The frantic applause by the Mayor at the production of ‘Goblin’, a locally written and produced play, put smiles on the faces of the amateur cast. Their performance was a show to remember.
Hacksville’s old weatherboard School of Arts was once the focal point for everything in the town. Fortunately the old building hadn’t decayed too much so its repair and maintenance budget slipped sideways into the transport officer’s portfolio, resulting in a new car for the Lady Mayoress.
The Mayor of the town was a minor supporter of the arts. And to have a fully produced local play performed at the School of Arts was a moment of pride for some of the townsfolk. To show his support, the Council purchased the whole front row. Sitting beside his Lordship was the Lady Mayoress who actually liked being referred to as the Lady Mayoress. Either side of them sat the town’s officialdom — local councillors and their wives. Many had been councillors for years and secretly detested the arts. But some influential people in the town supported local creativity so they saw it as their duty to the community (and to their own electoral votes) to attend. Some even purchased ice cream and lamingtons at interval.
The gong sounded. Seats filled. The lights went down. The curtain rose.
Lionel, the regional journalist for The Whole Truth, sat at the back of the theatre and had already developed his review during the first half and would put meat on the bones as soon as he got home. He was not impressed with the lacklustre performance, the absence of anything intelligent including the childish name of the play: ‘Goblin’. By interval he could not imagine when or where a Goblin might appear. It was not a fantasy as far as he could tell. And there were no signposts that might suggest any magical surprise to come.
The cake stall and refreshments were situated outside the theatre as the stuffy foyer would leave patrons ‘sweating like pigs’ as one local put it. The Mayor did what he did best and mingled with his constituents, reassuring them of any worries or complaints they pestered him with. During the interval he was unaware that a little insect with six legs and powerful jaws of the Myrmecia genus had hopped onto his boot. After all, it was a hot night and bull ants have been known to hitch a ride from time to time.
During the second half of the play, the ant investigated this strange new world — more out of curiosity than anything. The inquisitive Hexapoda was unaware that the Mayor’s R.M. Williams boots were expensive and highly fashionable — but it did like the comfortable feel. After a day of foraging in the heat, the fan-cooled hall was a relief. It didn’t fall asleep or anything like that, but drifted into a more meditative state — happy and content. During all of this the Mayor dozed a tad also — but this municipal monarch was a master at appearing alert, whereas he was away with the fairies. A technique he had perfected during boring council meetings and lengthy debates about everything and nothing.
Throughout the play audience members not familiar with the script wondered where the story was heading. Just deciding on a genre was impossible. It seemed to veer off plot to the right and then to the left with bizarre twists that started and stopped in a heartbeat. Some characters had multiple roles yet still wore the same costume. A local, originally from Russia, spoke his parts in Russian which confused the non-Russians in the audience. Lionel the journalist smirked at another idea for his review: This garbage is like navigating a city with another city’s roadmap.
The Lady Mayoress pretended she understood everything and smiled throughout. During the screaming in the killing scenes, she was not sure if it was black comedy or meant to be authentic. She dared not look at her husband — that would indicate she needed his nod of approval for her own thoughts.
The sudden clap of thunder, from behind the backdrop, caused the theatre to jump. Most were not aware that the effect was produced by the playwright using a large sheet of tin and an axe. That signalled the arrival of a Goblin from the dungeon. His dramatic arrival signalled an end to everyone’s confusion. The sudden noise also signalled an end to the Mayor’s hibernation and also to the ant’s harmonious siesta. Both were a tad shaken by the ear-deafening crash. The Mayor was ripped out of his meditative state — his eyes swelled into a hard-boiled fixed stare. The ant also reacted to the sound. And looked upwards.
Peering up a man’s trousers can be dark and mysterious. The ant shivered at the sight; perhaps the accumulated instincts of millions of years of evolution simply screamed — don’t go. Ants don’t question. He simply changed direction and crawled to the back of the footwear where the trousers hung just above the boot — he jumped onto the denim. The ant was not aware of these names of course — he just saw each bit of clothing as a hurdle — to go forward or to reverse. Up he went and in no time reached the leather belt — nothing of interest here. Then slowly up the shirt moving over the creases and crevices and onto the shoulder. He could see a thing we call an ear. His two antennae investigated. But he didn’t touch — the ears had a ghastly smell so he moved along the shoulder and down the short sleeve — to the end. He stopped at the hem. He saw flesh and had a look around — nothing interesting. He wondered why he left the nice boot. Then he remembered — the noise had frightened him a tad. Maybe he’ll head back.
Meanwhile Lionel the journalist was having great fun reviewing the worst play he had ever seen as a reviewer. He never thought himself a critic but offered himself as an honest reviewer. Readers looked forward to his ‘On the Spot’ reviews. He was never wrong. He became more engrossed in his review than the play. He wrestled with outrageous words and sentences to describe his agony. A few he jotted down included: peasant-provoking bilge; entertainment so devoid of entertainment that even the village idiots would demand their money back; even an idiot would be intellectually dehydrated. He was having fun — it could be his review of the year.
Then the Goblin appeared. And in a squeaky, non-Goblin like voice, he solved the confusion surrounding the many loose ends. The main plot and the twenty or so subplots were explained in full. All neatly put to bed — lives saved, honour restored, maidens rescued and evil punished — every element of curiosity that remained was explained away with gibberish by the Magical Goblin. This part of the play took quite some time and sent the audience into a state of slumber.
A flash of genius was penned quickly — Lionel had his headline: ‘Deus ex machina — Alive and Well in Hicksville’. He had always wanted a reason to call the town Hicksville — now he had it. The packed house was busting to leave — even after the swag of loose ends was ‘solved’ by a Goblin. Most knew that theatre etiquette demanded applause — and you cannot leave before the cast bows. Especially when it is a local production. They waited. And waited. Finally the cast and crew appeared on stage and bowed knowing full well their play and performances were tragic. Especially the Goblin’s fiasco — he got his lines completely wrong. The actors lined up with the Goblin, who had a very small part, taking centre stage.
