Sean stood breathlessly behind the red velvet curtain. The evening had been an unequivocal triumph. The curtain lurched open to reveal a sea of adoring faces, cheering and smiling and chanting his name. Bouquets were thrown, one of which hit him square between the eyes. Blinking back the tears of pain, Sean beamed. He didn’t care. This was the best moment of his life. The flowers were beginning to pile up around his feet. From somewhere behind him he detected a strange whirring, shuffling noise which encouraged him to look sharply over his shoulder. Trundling onto the stage came the Robot Players, whimsical expressions somehow portrayed by their remarkably expressive red glowing eyes.
‘Ah, the robots, all fixed!’ thought Sean, happily.
The cheering and acclaim of the audience was suddenly swamped by a cacophony of two-stroke terror, as a phalanx of chainsaws simultaneously spluttered into life. Sean’s eyes widened as the Robot Players advanced towards him, waving their weapons in warlike way.
‘Chainsaws?’ thought Sean, “pull the other one!” And with that struggled to awaken.
All the same, he woke with a start. Enough of a start to clunk his head painfully on the base of the nearest robot.
“Ow!” said Sean
He looked up at the robot, blearily.
“You’ll have to get up early in the morning to catch me out like that!” he said, patting it on its metallic rump.
Sean was sprawled in the corner of the room. The clock said 8am. Hugo was no-where to be seen – although there were a large number of empty beer cans. That explained it. The robot moved away slightly. Almost imperceptibly, but it definitely moved. Sean could hear the buzzing of its circuits.
‘Ah, the robots are alive again” Sean thought groggily. All his problems were…
He looked up at the robot, just as the chainsaw revved up.
“Waaaaagh” screamed Sean, as the robot chopped off his legs, whistling the lumberjack song.
Sean woke with a start, screaming, clunking his head painfully on the base of the nearest robot. His legs were intricately entwined with the lanky form of Hugo, who was sleeping not far away. Hugo, woken by the screams, immediately began untwining himself, and shuffling swiftly out of range.
“Oh god.” said Sean, who had soiled himself. Again.
“Don’t worry, mate, plenty of spare costumes in the theatre” said Hugo, wrinkling his nose and rapidly putting further range between them.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sean cursed as the fluffy ruffles of his costume flapped dangerously in his face. Dangerously on account of the rickety ladder on which he was perched wobbling dangerously in rickety fashion. Which was on account of him cursing and waving his flappy arms about. It was a proud moment, though, as cursing he fixed the last cue card to the near side of an out-jutting battlement. He had been very fortunate, really. In the upstairs office he had come upon a treasure trove of abandoned rarities, including a sturdy all surface marker pen and several dozen books of Post-It notes, in varying colours. Why they were ever brought on board he would never know. It may have had something to do with lazy writing, even. He would have preferred it if each pack didn’t have a depiction of a little fluffy kitten on every page, but beggars most definitely can’t be choosers. And Sean didn’t mind begging, where his ass was involved.
The theatre itself was built in the style of a classic Victorian amphitheatre, grand and cavernous and intimate, all at the same time. It had steep banks of plushly upholstered seating rising almost to the roof, which was ornately gilded and fashioned into stunning images and patterns. The stage was at the centre, slightly raised, and for amateur actors very intimidating. On the stage, it felt like you were the centre of the world. To all intents and purposes, you were. Above the stage were all kinds of mechanisms and gantries and buttresses, designed to make set changes and such like as simple and painless as possible. The coup de grace was a state of the art and very definitely 21st century touch – a holographic projection unit which gave every set a touch of realism, and the audience a sense immersion in the scene. The holographic projection unit could in theory be loaded with any kind of background that the user wanted, as long as they had the appropriate footage. The art was to produce a convincing set, without detracting from the on-stage performances. For this reason Sean used it sparingly.
Stepping wearily down from the ladder, Sean surveyed the results of his handiwork. And cursed, once more. The physical set was beautifully erected to create a convincing representation of Elsinore, seat of the Danish throne. At the touch of a button it could be converted from an inside to an outside set, with lighting effects and holographic images to support the look and feel of each scene. Hamlet, as a well-known classic, already had a number of sets and images that Sean could easily use; this part of proceedings hadn’t taken him too long. Little prop swords, capes, corsets, pantaloons and pirate hats were all neatly arranged waiting for his family’s imminent arrival.
