Rudolph!

by Mark Teppo

  Then, a buzz of feedback from the sound system. The script suggests: like the sound of a thousand children all screaming with joy, but downtuned a half-octave and slowed to one-eighth speed. The sea of lights is extinguished as if from the strength of this scream, blown out by the outrageous wind. The scream ascends into screeching static, until the Christmas tree explodes—lights popping into showers of yellow sparks, branches crackling and burning, the angel atop the tree dissolving into a pinwheel of red fire. The family is thrown aside by the explosion, and they lie crumpled on the stage. From out of the exploded tree comes . . .

  ENTER: AN APPARITION. The stage is black. The house is black. The only light is the burning Christmas tree. ‘As he kept looking, why, here the thornbush was burning with fire and yet the thornbush was not being consumed.' At first, there is only the shadow that reaches out of the flame, a great horned head that stretches across the stage like the stiff, reaching fingers of some great celestial being. The figure appears, limned in fire, a tall figure crowned with twisted horns. The fire subsides quickly, leaving only a ruddy glow on the stage as the figure stands in the living room of the nuclear family. His face is lit with a red glow, a single point of red light like a great Cyclopean eye.

  VOICE: (over sound system, reverb +10) No. This is an illusion. This is not real. I will show you reality. I will strip away the sweetness, the candied shell which coats, the taffied taste which numbs, the saccharine smell which opiates. I will show you the true spirit of Christmas. I will show you true.

  LIGHT: Strobe (15 SEC). The nuclear family sprawled in their living room. The tree consumed and blackened against the wall of their house. Standing in the center of the family's once-happy home is an immense reindeer with a thorny rack of antlers and a nose that glows the color of blood.

  LIGHTS: Blackout (after 5 SEC)

  END SCENE ONE

  Rehearsals were underway when I finally dragged myself to the Heritage. I stood near the back of the house and watched the capering and quivering figures onstage. Seated in folding chairs about twenty feet from the stage were the choreographer and his assistant. The lights were up on the stage, and the towering giants didn't look nearly as imposing as they did last night. And from here, you couldn't tell the throne was made from Barbie dolls.

  "Stop! Stop. Stop!" The choreographer rose from his chair as if elevated by his upraised hand. The mother of Henrik Guljerssen—our choreographer—must have grown up watching Ray Bolger knee and wobble his way through the Wizard of Oz. Bolger's impression of a walking scarecrow had resonated so strongly in her womb that Henrik had come out more like a child of flax and chaff than flesh and blood. He stumbled through his early years all loose and rubbery until something locked into place within the recesses of his brain, and what had once been fumbling became graceful, the continual artless pratfall became an expressive circuit of harmonic motion, and the rough and tumble child of straw became a man capable of infinite grace. Even the simple motion of rising from his chair and stopping the action on the stage was performed with such elegance that watching the dancers come to a halt at his call was like watching a train wreck in comparison.

  "Just because you are playing cripples doesn't mean that you should dance like them." Henrik turned the up-thrust motion of his arm into a sweeping gesture encompassed even the empty house behind him. "If we had seats, they'd be running a hundred and twenty dollars each. Do you think anyone is going to pay that much to see a bunch of cripples try to keep time? They are going to want razzle. They're looking for dazzle. They're going to want their fucking money's worth." His assistant shrank in her chair as he turned his attention on her. His voice didn't drop a decibel. "Honestly, what ward did we pull these rejects from?" He let the question hang in the air until he finally snapped his fingers at the electric piano, which was tucked away in the corner of stage right. "Again," he said. "From the top."

  The pianist—an angular woman poking out of a large overcoat—hunched over the keyboard and began to bang out heavy chords. Shuffling out of their hunched and twisted postures, the dancers transformed into a ragged line like a centipede uncurling when touched with a hot stick. It was like watching a stomach turn itself inside out, and I felt like a first year med student—repulsed and fascinated at the same time.

  "No, no, no!" Henrik shouted. The dancers faltered, and the music stopped. He lifted his long arm and pointed an accusatory finger with such gravitas that I expected lightning bolts to shoot from it.

