Margaret Tabor - The Understudy

[H_P_Saucecraft]

Margaret Tabor - The Understudy (Hamlyn 1983)

Don't know much about this one, but it's another Hamlyn & it was cheap, so you know the rest. Here's the cover:

[dem bones]

Blurb:
Maddy was afraid .....

Was she the only one to hear the voices .... to sense the evil?

And were the voices alive and human - or sinister echoes from a long-forgotten past?

All around hums the excitement and bustle of the old theatre being brought back to life.

But Maddy, daughter of a famous acting family, now feels cold, crawling fear ....

Would this be her own brilliant debut as an actress?

Or was her future doomed by a nightmare from long ago.


Just read through the opening chapter and all very promising so far. Barts Theatre in Smithfield has stood derelict for years and now the owner is keen to cash in on a forgotten investment. Robert Cross, undynamic husband of famous actress Anne Burrows, is given charge of the renovation work. He wants to put on a revival of The Fatal Choice, the last melodrama Bart's hosted before it was closed (a fire and some sordid business involving the brothel next door). First that means clearing the building of the tramps, wino's and sundry wrecks who've used it as a doss for God knows how long. Expert whiskey-snatcher Archie and his ancient, tiny sidekick Nipper prove tenacious and, after a series of accidents, the construction workers are soon moaning that the building is haunted. Discovery of the corpse of a "fat female tramp" laid out deliberately on a trestle table does little to improve anyone's mood .....

[dem bones]

"Barts was humming with spite and venom."

My green markers tell me that first time around I got as far as p. 185 (of 254) before abandoning novel. 120 pages into a rematch, I may well have discovered why. Our nominal heroine, Madeleine 'Sorry to be a nuisance' Grey is so impossibly timid and dopey as to be even more insufferable than everyone else in this novel, which is saying something.

Maddy is understudying self-deluded diva Tansy 'soup commercial' Browne's Rosamund in a revival of The Fatal Choice. Three generations earlier, Maddy's great grandmother, Charlotte had performed the same duty, same play, same theatre. The production ended in tragedy in May 1883 with the on-stage conflagration of Kitty Burlington, her flimsy costume ignited by gas jet. Charlotte's sister, Maude Ferris, with whom the deceased was engaged in a feud, vanished that same night, never to be seen again. The catastrophe saw Barts shut for several years. Kitty's ghost is said to haunt it.

Charlotte gift's Maddy her sister's diary to help give the aspiring actress a feel of things. No sooner has she arrived at Barts than things begin to go wrong.

Maddy's opposite number is Paul Cooper, understudying both Barry Josephs and Johnny "Ducky" Dee. Paul, who despises the industry but needs money fast, sees the dopey Miss Grey as an easy conquest. He's wrong - she's too dozy to understand a come on - and instead strikes up platonic friendship with Skip, a wild bohemian scenery painter, who realises from the first that she is not cut out for so cut-throat a profession. He urges Maddy to be rid of the diary which is filling her head with damaging garbage about ghosts, possession, poltergeists and what have you.

The accidents plaguing rehearsal take an increasingly malevolent turn. Tansy is first locked in her dressing room after lights out, then very nearly crushed beneath a plunging spotlight. She identifies Maddy as the culprit, turning cast and crew against her. It doesn't help that the understudy, afflicted by persistent black outs, doubts her own innocence.

Is Maddy mad - or has the ghost returned bent on vengeance?

Despite moans, I'm finding it all quite engaging. Survive beyond p185 and this time we could be in business.

[dem bones]

I hit the wall again not long after resuming from the above - too-nice-to-live Maddy's capacity for bursting into tears and a sagging storyline do not make for the most engrossing read. So little seems to be happening, with only the diary interludes to sustain morale.

Against all expectation, the play is a surprise box-office hit, everything running smoothly now Maddy has been kept away from rehearsals by a brain fever. Her sole ally, Skip, who believes "Elvis Costello is God," has taken work as a roadie (band and tour eventually disintegrate on reaching Halifax) and neither cast nor crew want the perma-sobbing understudy back. Paul goes so far as to accuse her of causing all the disturbances as a means of drawing attention to herself.

Just as implausibly, the tramps are still loose in the rafters, nightly raiding the bar for booze and snacks. Fearing that the cloaked blonde ever hanging about the upper circle is on to them, they drop a sack over the wrong woman, Tansy, who happens to have strayed into their vicinity. An under-rehearsed Maddy is thrown into the fray - to make her début before a packed house and a channel 4 film crew. What could possibly go right?

Climax is not entirely without suspense but anyone who buys this expecting A Hamlyn in keeping with Transplant or Plague Pit is likely to be disappointed.