The Phantom of Oz, Installment #24
Stagecraft, Sondheim, and True Beauty
Hello! As most of you know, I’m serializing The Phantom of Oz here in a bit of an experiment. Once a month, you’ll still receive the “regular” Slightly Silly News. If you missed earlier chapters of Phantom, you can find links to all of the earlier installments here.
Theatre is magic, happening right in front of your eyes. And a lot of the magic is created by people you never see: the scenic designers and builders. The Phantom of Oz is a bit of a valentine to those unseen (and often unsung) artists. One of the ideas in this chapter came from a clever bit of stagecraft I once witnessed. There’s a link to a video for you at the end of the newsletter (don’t want to spoil anything here).
Since I’m making you wait and I mention Into the Woods in this installment, I’m treating you now to this wonderful musical birthday present for Stephen Sondheim from Neil Patrick Harris and his kids (filmed during the pandemic):
I once got to sit behind Stephen Sondheim for a rehearsal of a revival of Merrily We Roll Along (!) and I have a bit of him on my desk (not in a murder-y way). My wonderfully thoughtful friend Mollie Quinlan-Hayes bought some of his effects at a fundraising auction and gave me this little wooden puzzle, which sits on my desk. I like to think the pencil marks are from Stephen scribbling while he works out a particularly tricky song - maybe the one above!
And now, a word from our sponsor (still me:): You can read a post from me entitled, “Hope, Kindness, & a Murder,” an interview, and a great review for Echoes of the Lost (out May 12th) at Annie’s Editing Pen. “GOODNESS, YOU’VE GOT TO READ THIS STORY….This story felt so real and the people so alive that the themes of trust, justice, and true friendships will bind you to their lives well beyond the last page.”
One last thing before going on to the latest installment — I hope you all use Eden’s words in this chapter as your mantra this week:
“You all know happiness is the root of true beauty. Drink champagne. Eat cake. Allow yourselves some pleasure and see how beautifully you’ll shine.”
Now, on to Phantom!
Chapter 17 (Part Two)
On the Famous Night of the Gala
In Part One of Chapter 17, Ivy’s upset about a fight with her best friend Candy. She goes to see her the next day after a matinee at the theater, where she finds a fancy reception in full swing. She joins in the party, enjoying the free food while she waits for Candy.
I’d already sampled all the cheese, so I surveyed the other offerings. There were crudités and mini spring rolls and little quiches, but it was as if a filmmaker in my brain had decided there was only one thing in the room worth focusing on: the petit fours glowed as if under a spotlight, their pastel colors winking at me. Oh. Someone else was winking at me too; a silver-haired gent who stood near the sweets, maybe mistaking my petit four longing for something else. I gave him a little “I see you, but I’m not interested” wave. He looked old enough to have been a babe in arms at the Grand Phoenician’s original opening. That would’ve been something. I could almost see the crowd as it would have looked in 1925: the men in tailcoats, the women in beaded gowns, standing underneath the stained glass windows, next to the drinking fountains shaped like seashells, some of them laughing as they wandered up the gilded spiral stairway that led to the balcony, or drinking champagne beneath the enormous 1920s-era portrait of a dashing fellow wearing an eyepatch, a patron of the theater, I guessed. I could even see the Lady in White drifting through the crowd, her gauzy scarf...wait, was that the Lady? I blinked. No one there.
A tug on my sleeve. Madison. “What’s the ratio of a pumpkin’s circumference to its diameter?” she asked.
“Is this a joke or a math question?” a girl munchkin asked in a snotty voice.
“It’s Pumpkin Pi,” said Madison. “Get it?”
“Pumpkin Pi!” I laughed loudly to make up for the other quietly confused munchkins. A few of the polite ones laughed too.
“By the way,” Madison said quietly to me, “I know that you’re really Candy’s friend. She was talking about you today.”
“She was?”
“Yeah. She’s really mad at you.”
Desirée must’ve heard her daughter’s voice because she pushed into the crowd of munchkins, grabbed Madison by the arm, and towed her toward Babette.
“Candace is probably crazy mad because she’s doing meth,” the snotty girl munchkin said to me, loudly enough that a few partygoers perked up their ears.
Great. Candy probably thought I started that rumor too.
I scanned the crowd again. Candy still wasn’t there, but those petit fours were. I could almost hear their come-hither voices: “I’m the most delicious cake ever. I’m moist and sweet. And I’m free.” It was the last line that did it. We actors are suckers for free food. I waited until Babette was distracted by the entrance of Desirée and Madison into her inner ring. Then I made a dash for the table, feeling like the Baker in Into the Woods, sneaking into the witch’s garden to steal her beans. I grabbed a couple of napkins (the better to hide petit fours, my dear) and had just taken a delicious-looking white one with a pink rose on top when...
“Oh my God.” Babette made a show of pointing at me. “You’re actually going to eat that? Aren’t you happy with two chins?”
Normally I would have stuck out my tongue, put the petit four on it, and made a big showing of eating it (with my single-chinned mouth, thank you very much). Instead I dropped my treat into a nearby wastebasket. Why did Babette make me act this way? Did I want to be famous that badly? What sort of hold did she have on me? Whatever her evil spell, everyone seemed to fall under it.
