Gleeson Hattie Brings the House Down

A Theatreland Whodunnit
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-83501-004-4
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Reihe: A Theatreland Mystery

Get ready for a thrilling backstage ride in the world of theatre as seasoned stage manager Hattie embarks on a new production at London's Tavistock pub theatre. Here, the drama doesn't just occur on stage. Troublesome directors and fastidious assistants soon become the least of Hattie's worries as, a week into rehearsals, an actress is found dead backstage on the same day that an extremely valuable theatrical mask goes missing. Hattie begins investigating both mysteries, all the while trying to keep the dysfunctional cast and crew on track for opening night. As she delves deeper into the secrets behind the scenes, her allegiance to her theatre, cast and crew will be tested to destruction... Follow this unconventional detective as she delves into the alluring and exquisitely perilous world of the theatre.

Patrick has a degree in philosophy and classics, another one in technical theatre and stage management, and one more in business administration. He has worked as a theatre sound designer, an 'interpretive naturalist' at an aquarium, a software developer, a business mentor to fledgling entrepreneurs, and a voice actor. He composed the music for a musical about taxidermy that The Stage said 'put to shame the hackneyed standards of the contemporary musical scene', and has been performed in London, Edinburgh, Suffolk and, weirdly, Alaska. He now lives in Norfolk with his wife and two children, where he brews mediocre cider.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gleeson, Patrick

Leseproben

Prologue

Monday, 2 October 2023

There’s an old joke they tell backstage sometimes: the circus has come to town, and everyone lines the streets to watch the parade. It’s colourful and glamorous and glorious, but once all the horses and elephants and clowns have gone past, bystanders see a solitary figure shuffle into view. He’s dressed in rags, carries a bucket and shovel, and he slowly collects up the dung dropped by the animals. As he works he mutters a continual stream of complaints.

‘Work all day, work all night, barely get food to fill my belly, just a pallet to sleep on, blisters on my palms from this splintered old shovel, hole in my bucket, and the smell, oh the smell…’

A well-meaning passer-by, hearing him rant, calls out to him, ‘You know, they’re hiring down at the mill. The work’s easy and the pay’s good. You’d never have to shovel dung again.’

The man looks up and replies, aghast: ‘What? Quit showbiz?’

– From the introduction to The Art and Craft of Stage Management by Donna Fletcher

The Tavistock Theatre was not a grand building. It wasn’t strictly speaking a building at all. Fundamentally it comprised one large, slightly damp room, connected to a couple of smaller, rather damper ones, all tucked behind and above the Tavistock pub. The pub staff and the theatre staff viewed one another with varying levels of disdain, but they were by and large mutually tolerant so long as neither was overly disruptive to the other.

So when Hattie Cocker came to visit Keith Macaulay, artistic director and technically sole employee of the Tavistock, at a little before eleven o’clock in the morning, she knew to walk round to the side entrance in the yard rather than go through the pub and bother the manager, who was doing whatever it is that publicans do on a Monday before their premises open.

Hattie was not a particularly large or heavy-set woman, but she wore an enormous thick coat that hung stiffly around her, rendering her external geometry almost entirely cylindrical. It was a good coat, which over the years had seen her through freezing cold overnight get-outs in Minsk, improbable outdoor performances in the Hebrides, and that one awful dress rehearsal in New York when the aircon was left on full blast in winter (as bizarre union rules meant they weren’t allowed to switch it off themselves, and the in-house technician was on holiday). It was a bit tattered now, but Hattie liked it and trusted it, and besides, new clothes were so depressingly expensive these days.

The side door should, strictly speaking, have been locked, but as usual it had been left on the latch. Hattie slipped through, into the dingy low-ceilinged hallway just inside. There was one door dead ahead leading into the auditorium, and another on the right leading to the dressing rooms. A crumbling staircase on the left led up to the office. The familiar backstage smell of cheap stage paint and badly plumbed drains wafted up to greet her like a drunken uncle at a wedding as she turned and, refusing to acknowledge the twinges in her hip, made her way up the stairs.

Keith, always the fidgety sort, was practically vibrating when Hattie found him. He was doing little circuits through the mess of scripts and bills that littered the office, while his intern Robin – young, rather effete, and frowning nervously – perched on a table edge in the corner.

‘Morning, then,’ offered Hattie, uncertainly.

‘Well, that ended quickly, didn’t it?’ exclaimed Keith abruptly, as he turned to look at her.

‘What did?’

‘The show. The season. The whole blessed theatre. Typical Hashi too, he had to blow the bloody lock off just to make a statement.’

Keith was a small man, with dark, bulging eyes, a crooked smile, and receding hair. He had a certain charisma to him that was perhaps attractive in its own way. ‘Ugly-sexy’, was how someone – Hattie forgot who – had once described him, and the epithet had always stuck in her mind. Of course, that charisma was rather lost when he was in the middle of a panic-driven meltdown.

