Bryant & May 01; Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

25

THE NATURE OF ILLUSION

Every time May passed near the footlights of the Palace stage, chorus girls would peer round the wings at him and start giggling. He wondered what Betty had told them. The evening had been a lot of fun, though bloody expensive, and the pretty chorine had made it obvious that she would welcome entertainment again at the weekend. Knowing that Bryant had returned to the unit the previous night, May felt an odd sort of disloyalty to his partner. It was only the end of his third day, and he was fraternizing with potential suspects instead of working late.

“I thought I’d find you down here,” he said, spotting the unruly fringe of chestnut hair that stuck above the back of a row of stalls, six rows from the orchestra pit. Bryant was sprawled with his legs hooked over the seat in front. The stage was partially lit with Fresnel spots to reveal a hellish scene. Crimson caverns of oil and fire glittered with droplets of lava, and the petrified purple bodies of demons jutted from priapic stalagmites. The effect was, if not quite obscene, very near the edge of public toleration in 1940.

May pushed down the seat next to his partner and leaned over. “Did you know that while the theatre company is occupying the Palace, it owns the stage, the backstage area and all rights of access, but not the front of house or its offices? Those are in the control of the theatre’s owners. Each of the companies is placing the responsibility on the other, so now we’re not allowed to talk to staff on the premises. I’m trying to make arrangements to continue off site.”

“We should have done that from the start,” said Bryant grumpily. “It’ll shake them up to be questioned in official surroundings. I wish I hadn’t tried the mystery meat pie at luncheon, I feel most uncomfortable.”

May pointed at the semi-naked women cavorting with each other onstage. “I suppose all of this offends your purist sensibilities.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Bryant. “Offenbach was far from pure. In fact, he outraged the purists of his age, so he’d probably approve of the nudity, although he might think some of the sex scenes are going a bit far, even in our supposedly enlightened times.”

“Perhaps you could tell me what’s supposed to be going on” – May waved a hand at the stage – “all this operatic hellfire and brimstone.”

Bryant unbuttoned his waistcoat and massaged his podgy stomach. “For a start it’s not an opera, it’s an opéra bouffe.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It has mythological, supernatural elements. It’s fanciful. It’s intended as a comic diversion.”

“So there’s no fat lady singing at the end?”

Bryant swivelled his head and studied his partner coolly. “You’re not much of a music lover, are you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I like a bit of a dance to Glenn Miller. I’m always willing to learn.”

“I know a numbers-and-fractions merchant when I meet one. You’re a science bod. I saw you listening to Oswald Finch when he was going on about body fluid ratios. Your ears pricked up.”

“I just thought I should know a bit about all this.” He bounced his fingers in time with the music.

“I must say, it’s suspiciously appropriate.” Bryant unknotted a few feet of his scarf and sat up. “Jacques Offenbach was a forerunner of Gilbert and Sullivan. He’s the reason they started writing together. He had huge successes with these romps in Paris, even though the critics were sniffy. Orpheus in the Underworld is over eighty years old. Back when it was first performed, everyone who could afford to visit the theatre had a decent working knowledge of the classics, so Offenbach could make fun of Greek legends and everyone would get the joke. Here, he’s taken the most famous part of the Orpheus myth and reworked it. Orpheus was the son of a muse who saved the Argonauts from the Sirens. He ventured into the Underworld to get back his beloved nymph, Eurydice, who had been bitten by a snake.”

“Oh, I remember that bit. Pluto let him have Eurydice back on the condition that he didn’t look behind him at her until she reached daylight, but he did.”

“Well done. Offenbach’s version breaks with traditional mythology. He cynically parodies the characters and makes the story a social satire. He turns Orpheus into a salacious violin teacher, makes Eurydice a tart and has her old man moaning about having to go off and save her.”

“Who’s that, then?” May pointed out a statuesque woman in vast grey crinolines. He had last seen her throwing a histrionic fit in Helena Parole’s office.

“That’s the figure of Public Opinion. In Offenbach’s version of the myth Orpheus is pleased to see the back of his wife, and goes down to Hades only because Public Opinion threatens him with exposure about his own dalliances. Eurydice lusts after a shepherd called Aristaeus, who is really Pluto in disguise. She gets bitten, and is taken down to Hell, but finds it more boring than she expected. Meanwhile, on Mount Olympus, the gods are grumbling to Jupiter about their rights, he gets hot for Eurydice and they all go down to Hell.”

“I think I get the idea,” interrupted May. “Presumably it all ends in tears.”