  Based on the reaction of many of the dancers onstage, I wasn't the only one who expected fingertip pyrotechnics.

  "You. Yes. You," Henrik said. "What is the problem? Do you have a medical condition that I need to know about?"

  The dancer in question shrugged and scratched his head.

  "You move like you've got an inner ear imbalance, and you've got about as much rhythm as an epileptic rehearsing for a Grand Mal," Henrik sneered. "Do you expect me to shut down the entire production while we fetch some dock workers to beat a sense of time into your thick skull? Is that what I need to do?"

  The dancer had enough sense to shake his head.

  The choreographer stared at the dancer, and we all watched the young man's head wobble faster and faster. And just before I thought the dancer was going to lose his balance, Henrik snapped his fingers and the young man stopped instantly. "Good," Henrik said. He snapped his fingers again. "Let us start again, you lazy clubfoots."

  The pianist didn't react quickly enough, and she jumped when Henrik shouted at her in some dialect I didn't recognize. He snapped out a four count as she hurriedly put her fingers to the keys and started playing again. On stage, the line of dancers writhed and twisted.

  I wasn't quite sure what the clumsy dancer was doing differently this time, and I must have made some inarticulate noise of confusion because Henrik stopped the dancers again and looked over his shoulder with an indolent curve of his head. "Who's there?" he asked archly.

  I cleared my throat and stepped away from the back wall. "Sorry," I said. "I was just curious."

  He dismissed me with a wave of his fingers. "Be curious somewhere else."

  "I—"

  "Why am I still hearing that voice?" he said, looking at his assistant. "Why is he still here?" She leaped up, knocking over her chair, and came back towards me, walking swiftly, her arms swinging stiffly at her sides. She was a rather severe-looking woman in a mousy sort of way. Her black glasses were straight out of the late '90s bohemian catalog, and the angular slash of her mouth was made even more angular by the utilitarian color and application of her lipstick.

  "Please," she said softly in a voice that made me think of stuffed animals being shoved into a speeding blender. She positioned herself between me and the stage, indicating the lobby doors to my left. "Go," she said in a tone of voice typically used on dogs who have just been caught pooping on the rug.

  "I just wanted to see . . ." I started.

  Behind her, Henrik groaned audibly. "I cannot believe these conditions. How can anyone have a creative thought when surrounded by such negativity? Such oppressive bleakness?"

  His assistant hunched her shoulders at the sound of his voice, looking like she was about to pass a kidney stone. She gestured towards the door again.

  "All right," I acquiesced, raising my hands. I turned and marched out like I had just been caught with my hand in a cookie jar. She slammed the door shut and stared at me through the small porthole-style window. I stared back, silently counting, and got all the way to one hundred and thirty before she blinked. And then, as if embarrassed to have been caught being human, she vanished. In the distance, I could hear the ragged wheeze of the music as rehearsals started up again.

  "Get caught snooping?"

  I turned and spotted Erma standing in the door to the box office. She was swathed in reds and purples today.

  "I guess I was," I said. "I didn't know it was a closed set."

  Erma waved a paw at the doors to the theater proper. "Henrik's fussy. H
is choreography is genius, but it comes with a few eccentricities."

  "Is that what you call it?" I asked, wandering over. "It looked like an earthworm turning itself inside out."

  "It takes a little getting used to. Most of his work is like that. It seems totally chaotic and random, but there is an order to it, an elegance that makes itself known if you free yourself from the rigid constraints of traditional dance forms," she said, launching into something that felt like a researched speech. "You have to be receptive to the possibilities of new experiences. It's very avant-garde. The French dance community isn't even sure what to think of him. We're so very lucky to have him on this production."

  "Is that what the scene needed? More avant-garde than French avant-garde?" I tried to recall the script notes about the throne room dance sequence, but my brain was already blocking all of that out.

  "The fire spouts weren't on, were they?" Erma asked. I shook my head. "Oh," she clucked. "That makes all the difference. There is nothing like the play of fire off sweaty skin to illuminate the misery of the human condition." The phone in the office rang, and she bustled off to answer it.

  How can you turn Rudolph's life story into a musical?

