Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Read Online Free PDF Page A

only mesmerising. Hilariously funny, but in the blackest way you could imagine, yet packing such a mighty powerful punch that judging from the look of the audience around me, leaves people reeling by the final curtain. The cast takes an astonishing three standing ovations and I’m pretty sure I’m the last person to leavethe auditorium; I just want to stay here, soak up the atmosphere and not break the magical spell that’s been woven round us all.
    Even better, a very old pal of mine going back years, an actress called Liz Shields is in the cast too, so I text her to tell her I’m here and waiting in the bar to say hi to her. Ten minutes later, she bounces out from her dressing room, still in all her war-paint, with her swishy blonde hair extensions and wearing her usual ‘rock chick’ gear of leather and denim. Looking like a young Madonna and Christina Aguilera if they were to step out of the matter transporter in The Fly , if you get me.
    I’m not joking you; Liz yells out my name so loudly that half the bar turns round to take in the sideshow.
    ‘Holy Jaysus, Annie bloody Cole!! Come here and givvus a hug! Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you?!’ So we hug and squeal and kiss and I can’t tell you how beyond fab it is to see her again.
    Liz and I trained in drama school here in Dublin together, ooh, way back in Old God’s time, and from the day we met, we just clicked. She’s completely wild and mad and fun – one of those people that you could start off having a normal night out with, like say, grabbing a few drinks in town…then you wake up the following morning in Holyhead. And by the way, that Holyhead story is no exaggeration and I should know; it happened on my hen night.
    Anyway, we grab a table, order a vodka for Liz, a Coke for me and settle down into a big catch-up chat, yakking over each other just like we always used to. Juggling about five different conversations up in the air simultaneously.
    ‘So what did you think of the show?’ she asks excitedly,‘and by that of course I mean, what did you think of me? Go on, rate me. And none of your plamassing either; be inhuman. Be vicious.’
    ‘Easy, eleven out of ten,’ I giggle back at her, loving the banter and not realising just how much I’ve missed it. For a split second not even being able to remember the last time I actually laughed .
    ‘Feck off, eleven out of ten sounds insincere.’
    ‘Right then, nine point nine if it’ll make you believe me! Seriously, Liz, do you even know how amazing you were out there tonight? Honest to God, girl, you’d be magnetic if you stood on the stage reading out instructions to an IKEA flat pack sofa…but in a show as good as this? You were bloody mesmerising! Only the truth, babe.’
    She playfully punches me, then yells over to the barman: ‘What’s keeping our drinks, Ice Age?’
    Pure, vintage Liz. I give her a completely spontaneous hug and then tell her the real reason why I came to the show all by myself tonight. Well, they must hear her shrieks all the way back in The Sticks. I honestly think that she’s more excited about my audition than even I am, if that were possible. Bless her, she even offers to ring up another one of the cast to get her to say her magic, foolproof novena to Saint Jude, to guarantee I land the part.
    ‘So tell me then,’ I ask, fishing for the one scrap of information I’m burning to find out. ‘What’s he like to work with? The mighty Jack Gordon.’
    Liz sucks in her cheeks and thinks before answering.
    ‘Jack is…it’s hard to say…I don’t really know him, even though I’ve known him for years. He’s like nine parts genius to one part knob, if that makes sense. Hard to please. Never happy with the show, even on nights when we takethree standing ovations, one after the other. Never happy with anything. Apparently the National are putting him up in some five star hotel in town and he walked straight into it and said, ‘what a dump.’
    My heart