The End of Fame by Bill Adams & Cecil Brooks

Author:Bill Adams & Cecil Brooks [Adams, Bill & Brooks, Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-24T22:00:00+00:00

But by twelve the mask was back to normal. And when normal, it was supposed to be happier on my face than in its dish. I put it on, and showed up on time for rehearsal at twelve-thirty.

Which was more than the Pretender did. He’d called in which scenes we were to rehearse, putting the virtually silent Renfrew in charge.

“Is the Boss sick or something?” I asked Julia. “How did he look when he left you last night?”

“He’s fine,” she said, and leaned close to whisper, “Doctor Lao, his therapist, arrived last night. I guess he’s having his session.”

“What’s that all about, anyway?” I asked.

She shook her head and shrugged.

Too bad I’d had so little sleep. I had to go over two of my most complicated and intense scenes from the middle of the play.

At this point in the plot, Manfred has arranged to have the dozen leaders of the revolutionary Carbonari, innocently revealed to him earlier by Theodore the Chamois Hunter, arrested and brought to the castle. They think they are going to be tortured and killed, but Manfred has ordered them released into the dining hall. Arriving before them, he discovers the giant black suit of armor we have heard of earlier—a sort of concrete ghost of his murdered father the Emperor. The effigy has been moving about the castle in a ghostly fashion, never when someone is looking. Now it stands at the head of the room. Manfred approaches it fearlessly, looks inside the helmet to confirm that it is empty, laughs, and draws a curtain so that no one else will know that it is there.

Next to arrive is his stepmother, Bel-Imperia—a name looted from The Spanish Tragedy, and why?—played by Olivia Viviani. She has liked being the imperial consort, would like to be one again, and attempts to seduce Manfred in a scene so outrageous we couldn’t rehearse it too often. Today, however, I was a little nervous about working the mask cheek-to-cheek with anyone, and it showed. Olivia apologized to me afterward for having the garlic scampi for lunch.

Next scene. When Theodore and the other leaders of the Carbonari arrive, Manfred reveals his princely identity to the astonished Theodore, and bids them all join him for dinner. Far from punishing them for their revolutionary activities, he is thinking of abdicating his power to a council of citizens, and wants the Carbonari to convince him that they are worthy of becoming that council.

The discussion that follows is talky but entertaining, as Manfred plays the cat with a number of different mice. When the democrats preach, he seems to agree that the land needs no prince or emperor, and there are moans from behind the curtain like metal armor under stress. But before the Carbonari become too complacent, he slyly turns them against each other, revealing the various selfish interests that will compete for power in a pure democracy.

Theodore, who has been writhing uncomfortably throughout, pipes up. By this point the audience knows that he is secretly of royal blood and has planned to use the revolution to become an absolute ruler.

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