  Well, scratch that. It's already been done. Back in '64—the same year we had that horrible accident with the Nuclear Clock. Rankin and Bass released their stop-motion TV special, and generations of children grew up believing that production values were so shoddy at the North Pole that a place like the Island of Misfit Toys could actually exist. Burl Ives was the serpent who hummed "Silver and Gold" in their ears from Thanksgiving to New Year's. These kids thought elves dreamed of being dentists, that Bumbles bounced, and that Rudolph was actually shorter than your average elf.

  Yeah, right. I can walk under most of the reindeer without ducking, and I'm considered a giant in my family.

  Let's be honest: most musicals are sort of scary anyway, even the ones that purport to be about passionate excess, and most kids' movies that have song and dance numbers would prefer you not to call them by that name. Rudolph! A Musical was a fiery fever dream of psychotic fury and impotent man-child rage. It stomped and trampled its way across the popularized myth of Santa's favorite reindeer with absolutely no remorse for its bleak tone. It was equal parts Grand Guignol, orgiastic mystery cult ritual, Abbott and Costello-style sight gags, and a cheap remix of the old Faust legend. Full of pyrotechnics, full-scale choral histrionics, and kinetic word play, it was a mesmerizing disaster. The only way it was going to be successful was if the audience bought the premise that Christmas sucked.

  And I had to ask myself: how far from the truth was that?

  We had gone to purgatory to make sure that no Christmas wish was left unfilled, thinking—in our eternal sugarplum-coated innocence—that a child's happiness was the most important thing in the world. And, that night in Troutdale, watching little Suzy jump into her father's arms? That moment had been totally worth everything we had done.

  But we had performed a miracle, and Ramiel had been right about the repercussions of our actions. We had changed the rules, and it had changed Christmas. It raised the bar, and the wish lists the following year had been outrageous. Even with the help of the heavenly host, we had been hard pressed to fulfill every wish—and some of them we interpreted really liberally. And we had hit the ground running after being recruited by Mrs. C. There had been so much work to do in restoring people's faith in Christmas. What do you do for an encore after performing a miracle? Especially when you know the cost of doing them?

  Part of the reason I put Rudolph and myself in a metal plug six thousand feet below sea level was that I didn't want to see what happened when Christmas cratered. The fact that it didn't without us was both heartbreaking and a huge relief.

  But Santa knew. I could tell. Satan wasn't stealing the Spirit from him this time. It was the rest of the world. We had wrecked things when we went to purgatory, and no matter how hard we tried to put it all back together, it wasn't the same. It was like watching a remake of your favorite TV show. It seems like it should be better—it certainly looks prettier, and the actors are way younger and sexier—but something isn't quite right. And eventually you realize what is off is your sense of wonder. It's gotten dull.

  And Mrs. C knew too. I was slow to figure it out, but she had already extrapolated Rudolph's emotional trajectory.

  It was all there in the Boston job. If Rudolph's anger had gotten the better of him, if he lost track of his faith and his desire and his direction, that job would have ended a lot worse. He had the Spirit of Christmas in him still—just like I did—but his core was nuclear. How long could the Spirit survive in that heat?

  I will tell it true. That's what Rudolph says in the musical. Scene One, Act One. If you looked at it the right way—or wrong way, I suppose—this wasn't a musical. It was a prophecy. Oh, sure there's the deeply entrenched Rankin and Bass influence where Rudolph laments how different he is from the others. How they won't let them play his games. How he can't run with the reindeer on Christmas night. But the similarities stop there. Whereas Rankin and Bass paste a "Kumbaya! let's all clap our hands" veneer on the story, the musical script pulls a Milton and dives off the deep end. Just like Satan in Paradise Lost, the musical Rudolph is bent on revenge.

  November 27th

  Turkey Day was a respite from everything for everyone except the turkey. "A day off," Barb said when she invited me to join the turkey orphans at her place. "We could all use a day off. No rehearsals. No budget meetings. Nothing to do with the show. It'll all be there tomorrow."