The theatre did look a bit different from normal however, although Sean had tried very hard to be subtle and mis-direct the observer. In spite of his best efforts it was most evident that every item and surface in the room was plastered with a line of script, a stage direction or other piece of information, mostly in the form of cuddly kitten post-it notes. Sean had initially hoped that the majority of his handiwork would be invisible to the audience, however the sheer volume of material had proved prohibitive. Still, clever lighting might be able to compensate to some extent, and as for the rest – well, he hoped that people would view it as part of the production’s rough charm rather than the last desperate gambit that it was.
Hugo arrived first, carrying more pizza for Sean, who had been trapped in the theatre all day by the baying mob. He had a feeling that Claire might eventually see his potential lynching as a convenient excuse for avoiding her, but he hoped not. It was, however, a convenient excuse. Mick arrived next, unusually early and especially eager, for some reason.
“How you doing guv’nor?”
Sean nodded mutely on account of the pizza slice half-wedged in his mouth.
“What’s with all the paperwork?”
As the question clearly elicited some kind of response, Sean elected to swallow an unchewed mouthful
of pizza. It was a particularly pointy mouthful of pizza, as it turned out. Sean squirmed, spluttered,
then managed to speak.
“Cue cards” he said, in what he hoped was a dignified manner.
“Why not just use the autocue?”
“The what?”
Mick pointed towards a large display suspended over the audience in front of the stage, clearly positioned to be unnoticeable from anywhere else in the theatre.
“You feed lines into it, then someone can operate it and bring up each line as it’s spoken. With a nice one, like this, it probably has most of the classics pre-installed. It may even work from speech recognition. There must be a control panel around here somewhere….”
Sean looked at Mick disbelievingly, and put the other half of the pizza slice back in the box, before removing the box from the console he’d perched it on.
“I think I found it” he said.
Mick strolled across, and leaned over Sean to examine it.
“Ok, let’s have a look….” he said, scrolling down the screen. “there you are, Hamlet.” He pressed a
button and the first lines of the play appeared overhead, almost obscured by Post-Its.
“Mick?”
“What is it, guv?”
“How do you know all this?”
“Oh, I’ve studied the theatre in my spare time. It’s in the family. In the blood, if you like. I’m really
into all this stuff.”
“Right” said Sean. The robots hadn’t ever needed the autocue, so he’d never even looked at it before.
He felt a bit silly.
Sean looked around the theatre again, hands on hips. Considered all the writing and standing on a rickety ladder he had done that day, cursing and nearly falling off.
“Mick?”
“Yes, Sean?”
“Could you help me to remove all these Post-Its before the others arrive?”
“Of course!” Mick was grinning already.
Half an hour later, everyone was gathered around, watching Sean remove the last of the notes from high on a balcony.
“How would we have seen that one anyway, lad? Binoculars? X-ray vision? Har har!” David said, helpfully.
Although the cue cards had been a disaster, Sean didn’t mind too much. Finally he felt like he was putting on a proper play. Whilst he was removing all the cue cards, everyone had picked out a suitably Elizabethan costume, with ruffles and silly hats and velvet aplenty. A number of teenagers were alternately jousting with the little prop swords and nursing splintered hands. David Miller was strutting about the stage in maroon velvet pantaloons, thrusting here and there with the sword that hung on his hip in an ornate plastic scabbard. Sean drafted Claire’s sister Sophie in to help with the set changes, and she was delighted to have something to do. She leaned in very close to Sean as he explained what all the buttons did. Danny, too, took a healthy interest in how everything worked, watching over their shoulder and even asking the odd question. Sean also noticed that Danny had taken to carrying a camera around with him, everywhere he went. It looked suspiciously similar to his dad’s camera, but Sean didn’t say anything – he didn’t want to spoil the mood. There was something of a festive atmosphere about the place. A bit too festive perhaps, more end of term. Which wouldn’t do at all.
“OK everyone, let’s get on with it!”
“Spoilsport” everyone said.
Before they started, probably for the first time in his life, Sean sought out David Miller.
“How’s Claire?” he asked
“None of your business” David replied.