Everyone except for Eden. Not only had she seemed remarkably unaffected by Babette’s mean remarks about her weight during rehearsal, now she sauntered over to the dessert table. “Ooh, you mean these little cakes could make my hips even bigger?” She bit into one, licking her lips with relish. “So the men will line up to walk behind me and watch the swing in my backyard?” She popped the rest of the petit four into her mouth and picked up another. “I think I’ll have several.” She put three more on a plate. “Yum, yum, yum. These are delicious, and so am I. Listen up, ladies,” she said in a louder voice. “You all know happiness is the root of true beauty. Drink champagne. Eat cake. Allow yourselves some pleasure and see how beautifully you’ll shine.”
The women in the room, especially the stick-thin ones surrounding Babette, looked at Eden and the cakes with a hunger that startled me. A few even stepped toward the table, until the sound of slow applause cut through the air. “Very nice,” said Babette, clapping. “I didn’t know hippos could talk. Get it?” she said to her coterie. “Hippos? I mean, look at her, she’s—”
“Beautiful.” Madison walked over to Eden, who appeared completely unfazed. “And so am I.” Madison popped a cake into her mouth.
“Madison!” her mom hissed.
“It won’t make any difference,” said Babette. “That one’s going to have to beat them off with a stick.”
Desirée beamed at Babette, whose smile held more than a hint of cruelty.
“Beat off the flies, I mean. The kind that circle piles of shit.”
“That’s enough, Babette.” My voice rang out in the lobby. Years of voice work, you know. “Looks like the real Wicked Witch is right here in our midst.” I picked up a pitcher full of water and marched over to Babette. “And she’s about to get melted.” I tossed the entire contents of the pitcher at her. So much for my career aspirations.
“Aaah!” yelled Babette, water streaming off her hair and down her face. Darn, she hadn’t worn waterproof mascara.
“Yay, Ivy!” shouted Madison.
I turned to high-five her when the back of my neck caught fire, or at least felt like it. “What the...?”
Babette stood behind me with a carafe of hot coffee, pouring the last of it down my back.
“Ow! Hey. Stop it. That’s hot.” I flung my hands ineffectively at the hot liquid.
“You want a fight, you got a fight,” Babette said. Then a petit four hit her on the nose.
“Bullseye!” said Eden. “I hit a ‘bully bullseye.’”
“Food fight!” cried the munchkins, and suddenly cheese and crackers and little cakes were flying everywhere. I ran to the dessert table and grabbed a few petit fours, shoving one in my mouth (it was SO good) when someone screamed. Two someones. Candy, still dressed in her Glinda costume, had finally appeared, near the top of the spiral staircase. It would have been a grand entrance, even if she hadn’t been screaming. “Oh my God!” She pointed at the other screamer.
Babette stood shrieking, her face covered in blood. Oh no. Did someone throw something sharp during the food fight?
I rushed toward her. I was the only one; everyone else was backing away. Several of them pointed at the portrait behind Babette. Blood streamed from the painted gentleman’s eyepatch, a sticky red trail dripping down his face and onto the floor. But wait. Babette was a good three feet away from the painting.
“Are you hurt?” I asked Babette, who was gulping air like a dying fish. “Let me see your face.” I carefully wiped off the blood with a paper napkin. “No cuts or scratches that I can see.” Babette was speechless, maybe for the first time in her life.
I walked over to the portrait to examine it more closely. Blood ran down the man’s face, like those miraculous statues of the Virgin Mary I’d read about. “Aah!” Something wet on my forehead. Muffled footsteps beat a hasty retreat.
People screamed. Was I bleeding? A sticky warmth covered my face. Not the metallic tang of blood, though, something sweeter. I swiped at my face, and my hands came away covered in red gore. I lifted a finger to my lips and tasted. “Stage blood,” I said to the whimpering crowd.
Remembering the footsteps, I knocked on the wall behind the portrait. Hollow. Definitely a space behind the wall. “Someone was hiding behind the painting.”
“The Lady in White,” someone said.
“Ghosts don’t have to hide.” I shook my head. “This was a real person. Someone who knows the old blood-in-a-syringe trick.”
“What?” asked Madison.
I’d seen the stagecraft used once in a production of The Mystery of Irma Vep, which featured a bleeding painting. “You make a tiny hole in the painting...” Yep, there it was, right beneath the gent’s eye patch. “Then you put a piece of tape over the back side of it, to create resistance. Then you plunge the syringe through the hole and when it breaks through the tape blood squirts everywhere.”
“But why?” someone asked.
“Maybe we should ask Babette,” I said. She shook her head, her blonde hair matted with the fake blood.
“I still think it was the Lady,” said Madison.
“Pretty sure I heard footsteps inside the wall right after I was...shot,” I said.
“Squirted,” said Desirée.
Dang. I’d been hoping to get away with that bit of dramatic license.
“Did anyone else hear anything? Maybe you, Candy, since you were near that wall too?” I looked up at my friend.
Or looked for her. Because Candy had disappeared.
I promised you a link to a video:
You can see how to make a painting bleed here. (Phantom used a syringe and more blood for an ultra dramatic effect.)
Watch next week for the next installment of The Phantom of Oz!
And if you haven’t read the first four books in the Agatha-nominated series:
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