  The cab driver did the Seattle version of over the hill and through the woods, taking me across one of the floating bridges that spanned Lake Washington and whisking me through one of the neighborhoods where the tech industry's early retirees live. I was deposited on the curb in front of a narrow brownstone house that looked like it had been airlifted out from the east coast. It was half as wide as the surrounding houses, but a full floor taller. White lights were strung along the eaves and the edges of the windows, and through the open curtains, I could see a fire dancing in the fireplace and the requisite triangle of a Christmas tree. Up but not decorated. She wasn't one of those crazy ones.

  A pudgy teenaged girl answered the door. She had a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her wrinkled nose, and her eyes were the color of the ocean and appeared ready to overflow with water at any moment. She was dressed in a plaid skirt and a frilly blouse that looked nearly as uncomfortable as her expression.

  "Who are you?" she demanded.

  "Jacob Marley," I replied dryly.

  She slammed the door in my face. Hard enough to rattle the brass knocker. I tapped my thumb against the side of the bottle of Pedro Ximénez I had brought. "Obviously, a huge Christmas Carol fan," I muttered as I leaned on the bell again.

  "Sorry," Barb said as soon as she opened the door. "Cordelia—my niece—is unhappy with her stepmother and is taking it out on the rest of us." She was wearing a printed wrap dress that augmented the color in her eyes. A simple strand of pearls wreathed her neck. "This is your last chance," she said, offering me a smile. "You can still turn back."

  "‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.'"

  She cocked her head to one side. "Is that Goethe?"

  "Dante."

  "You sure?"

  I laughed. "Yeah."

  She stepped out of the way and ushered me into her house. "From the sound of that laugh, I'd say you're more than a little familiar with Dante."

  "Personally? No," I said. "But yeah, I've . . . well, let's just say I've done some independent research on Dante."

  "Is there a good story there, or is it all dry academic talk?"

  "It's a knee-slapper," I said.

  "Do I get to hear it?"

  I turned around in the foyer and looked up at her. "Now?"

  She closed the door and leaned against it.

  "Later is fine." Her eyes twinkled. "If you survive."

  I twirled the
bottle of wine around in my hand and held the neck like the handle of a shillelagh. "I can handle the moody ones."

  She swirled past me, trailing an aroma of spices and sandalwood that whispered Chanel. "Give up your outer vestments, o fierce warrior," she said as she led me toward the back of the house, where all the noise was coming from. "Let me show you off to the rest of the savages."

  I filled out the double-digit group of turkey orphans. Barb. Cordelia. Cordelia's father and stepmother and two smaller moppets: half-brother and -sister to the obnoxious one. The other couple was Edgar and Sylvia Brandstreet. Barb said that Edgar painted and that Sylvia wrote, which I had already guessed by how he held his wine glass and the way she picked at the hors d'oeuvres. The other man in the room was Terence Ulan. He tried to bond with me by playing the game of Whose Hand is More Like a Cold Fish? and letting me know that he preferred "Doctor" to "Mister." I bonded back by calling him "Terry" and squeezing his hand hard enough to make fish oil.

  Cordelia's wrath, as Jack, her father, rapidly explained to me the first moment she was out of earshot, stemmed from the fact that her birth mother had picked last Monday to go into rehab. "Prescription medication addiction," he explained sotto voce. "Darlene loved her pills more than her own daughter." Cordelia, he elaborated, never cared much for his new wife, Nancy, and she found the idea of spending an entire four days in her stepmother's companyworse than the psychological torture inflicted upon illicit prisoners of war.

  "You couldn't lock her in the basement and send down bread and water twice a day?" I asked.

  From his nervous laughter, I could tell that the idea had occurred to him already. More than once.

  Nancy was blonde and petite, and as I discovered through the course of snack-table small talk, she had been a cheerleading coach out in North Carolina during the last decade. Her team had gone to Nationals a few times, and had almost one once. Her voice wasn't as helium-charged as I would have expected, but the lingering aroma of ground tobacco hiding beneath her perfume gave her secret away. Her breasts were new, and she was enjoying how they stretched the fabric of her dress, which was very disconcerting, as they were sort of at eye-level for me. Every time she turned toward me, I was worried I was going to get smacked in the head.