First Things First
I read this a few years ago, along with the rest of the stories from Volume One of Barker’s Books of Blood. I liked all six stories, but I wasn’t as high on this story and the final one as I was on the earlier stories. I’m excited to read this again and find out if that still holds true.
3 Things I Like
3. Burning Down the Elysium
The reappearance of Richard Lichfield and his wife, Constantia, and their keen interest in the upcoming production of Twelfth Night because it’s going to be the final show at the Elysium, make this theater feel as important as the Globe. And I guess for performers who devoted their lives to playing there, it is.
But the Elysium has seen better days. As Lichfield breaks the news to the director, Terence Calloway, about the theater shutting its doors, he says…
“It makes admirable financial sense, I’m afraid… The Elysium’s getting old. We’re all getting old. We creak. We feel our age in our joints: our instinct is to lie down and be gone away.”
That’s why I like the decision to send it out in a literal blaze of glory. Rather than see it demolished, or transformed into an office building, or whatever the plan is, this bloody conflagration—casualties be damned—must feel like the only suitable sendoff for such a revered space.
2. Star Vs. Artist (or the Elegance of the Theater)
One of the only reasons this performance of Twelfth Night is notable to the public, who don’t know about the theater closing, is because it features soap opera superstar Diane Duvall.
Here’s one of the earliest descriptions of Diane’s acting chops, or lack thereof…
“[She] didn’t need to be a great player, she was famous. So what if she spoke Shakespeare like it was Hiawatha, dum de dum de dum de dum? So what if her grasp of psychology was dubious, her logic faulty, her projection inadequate? So what if she had as much sense of poetry as she did propriety? She was a star, and that meant business.”
Her inability to perform the part stands out not so much because she’s sleeping with the director, who recognizes how pitiful she is as Viola, the lead, but because so does Lichfield.
And when Lichfield is granted a moment to speak with her in her dressing room, he politely tells her she lacks delicacy and style… that she’s bland and unpersuasive… that her comedy is flat… and to hammer home the point that there’s a difference between being a star and being an artist worthy of the theater, he says…
“I’m sure on the television you are radiance itself, but the stage requires a special truth, a soulfulness you, frankly, lack.”
Lichfield isn’t one to complain without proposing a solution, though. His wife, though dead for a very long time, was born to play Viola and knows the part inside out, which leads to one of the story’s most shocking revelations…
1. Unmasked
There are teases earlier in the story about Lichfield’s appearance… how something didn’t seem quite right about how his face moved. Diane is the one to fully see something is wrong. Even though he tries to keep his face mostly hidden by the brim of his hat…
“… she saw the deeply-etched lines, the gougings around his eyes and his mouth. It wasn’t flesh, she was sure of it. He was wearing latex appliances, and they were badly glued in place. Her hand all but twitched with the desire to snatch at it and uncover his real face.”
Unfortunately for her, Diane is right. And when she pulls of Lichfield’s mask, she sees mostly skull, with very little flesh and a few strands of muscle. It’s never made clear what sort of zombie he is, or what type of magic is at play. But Lichfield reveals he was never embalmed, unlike Constantia, which is why she’s so much better preserved while he’s badly decayed.
From here, a few more horrific things happen to set the stage for the final performance and the Elysium’s “last rites” immediately afterward. People get murdered and “turned.” There are a lot more dead people. Some even come straight from their graves to fill the theater. But the unmasking is my favorite scene in the story.
0 Things I’m Mixed About
1 Thing I Don’t Like
1. A Love Letter to the Theater
More than anything, this story feels like a love letter to the theater.
That’s not a bad thing. I like the theater quite a bit. But I’m not passionate about it. And I feel like this sacrifices some of the more shocking elements I’ve found in his other stories to focus more on telling the story of this final performance, and the lengths Lichfield will go to make sure it’s as glorious as he believes the Elysium deserves.
Even the unmasking, which I just said is my favorite part of the story, isn’t as shocking as it could be. And the way in which it handles the dead patrons of the theater is pretty straightforward. The only other shocking moment is Terence’s realization that Diane isn’t breathing—and must be dead—while she’s mid-bj.
But in terms of scenes that have implanted themselves on my brain, nothing here stacks up to the violence of the ghosts writing their stories in “The Book of Blood” or some of the most gruesome moments in “Pig Blood Blues.”
This isn’t to say any of these choices are wrong. They just don’t work as well for me.
Tim Matassa