As they bowed, close relatives of the cast applauded. Otherwise silence. At the same time His Lordship sensed something on his arm — he just flicked and scratched, believing it might have been a mosquito. Well, that scratch was not a scratch to the bull-ant — it was a full-on attack. Nobody attacks a bull-ant, especially when he is out on an excursion. His fangs went into attack mode. The Mayor gave a hard slap to his arm and then another and then another — this caused the bull-ant to jump wildly, digging his fangs in each time he landed — as his anger increased so did the intensity of his attack. The Mayor’s sudden movements threw his front row into a panic. It was blatantly obvious the Mayor loved the performance. They had no choice — the Mayor is always right. They all clapped in unison. He jumped up and screamed — he was excitement personified — his hallelujah moment was indeed a message from the heavens. Slapping here, punching there, shouting at the top of his lungs. Nobody had ever seen anyone so enthusiastic towards a play, let alone a local production. The Mayor had recognised something they hadn’t — perhaps there was a message of hope and wisdom in the story — his excitement became their excitement — they were transcended by a Mayoral-induced delirium. They copied his movements to a tee.
The Mayor, Lady Mayoress and the councillors all reacted with a fervour for theatrical brilliance. Then the human domino effect took hold and a tumultuous tidal wave of applause and ovation caused the theatre to explode into a mass appreciation. In a heartbeat every member of the audience realised they had missed the meaning of the performance. It was clearly so deep only intellectuals got it. They all jumped to their feet, screamed and clapped as well. It was as if the heavens had opened and a spiritual intellect had descended upon them. Patrons stamped their feet screaming encore after encore. Even though the Mayor was in pain he masked his pain with political sharpness and nobody noticed. He had been so focused on his personal disaster, he didn’t realise the excitement of his team and the local people. He must have missed it when he nodded off. While a white-hot, agonising torment pulsed inside him from the savage stings of the bull-ant — driving him to the absolute brink of delirium — on the outside, he remained a smiling, jovial man of the people. A true politician to the core.
The cast and crew were stunned at the audience’s performance and soon got into the moment. They had reached the pinnacle of their craft; they were brilliant. They had been discovered. Some cried at the sheer weight of their own talent.
The Gallery level also reached a pinnacle of delight never seen before in theatre. Not since the sixties when teenagers danced ‘the stomp’ had the School of Arts shaken so much. The commotion was sheer havoc for the families of wasps in the rafters. As their homes exploded into the gallery below they sought revenge. The theatregoers, now bitten to shreds, reacted as one would expect and evacuated their floor at speed. They created a bottleneck in the stairwell that resulted in an avalanche of people falling down the stairs — this only provided further agitation for the wasp families. The patrons screamed at such a high pitch others assumed they wanted to be out first to catch a glimpse of the stars at the stage door. In that moment of madness, none of them thought or knew that the funds for the Lady Mayoress’s car came from the cancellation of the pest control contract.
Lionel the journalist was gobsmacked at the roar of delight from the theatre aficionados. What had he missed? In a flash he erased the memory of the planned review and tuned himself into the room’s electricity. He kept asking himself why he was so wrong. Nevertheless he could not write a scathing review now — he would be the laughing stock of his peers, the town and his family. He would be seen as vindictive and it could be the end of his media career. A whole theatre of patrons cannot be wrong. The local council were not sure why they were clapping but it appeared their constituents who voted for them understood the performance better than they did. The constituents were clapping because the councillors were clapping — they had to, councillors approved their development applications. The Lady Mayoress kept clapping and stomping long after the commotion died down because she loved the play.
The Mayor left the theatre at speed using the old ‘Council calls’ excuse to get his arm seen to. It was starting to swell. It must have been the lamington with mock cream that he gorged on.
Lionel’s review in The Whole Truth set off a chain reaction. Every seat in the theatre was booked for the one-week season — scalpers were making a fortune. His review had caused a stampede on tickets. In some instances fights broke out. On the second performance, the theatre committee stretched the building’s capacity to busting, and even brought in extra chairs and offered cheap standing room tickets — the theatre was alive with excitement as the curtain rose. But that soon changed and patrons escaped the torture at interval — only theatre diehards remained. Then word got out — the review was a sham, the play was rubbish. Some even tried to get refunds but the theatre’s strict ‘no-refund policy’ meant the play was a success. By the third performance the unsold lamingtons had piled up and some were so stale they were recycled into a trifle. The Lady Mayoress attended every performance — at times she had the whole front row to herself. She loved the trifles.
The ant suffered also after the event and needed a little time to recover after the Mayor’s brutal assault. It took days to replenish his venom supply but there was no real threat anymore. That is until he smelled that fragrance once again. The R.M. Williams boot. Was there something about the feel of that boot, or was it the smell that attracted him? And that scent was coming from someone close by. The ant honed in on a human shape in the grounds of the School of Arts.
A man sat on the grass outside the building and drowned his sorrows. His life had been a mess since the play. He just sat drinking himself into a stupor — ashamed that he had been demoted into reporting on hard news. Lionel’s mind was trying to find connections where there were none — why would a theatre full of townsfolk react the way they did? The play was a disaster but they treated it as a form of spiritual enlightenment. As a journalist he dug deep and was working on a theory that the lamingtons were laced with some sort of hallucinogen. And their hysterical reaction was actually a drug-induced psychosis. If he could expose this his career would take off like never before. He would start with the shifty seniors who baked the lamingtons.
Then he noticed a bull-ant on his boot. And killed it.