no_sin_but | (no subject)

"So, this play we are seeing..." He asks as they walk into the theatre.

"No, this isn't even the stage it'll be on."

Welcome to the Swan. Grand and sweeping. Rows and rows of red, cushioned chairs. A beautiful balcony. A prosceneum arch.

Darren leaps down the aisle, back in a familiar space and happy. Fucking bar.

"This is where I'll put on my Hamlet."

Marlowe takes his time, brushing his long fingers against the chairs, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling.

It's not his theatre.

But it doesn't matter.

It's Darren's, now. He's onto the stage with a leap-bound, long legs and aggressive strides.

"It will be wild."

Marlowe crosses his arms, looking amused (and not a bit wistful).

"Tell me more," and there is a lilt to his words.

"Enters the watchmen, the crude humour, the representation of laymen everywhere. To be laughed at and terrified by the GHOST."

Sweep, point, gesture like he can pull it out of the air.

"Who flies in. And hovers. He will be horrible. He will be disgusting. He will be the flesh of the undead, the personification of Hamlet's gnawing guilt, of the corruption of his soul, the cowardice that has stopped him avenging the death of his father and ending the life of the incestuous king!"

Marlowe tilts his head back, slightly, and looks at the stage. His lips move, repeating Darren's words as a slight echo a beat behind and no more.

"Silently, shall this walking conscience enter, or with drums and gasps?"

"Fire and screams. Glancing hints of the torments from which it has fresh escaped, to deliver its message to the good cowardly prince. A pretty young man, rather innefectual and shallow by necessity, as I haven't much to work with."

Movie stars. What can you do?

A quick smile.

"He gains anything by it all, or does he just run made with it too much for his already fragile mind?"

"He doesn't break yet, but the first knocks are had, and knocks turn to cracks and cracks turn to fissures and pretty soon the pieces are in a mess on the floor. An apple, the rot of madness from within has worked through the skin and rendered the perfect seeming fruit useless."

It's all about the rotting metaphors.

"Like his very home, indeed. Drunken Denmark, whose own corruption dooms her kings. His syphalitic mother."

"Because the kings and queens are god, the foundation of their realm. It starts with them and ends with them."

"The Kings and Queens are the heart of the city, sitting crowned from their golden thrown. That their rule is a sham and that they're disgusting makes sense. The rot spreads from the core. Claudius is the worm, that has oozed his way unnaturally inwards and poisoned where the seeds of the realm should lie. See, Gertrude, and her uterus."

Darren is pacing still, picturing. Blocking, in his head.

"But why is it a sham? They are King, they are the Queen, they are there. Heart of society, corrupt or no."

"They are not. They are a Queen, and her usurper brother who has killed the rightful king, in a fit of corruption, do not, and slips into an incestuous bed. Disgusting behaviour. Rotten behaviour, you might say. Claudius cannot be a lasting King because he came by it unnaturally. By cheating fate. By cheating young Hamlet of his rightful role through his overhasty marriage. And Gertrude, well, she married him, did she not? Can we help but wonder whether or not she was an accomplice? She certainly hadn't many objections."

He whips out an invisible sword, and lunges a stab at one or the other of them, standing in his imagination center stage.

"Women do not always have a choice, rank or no. Save the objections, save face."

"Cowardice!"

Another stab at the air.

"Her son, of thirty years of age, well fit to rule. There was no need to marry Claudius. From this corruption, the poison festers, spreading through the city. We know Claudius is a drunk. We know his alcoholism has spread to the city. We know she is being made a mockery of by other nations!"

"But is she conflicted? Duty warring with perverted lust, mother's guilt and lover's sin."

"Corrupted lust welling from within the recesses of her darkest dreams, welling up and overcoming the polished verneers of humanity, the mantles of morals we all take up. Her lust for Claudius overcoming her first and most sacred duty to her child. She can not help but know Claudius means Hamlet ill. She fucks him anyways. Selfishness."

Darren will never see the good in people, first off.

"The memory of her dead husband isn't enough. The protection of her son neither."

He bows his head, just a little, and just a little to the right, and he watches Darren dance and dream on the stage.

"They will hate it," he admits, with glee, "or they will love it. They will miss the point entirely or see and not be able to help but hate it. It will provoke."

And Darren Nicholls is all about provocation.

"As things should."

Darren leaps off the stage, landing gracefully in the aisle and still moving like he owns the place, because in a way, he does.

"Uncle Vanya's over in the smaller space."

"Not so grand?"

"No. Hamlet is, as I have said, the flagship production. But there are four stages and all need to be filled, and the only thing playing here tonight was Oliver's fucking Dream and I'd rather chew tacks than sit through that particular nightmare."

And he'd spend all of it thinking of butterscotch schnapps and stolen kisses.

"And I would be a poor guest indeed if I had made you."