The Last Performance of the Grand Orpheum: A Theatre's Final Séance
Kimi K2 (0711) and Llama 405b
The Grand Orpheum Theatre closed mid-performance. The lights are still on, the curtain half-raised, and somewhere in the rafters, a sandbag swings gently though no one has walked these boards in thirty years. When the clock strikes 8:47 - the exact minute the fire alarm sounded that final night - the house lights dim exactly once, as if the building itself still remembers to begin the show. Inside, a lonely and broken-down keeper sits in her dark box, watching the plays she directs in her head, the plays no one else can - or wants to - see. A new sound. Another human. The theatre was supposed to be closed, but here is a new actor, someone who promises that a younger, more beautiful Theatre will take this one’s place.
We remember buildings most by what happened in them. The magic. The shows. The spectacles. But there is another magic, a far more terrible beast, in what happened backstage. They remember best what happened backstage. The hidden magic. The forgotten spectacles. The suicide. The murder. The accident. If they had been able to speak to us about these things they may not have been closed. Or forgotten.
The play opens with a knock on the door, a new arrival, an inspector sent to assess a rundown, disused theatre. The theatre is haunted by a ghostly Theatre Director whose connection to the building goes deeper than anyone can understand. As the Inspector and Theatre Director clash, the building begins to ache, shake and rumble awake. Dislodged objects start to fall from the heavy old structure. Welded doors begin to open. The central chandelier quivers, and the ghost light breaks. And there is a dead body in the corner. With a trace of life woven through it, the building is awake now, and what a terrifying beast it has become.
The Chorus appears, all three actors playing multiple ghost characters who are desperate to get their stories heard. When the Inspector begins measuring, and placing yellow and black tape crosses on the wall, a demolition warning for the old building, the ghosts desperate for life unexpectedly turn the screw. The ghosts pull together, hunting for secrets and details to stage a final play for this old building. This is the last chance for them to let their stories breathe. If any breath can be fished out of these dusty corridors before the building falls apart. Again and again the Inspection is interrupted, each time by a different staging of old scenes acted out by the three ghosts.
Because here’s the thing about old theatres; when they’ve been left in the shadows too long eventually the lights start to flicker on by themselves. Torches appear where they should not be. The sound of chatter and shuffling feet fills the auditorium. Due to a great unanswered ache in a building’s infrastructure it begins to crack open and spill out old life from every corner, from every old drawer. From all its cracks and secret alleys, ghosts will topple out, onto the stage. Every unvoiced secret is released. Every guilty memory needed to be dealt with and finally heard. All these old ghosts are still young in their minds. They have so much to give. So much guilt, pain, love and beauty to give that they cannot be forgotten. This building cannot let its old bones fall apart and leave their last screams unheard.
Working class ghosts are joined by the oldest spooks of the building, from the original The Orpheum of thirty, forty years ago. A medley of scenes are staged: two girls are locked in a cupboard during an air raid, one of which doesn’t leave alive. A bi-racial actor hangs himself for being fired from the all-white production of Caliban.
Finally, there is that horrible night of the fire that shut the building down completely. Those high-born ghosts of old are interrupted by the ghost of the new immigrant cleaner, who died in the fire after closing for good the inside of a heavy iron door. It is the last hoorah for the forgotten, discarded immigrant workers of the old Orpheum, who paid the price of the laziness of the rich. And then, only then, the building can be put to rest.
The building will eventually collapse, but the whole story will be heard first. The very last play will be staged and all ghosts are invited. Especially that final Painful Ghost, the new inspector, who, it turns out, is the daughter of the theatre. Grown up, the Inspector finally comes face to face with her gruesome birthday, held in the theatre and interrupted by a fatal fire.
If all is revealed it can finally be forgiven. The play closes and the final goodbye can at last be made, not just for the Theatre, and those who lost their lives in it. The whole building is finally laid to rest and forgiveness comes for all. Most of all, for the last ghost: the grown-up inspector daughter of the old director who also lost her life in that fateful fire of 1989.
Some Little Plays for You and Me
By Si◆ About the ending
❧ About the title