PLAYWRIGHT: Hold it, please. [Jane and Tye exchange cryptic glances.] I’m afraid we’ve lost our director. [Hilary appears from the wings.]

HILARY [in his costume-drama voice]: Mr. Leigh-Bowes has to catch the one-ten to East Hampton.

PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, that’s one way to put it.

HILARY [rushing downstage]: I think you’re the most—

JANE [crying out]: Please!

HILARY: I have got to say it. I’m going to say it. This old derelict pretends he can’t see well because he’s blind drunk and he has the insolence to—

JANE: I’ve just played a very emotional scene and— [She weeps on the actor’s shoulder.]

PLAYWRIGHT: I know. Take a minute. Now, Hilary, you can say it without shouting it.

HILARY [still shouting]: Mr. Leigh-Bowes tells me you consider me incompetent as a stage-manager. I happen to have made a rather distinguished career as an actor. I have worked with Mr. Leigh-Bowes in six productions and he does not want me to quit this one but I shall have to turn in my resignation if you go on attempting to undermine my reputation by your, your—stupid, sodden—slanders about my . . .

JANE: Make them stop it.

PLAYWRIGHT: Honey, let him hang it all out. Now, Hilary, I know I’m not always discreet as I should be, but—what slanders do you mean?

HILARY: That as an actor I merely carried a spear in a couple of Katharine Cornell productions, that for one. It happens to be that I supported Miss Cornell in three productions, including her Cleopatra, and it also happens that I received the Clarence Derwent Award, the first one given, as Mr. Browning in Barretts. Standby yes, but I gave twenty-six performances.

PLAYWRIGHT: That’s—that’s very impressive but—

HILARY: Are you calling me a liar, you old—derelict?

PLAYWRIGHT: I’m calling you nothing at all in spite of much provocation because I have notes to give and this hysteria of yours is holding us up.

JANE [to Tye]: Can’t you make them stop this?

TYE: Notes, he says, he’s got notes to give us. —Christ. . . .

HILARY: Mr. Leigh-Bowes left notes for you, his chauffeur came in the stage door and left this page of notes. [He throws it in the playwright’s face as the latter carefully mounts the steps over the orchestra pit onto the stage.]

PLAYWRIGHT: I hate to be bitchy, but—

HILARY: Can you HELP it?

PLAYWRIGHT: No. You may be Mr. Leigh-Bowes’ asshole buddy from public school in England but still you look to me and you act to me like an outpatient from Bellevue that ought to be back in. Now get the fuck off the stage while I exercise my right to give the performance notes.

HILARY: —You—despicable—!—old—

PLAYWRIGHT: That’s your curtain line, baby, so use it and get off!

JANE: —I play a scene like that and then am exposed to one like this and . . .