked, her tone terse. She wouldn’t sell her soul for this. She would find another way.

“They want you to direct the flagship performance. And to earn them enough money that night that they’ll believe this little venture is worth it.”

She groaned again, massaging the bridge of her nose. Genevieve felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. “So basically, the whole bloody thing either lives or dies with me. Everything is going into this last-ditch effort to make RBC ‘cool’ again.”

Sammy smiled wickedly. “Don’t you worry, my dear. I’ll be helping you along. After all, I get to decide the lineup. That’s where our dear Alicia Pearson comes in. Tell me; how many of her books have you read?”

Genevieve didn’t dignify that with a response. As if she had time to read for pleasure. She was too busy carrying the whole damn company on her back. Her phone buzzed again, and this time she pulled it out and glared at the screen.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered, scowling at the string of messages from her darling ex-wife, Amy. Why the woman insisted on pestering her after everything genuinely baffled Genevieve.

“Ooh, anything juicy?” Sammy asked, stretching even further across the desk with a glint in his eyes.

She turned to glower at him. “Weren’t you yapping on about Alicia Pearson?”

“Ah, yes, dear Alicia. You see, the thing is, ten years ago she published a book called ‘Beatrice.’ Some proto-feminist nonsense, really, but the concept has potential. It’s Much Ado About Nothing, except from Beatrice’s point of view. And there’s no swooning over a yummy Benedick in this version. No, it’s more oestrogen-fuelled rage and latent gay awakening.”

Genevieve raised her eyebrows, her attention caught. Sammy saw the shift and a shit-eating smirk spread across his features. She’d be annoyed at his smugness later, but this could potentially—maybe—hold her interest.

Beatrice was both a favourite character of hers, but also one that frustrated her to no end. Shakespeare was no stranger to both feminist and queer-coded characters, empowering them in a way that was rare for the period to which they belonged. But the ending always had to fit the narrative. Genevieve doubted that the old bat, Alicia, would be able to capture the true passion and despair of the character in her silly books. But Genevieve could, she was sure. On the stage.

“I knew that would get your attention,” Sammy squealed, clapping his hands together with glee. “So what do you think? Will you do it? Oh, please say you’ll do it! I’ll give you whatever budget you want!”

“Remind me what’s in it for you?”

He spread his arms out wide, gesturing to the comically empty room. “It’s my legacy, darling! I’ve been trying for years to get something original on the stage, and this is my chance! I will not let RBC whither and die under my watch!”

“Casting?”

“The quotas are still in place, but you get final say.”

“Costumes?”

“I’ll give you Damien.”

“Phoebe Chen is better.”

“Then you shall have Phoebe Chen!”

“Theatre?”

“How about the Whinney Playhouse?”

“I detest the rigging there; it’s so restrictive. I want the Braga.”

“Damn it, I knew you would say that. Fine, I’ll move James to the Whinney, but he won’t be happy. You can have the Braga.”

Genevieve smiled for the first time that day. “Well then, you’ve yourself got a deal.”

RBC’s flamboyant artistic director cried in delight, jumping up from his chair to sweep her up in an entirely unwelcome hug, squeezing her tight. “Oh, Genevieve Howard, you simply are the most amazing creature ever! I’m eternally in your debt. Can I take you for dinner? Oh, you must come to dinner. Thomas and I know this simply exquisite little Italian joint . . .”

He carried on yapping as she extricated herself from his embrace, smoothing down the sharp lines of her suit. She wasn’t listening anyway. Her mind was too busy racing through the task ahead of her. Genevieve would need to see the script, of course. She didn’t trust Alicia to be able to translate Shakespeare’s works with the necessary panache. And Genevieve would need at least a week of brainstorming in her home office, surrounded by awards and scripts and crumpled posters. Proof of her prowess.

She would need concept art, character explanations, and visual inspiration. There was so much to do, but so little time. It was basically an impossible task. Genevieve felt a small fissure of excitement crackle up her spine. She adored an impossible task.

“Oh, I can already hear that brain of yours whirring away.” Sammy grinned, leaning back against his desk, one leg draping over the other. “I’ll put in a script meeting for this afternoon, so you know what you’re working with. Is a month enough time before auditions open? We’ll need to get the word out if we want to open next summer.”

“Not really,” Genevieve answered, showing her own sly smile, “but do it anyway.”

Her boss squealed again, “Oh this is so exciting! Far more exciting than Macbeth, don’t you think? Oh, don’t look at me like that! If this works, I’ll let you do it next year. I’ll even let you use the bloody sand, if you want it!”

Genevieve’s phone buzzed again. Sure enough, there was another message from her ex-wife, Amy. The jolt of annoyance brought the triumphant director’s mood right back down. Sammy peered over, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.

“You know . . . it’s been years. She’s clearly making all this effort to be friends. How long can you really go on hating her?” he asked.

“Sammy, she cheated on me and moved in with her mistress because I apparently work too much and am emotionally unavailable. Of course, I still hate her.”

He considered, “Well, darling, you do work entirely too much. But thank the Lord you do. We wouldn’t be nearly as successful without you. And, well, I’ve met rocks that were more emotionally available than you. But perhaps you should think about moving on. Maybe start dating again. You never know who you’ll meet.”

Genevieve raised a perfectly plucked brow. “And who exactly is going to put up with me?”