flashback: “a christmas carol”

Years ago, I was in a local repertory theatre’s production of “A Christmas Carol.” It was a small cozy cast and we each played a couple of roles in the show. One of my parts was Belle, Scrooge’s long-lost love. At one point, the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge his heart-wrenching farewell scene with Belle from years ago where she tells him that he is changed now, that a golden idol has displaced his love for her, that Gain has become his master passion, that she releases him from their agreement to marry. Blahdie blah. She actually kinda lets him have it. Nicely, but still. After that, Scrooge is shown another brief scene of his lost love, the scene causing this random flashback. Belle is now married, surrounded by a throng of noisy children, happy in her loud and crowded life. Her husband enters and is instantly mobbed by his delighted feral children. Finally, he turns to Belle and this is the scene as we had it in our show — basically, straight from Dickens:

“Belle, I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.”

“Who was it?”

“Guess!”

“Tut, don’t I know! Mr Scrooge.”

Now, they are laughing, smiling, as if there is some private — but not unkind — joke between them about old Mr. Scrooge.

So that’s the scene. Those were my lines in that short short scene. I was supposed to say, “Who was it?” and I was supposed to say, “Tut, don’t I know! Mr. Scrooge.”

Not hard, right? Really really not hard. I’m not talking about the nuances of that short scene; that’s a separate thing. I simply mean that those are not hard words to get out of one’s mouth correctly. As a matter of fact, I had no problem at all with “Who was it?” I nailed it every time. I also had no problem with “Mr. Scrooge” there at the end.

But at some pivotal point during rehearsals, the line “Tut, don’t I know!” became the bane of my existence. The angel of death. The worst line that anybody anywhere ever had to say. Worse than when Leonardo DeCaprio bellowed ridiculously “I’m the king of the world!” to a cold and callous Atlantic Ocean. I felt pretty bad for him then, but not as bad as I felt for myself when “Tut, don’t I know” started tightening its hideous vise grip on my psyche. I don’t remember how it happened, exactly, but I began to have complete and utter dyslexia about these four little words and at this pivotal fatal rehearsal, I blurted out in my proper British accent, displaying a staggering mastery of my craft: “Tut, I dunno!”

The scene instantly stopped. My “husband” stared at me for a brief second, then burst out laughing.

“You ‘dunno’?” he said.

“What?”

“You said, ‘Tut, I dunno!'”

“‘Tut, I dunno??’ No, I didn’t!”

It was totally unconscious. Some kind of hidden frustration coming through, obviously. I started laughing. Everyone around was laughing and repeating it, with that certain annoyed edge I’d inadvertently given it. Little did we all know that lingering over that blunder, laughing about it, repeating it would just mess with all our psyches, doing irretrievable theatrical damage. We didn’t care, though. It became THE stupid backstage joke: “So Mike, when are you adding that gobo?” “Tut, I dunno!” “Becky, where’s that candelabra?” “Tut, I dunno!” “Tess, what is the meaning of life?” “Tut, I DUNNO!!” It became the answer for nearly every question.

Now saying it like that — “Tut, I dunno” rather than “Tut, don’t I know” completely changes the nuance of the scene because Belle DOES know whom her husband is referencing. But — it shames me deeply to say this — my psyche was now ruined and I blamed myself while publicly and loudly blaming everybody else. “Tut, I dunno!” had spread like wildfire and was now part of our lexicon, our lingo, the secret shared language that every show always has. People used the accent; people changed the accent. People imitated my inflection; people changed the inflection. The possibilities of “Tut, I dunno!” were an endless comic horizon and we seemed to be deeply committed to exploring it — forever!!

But … once the show opened and real people were really watching …… oh Sweet Jesus. The vise grip that stupid phrase had on my psyche — on everyone’s psyche — was still so tight that when the moment for that line came up, the air went cold, time went backwards, genetic mutations sparked in my brain on a subatomic level. The actor playing my husband would stare at me, wild-eyed with fear. What will she say? What will she say?! What will she say?? Tut, I DUNNO!!! There was an eternal pause between his line and mine which never should have been there. And when I say “eternal” I mean eternal. The Rapture happened. The Apocalypse. The Second Coming. But “Belle” and her husband were outside of the time-space continuum whilst we waited for my pea brain to process four little words in their correct order. The white-faced look of horror on my husband’s face as he gazed down at me was no acting. It was real.

Miraculously, every night of the show, my brain fought back against mutations and time and eternity and I did manage to eke out a feeble “Tut, don’t I know!” But the line was ruined. The moment was ruined. Because although my brain finally rallied every night, we couldn’t look at each other when I said it. We simply could not. There were always ominous twinkles threatening in the corners of our eyes. The edges of our mouths twitched to hold in the shrieking laughter that was always waiting to break. Desperate to fight it, we both stared shakily at some neutral point offstage, which, of course, is what the scene is all about.

It was a warm, touching moment, rendered professionally, lemme tell ya.

Was Dickens spinning in his grave from his mistreatment at our hands?

Tut, I DUNNO!