Ch. 3: The Classical Theatre
As promised, Mouse took Alice to the theatre to see a play called The Truth About Dinah, which was at the New Crucible theatre. Mouse took great care that Alice was dressed appropriately for the performance. Her long hair was brushed back and kept back by a ribbon. She lent Alice a dress which came to just an inch above the top of her inside leg, and scrubbed her vagina so it sparkled and smelt nice. She put little white ankle socks and nicely polished black shoes on her feet. Mouse took especial care, with Alice's assistance, to shave off any hair on her body, particularly between her legs. Alice spent a fairly uninspiring time tweaking out the hairs that were caught in Mouse's prised open buttocks.
Most of the audience at the New Crucible was women and most of those had short bobs like Mouse and proudly showed off their shaven vulvas. Theatre, whatever it might have meant to Alice, was a sexual experience according to Mouse. The centre piece of a good play was a well-performed fuck scene. There might be several fuck scenes in a play, but only the best actors were truly able to arouse an audience. Mouse had seen plays where a fuck scene in a sub-plot was better performed than the main one but that was rare.
Modern drama (in which Mouse didn't include the avant-garde rubbish Dodie advocated) was always bound by certain agreed standards according to whether it was comedy or tragedy. In a comedy, there would be a series of fuck scenes in which the final scene involved the climaxing of most of the cast. This orgy scene would not be the principal fuck scene. This would happen earlier to allow the stars the opportunity to perk up for the last act. In a tragedy, then there were less fuck scenes and most of the cast were not involved (except as passive spectators), but each fuck scene required more from the actors to express the complex emotions involved.
Unlike, Mouse sniffed disparagingly, the avant-garde, proper theatre was bound by certain quite sensible limits. No buggery in any circumstance. Where male homosexual sex was required, one of the couple would need be of the other sex dressed to appear as the same sex, so that it would only appear to be homosexual. In those cases, for instance, a woman might play, say, Edward III, and wear a dildo around her waist to exhibit her supposed role. Fucking, even from behind, had to be into the vagina. The Theatre Inspectorate were very strict on that.
The Truth About Dinah was a tragedy concerning Dinah, played by the leading actress, Prudence Smith, who was hiding the dark secret of her love for another woman, Laurel, who was played by Pauline York, an actress of lesser significance. Her husband, Edward, was a disapproving religious man, played by Lionel Johnson, the leading actor.