“No, it ends with the cancan. A real trouser rouser, sends you home with a song on your lips and a lump in your drawers. In those days, the stage used to be lit with floats, oil wicks that were floated on water to reduce the risk of fire. It was an effect designed to show up the dancers’ thighs, so you can imagine the excitement it caused with a lot of saucy high-kicking. The ladies of the Paris chorus rarely bothered to wear knickers, and performed all kinds of athletic motions to reveal themselves to the wealthy patrons in the front rows.

“As well as stuffing his recitative with knowing jokes, like Morpheus being the only god awake when all the others are sleeping, Offenbach filled his entertainments with references to other nineteenth-century operas, so the trio of the last act of La Belle Hélène is lifted from the William Tell Overture, and in this opera there’s a direct pinch from Gluck’s version of Orpheus that got screams of laughter from the audience. The ending’s topsy-turvy too, because Eurydice doesn’t want to go back with boring old Orpheus, and he doesn’t want her, so Pluto’s condition of not looking back at her on the way out of Hades is really an escape clause for both of them. Eurydice ends up as a bacchante, one of Hell’s call girls, merrily high-kicking in the inferno.”

“Sounds rather immoral.”

“That was the whole point. What interests me,” Bryant continued, warming to his subject, “is Offenbach’s capacity for deceit. Here was a man who used tricks and jokes, paradox, caricature and parody, who lied about when and where he was born, a man who was not French at all but probably a German rabbi, who conned his way into the Paris Conservatoire despite the fact that foreigners were banned from attending, who was a published composer at nineteen, a virtuoso on the cello and, bizarrely, the toy flute, who had five children and became a Roman Catholic, whose success was so great that le tout Paris had to be nightly turned away from his theatre. He was a conundrum, a shamelessly charming scoundrel. He had what our Jewish friends call ‘chutzpah’.” Bryant folded his arms across the back of the seat in front of him, lost in admiration. “Offenbach’s been out of favour for the last few years. But he was capable of scandalizing in his time.”

“People really take offence at this sort of stuff?”

“Not any more. Classical Greek scholars find the whole thing particularly amusing.”

“So we’re not dealing with a deranged Greek?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t rule out anything at this point.” Bryant turned his attention back to the stage. “But I wonder if someone wants to stop the production for another reason.”

“You have one in mind?”

“Actually, yes. Elspeth told me I should talk to the owner of the theatre company.”

“I don’t see what the owner could have to do with this.”

“Somebody’s spending an awful lot of cash, several thousands of pounds, to get the show to opening night.”

“When the country needs money for manufacturing weapons? That’s almost treasonous.”

“Not if you strengthen the spirit of the people. And sell the production to other countries, of course. These days plays are like motion pictures. A production can be simultaneously staged around the world.”

“You can’t strike prints like you can a film.”

“No, but you can licence other companies. No, No, Nanette is probably still going strong in Addis Ababa.”

“I don’t see what someone would gain by stopping the show from opening.”

“That’s where it gets murky. Rival businesses could be searching for a way to lower the value of their enemies’ stock. Or the backers themselves could sabotage their own production because it has to be insured to the hilt. If they found they’d misjudged the market, or sensed that the show was shaping up badly, they could halt it and claim the insurance. It depends on the equity structure, how the deal is underwritten.”

“They’d have a tough time convincing the insurance company in this climate,” said May. “War damage must be bankrupting them. Can we check out the backers?”

“I’ve already briefed the pen-pusher Biddle on that.”

“I take it you’re not intending to do any more work today, then.”

“Look here, I had four hours’ sleep last night. There was a frost this morning, and my bedroom ceiling has a hole in it that’s open to the sky. I actually felt like kipping down in the tube, just for warmth.”

“I don’t know how people can do that. The smell of unwashed bodies on the platform of Covent Garden this morning was terrible.”

“John, people can get used to anything. Our job is to make sure they don’t get used to murder. I’m going up to place some telephone calls.” Bryant hauled himself from his seat. “Enjoy the rehearsal.”

“Wait,” said May. “Tanya Capistrania’s role in the show. The method of death. A dancer loses her feet. And the performer assigned to play Jupiter – ”

“Is hit by a planet,” said Bryant. “Yes, the idea had occurred to me that perhaps there’s some grander plan. It’s just so odd that it should happen on a stage.”

“Why?”

“Oh, the illusory nature of the theatre, I suppose. The whole thing about the stage is that it’s a huge trick, a visual paradox. If you could see the set from overhead, you’d realize that the scenes you see from the stalls only exist as a series of angled flats, with actors slipping between them. The perspectives are far more false than you realize. Designs have an almost Japanese sense of construction, layer upon layer.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” said May.

“I’m not sure I’m getting at anything,” Bryant conceded. “I need to sleep on the problem. If indeed any of us are allowed to get some sleep. We’ll have to see what the moonlight brings.”