Cho Lo
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Are you good at being a starstruck, materialistic celebrity-wannabe chatterbox? If so, Alice Beane could be the right choice for you!
She's an all-American second class passenger who simply won't shut up. She never leaves her husband Edgar's side - probably because nobody else can bear to listen to her. Edgar probably wouldn't either, except that he loves her. She dotes on the first class and everything about it - it's all she ever talks about (and she talks a LOT).
She always tries her utmost best to make an impressive entrance, and spends a good chunk of the opening scene dishing out the gossip on all of the American first class celebrities ('The First Class Roster'). Edgar, being the quiet, uninfluential character that he is, is left helpless but to listen to his wife swooning over the richest Americans on the ship. It is very likely that Edgar only took his wife on the ship because she nagged him to do so.
Her obsession with the first class almost comes between their marriage because she strives to better herself to mingle with the swells, yet she cannot identify with Edgar's much more laid back approach, and she is so dominant over him that she doesn't really feel the need to. She will not appreciate his down-to-earth philosophy that they should just be happy with what they have.
Their comedy value is that as a couple their personalities and philosophies could not be more different. In one particular scene, after she has successfully smuggled herself into the First Class afternoon dance and been unsuccessfully chased Sherlock-holmes style by the First Class Steward Mr Etches, she comes back to Edgar ranting and raving about the experience, criticising him for his lack of effort 'to keep up with the Joneses', because he:
"had to be satisfied with that one dinky little hardware store, instead of branching out! How d'ya think those millionaires got their millions, Edgar?"
She is extremely materialistic and quite self-centred. When the stewards raise the alarm to evacuate to the Grand Salon, she says "I can't come out until I've fixed my face", to which Edgar replies "For goodness' sake Alice, they'll have fixed the ship by then". Even when she gets a place on the lifeboat, all she can say is "Edgar, look; we're next to Mrs Astor!" In fact, the audience is left wondering if she loves Edgar half as much as he loves her, until the point whereby the Lifeboat scene becomes deperate, and she cries "I love you, Edgar!" Amongst the chaos of that scene, it's always been a very poignant moment.
You have to be prepared to give this everything, and I'm quite sure that you'll know by now if you're the right person. The Alice and Edgar comic relief duo can help make the show sink or swim.
A Classic Alice Quote:
"But I don't wanna see the world, Edgar; there are too many other places I'd rather see first!"
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