‘Er… Sorry, I don’t follow,’ Hattie confessed. ‘Which lock?’

Keith waved expansively at the corner of the room. Hattie’s eyes followed the direction of his gesture and alighted on the bright yellow safety cupboard standing, open, in the corner. The one that was compliant with Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations, that was supposed to be used for storing stage pyrotechnics, but that Keith used like a safe and had insisted on keeping the… oh. Oh dear.

‘Right. Just so I’m clear,’ she ventured, ‘are you telling me that something has happened to that… mask?’

‘Happened? Happened? Yes, I think it’s safe to say that something has happened to the mask. Hashi has taken the mask.’

He slumped down into his chair and groaned.

‘A week. We got a week into rehearsals and the wheels fell off. I knew he was prickly but I swear on Derek Jacobi’s codpiece I didn’t know he’d try to take down the whole theatre.’

Hattie considered all this. In the world of theatre, feuds and dramatic gestures were commonplace, but actual, proper, calculated theft was not. The idea of it was repugnant. Theatre people did lots of things that they shouldn’t, but they didn’t steal from one another. Still, it was important not to jump to conclusions.

‘Um,’ she said eventually, ‘now obviously I’m coming at this from the outside, so apologies if it’s a stupid question, but are you sure that it was Hashi, and are you sure that it wasn’t some sort of a misunderstanding?’

‘Look!’ shouted Keith, his voice cracking as he jumped up again and strode over to the cupboard. He scooped up something from the floor next to it and tossed it onto the sprawl of papers on the desk in the middle of the room. It looked like the mangled remains of a padlock that appeared to have been… melted? Dissolved? Perhaps it had been blown apart by an explosive. Whatever the case, it did indeed look like a deliberate act of destruction.

‘And he left a note. A… a receipt. Look!’

Keith pointed at yet another pile of papers, atop which was a sheet of A4, on which was scrawled, in black Sharpie, the words ‘Love’s Labours Repaid’.

‘Pretty clear now, isn’t it? He even forgot the second apostrophe again. Moron.’

Keith resumed his frantic pacing.

‘Well now, let’s not jump to conclusions,’ began Hattie soothingly. ‘If it was someone upset about the pay issue, it could have been—’

‘Who? The twitchy little sound assistant? You? Or, I don’t know, how about the obviously unstable, temperamental prima donna director who’s already explicitly threatened to nick it?’

‘I think he was just making a jo—’

‘Jesus H. Sondheim, I never should have let him anywhere near this place. As soon as he said he wanted to do Love’s Labour’s Lost I should have seen he was completely off his rocker. No one in their right minds would pick a sodding Shakespearean comedy in a theatre like this, especially not given where he’s coming from. And now he’s going to destroy the whole theatre.’

‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely?’

Keith glared at Hattie.

‘Is it? Oh, great, I hadn’t realised. What with being the only person in the world who understands how this house runs and what keeps it ticking, it’s no wonder I misunderstood. Thanks for keeping me informed. For God’s sake, Hattie, I wouldn’t joke about this sort of thing. That mask is vital, vital, to the continued existence of this place.’

‘How?’ asked Hattie, genuinely confused.

‘I don’t… I don’t have time to explain all of this to you. All you need to know is that if I don’t have it in my hand on press night, two weeks from tomorrow, the theatre will fold before your show ends its run. Just remember that: it’s your pay cheque on the line.’

Hattie looked over at Robin, who met her eye and gave an agonised sort of half-shrug. Poor thing, he must have been trapped in this room with a raving Keith all morning. This can’t have been what he signed up for when he applied for work experience at the Tavistock. Hattie decided to stop winding Keith up with more questions, and instead tell him what he wanted to hear. The fact that he had called her instead of big Steve suggested that he was probably hoping for a diplomatic intervention of some sorts, even if he was too agitated at the moment to actually ask.

‘This sounds like the sort of thing that could possibly be fixed with a few quiet words in the right place,’ said Hattie cautiously. ‘Shall I go and have a chat with Hashi and see what he has to say about the whole thing?’

‘Sure, and if you wouldn’t mind telling him to shove his face down a toilet, that would also be great, thanks,’ replied Keith sourly.

‘I think I’ll reserve the right to include or omit that suggestion as I see fit,’ said Hattie, eliciting a small smile from Robin.

Keith ignored her.

‘I just don’t know how we got from kisses and smiles to breaking and entering in the space of a week,’ he said dejectedly.

‘I’m sure we can sort it out,’ Hattie replied encouragingly. She was still choosing to believe that, in the absence of definitive proof to the contrary, Hashi couldn’t possibly have...