Offed Stage Left

by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  “Laxative in the coffee.”

  “Oh, yeah. I mean we all got sick right after the break.” She held up the pot. “I rinsed it out, so today’s coffee should be fine. I was about to make some.”

  “I’m pretty sure the people who got sick drank from the pot you finished, not the pot you made, though I could be wrong.”

  Heather gave her a curious look. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  Isobel shrugged. “I couldn’t help noticing. Listen, when you’re done, could you politely suggest to Arden that she warm up in her dressing room? Preferably with the door closed. Talia is still feeling crappy, and Arden’s singing isn’t helping.”

  “I’ll try,” Heather said, although she looked cowed by the thought.

  “Thanks.”

  Isobel left Heather spooning coffee grounds into the filter and descended the two flights to the orchestra pit. Hugh beamed with delight when he saw her.

  “You look like you stepped out of an episode of Masterpiece,” he said.

  Isobel executed a graceful turn. “I have to say, the costumes are the one thing this show has gotten right. Thomas is a genius.” She hitched her eyebrows in the direction of the piano, where Oliver was noodling quietly on the keys.

  “Patience,” Hugh counseled.

  “Never my forte.” She picked up the first trumpet part from the nearest stand and shivered with excitement. “Ooh! I can’t wait to sing with the orchestra!”

  Hugh frowned. “It’s a shame we aren’t having a sitzprobe.”

  “And why aren’t we again?” Like most singers, Isobel looked forward to the sitzprobe, a special rehearsal for the cast to sing with the orchestra without the distraction of costumes and staging.

  “It was a budget trade-off for five extra musicians. I’m grateful for the players, but it means the pressure’s on this afternoon.”

  “But you said yesterday went well. It should be fine,” she reassured him.

  “It’s more for you than for us. I’ll keep the band volume down as best I can, but I don’t want everyone to blow out their voices before tonight. Remind me to remind everyone during the warm-up.”

  “Somehow I doubt you’ll need reminding.” Isobel touched his arm. “You seem a little nervous. Are you okay?”

  Hugh tugged down the cuffs of his plaid button-down shirt. “I always get a bit jittery when it comes time to put it all together.”

  She pulled him close and gave him a kiss. “Don’t worry, you’ll be brilliant. You always are.”

  HUGH WATCHED ISOBEL bounce away, her skirts swishing behind her. She was so lovely and artless, funny and endearing, and, if he was being completely honest, occasionally vexing. He wished he could confide the real reason he was on edge, but he’d been sworn to absolute secrecy. And if there was one thing he knew about Isobel, it was that keeping her mouth shut required a Herculean effort. Word of Broadway producers attending opening night was bound to generate something akin to hysteria among the actors, Isobel especially. Knowing her, she’d make the leap from producers scouting a potential property to being discovered in the supporting role of Emma Swallow. She would only be disappointed when, inevitably, it didn’t turn out that way.

  And there was still the problem of the show’s embarrassing score. John Philip Sousa’s marches were magnificent—as marches. They were never meant to be lyricized. God bless the cast for giving it their all, but they just sounded silly. Hugh feared the musical deficits would reflect badly on him, no matter how well he had prepared the cast or how good the orchestra sounded. Finding out that there had once been an original score was a blow. Whatever was wrong with Geoff’s version, it had to have been better than what they were stuck with.

  Well, there was no use dwelling on what might have been. It was time to employ the stiff upper lip that was his birthright and ensure that both cast and orchestra performed to the best of their abilities. He had been paid extra to reduce Sousa’s orchestrations for their relatively limited forces, and he was pleased with the result. That was exactly the sort of thing a Broadway producer might take note of for future reference, but he sternly reminded himself not to get his own hopes up. Hugh was slightly concerned that some of the lighter voices might not be heard above the brass, but there was time to thin out the texture before the evening performance if the afternoon dress revealed problems.

  Musicians drifted into the pit, finding their spots, setting down their instruments, and swapping out threadbare seats for ones that offered a little more padding.

  “Need anything?” Oliver asked.

  He hovered next to Hugh, his backpack slung over one shoulder. Oliver was six years younger than Hugh, twenty-two, with high color in his pale cheeks that contrasted with his straight black hair. He was quick-witted and a good musician, ready to help and happy to entertain himself doing crosswords in pen when he wasn’t needed. No matter what Isobel suspected, Hugh couldn’t imagine Oliver lurking in the wings plotting sabotage.

  “Are all the parts out?” Hugh asked.

  Oliver nodded. “I put them on the stands last night during tech.”

  “Perfect. You’ll sit in the house and listen for balance, right?”

  “Heading there now.”

  Hugh hesitated. With the pit filling with musicians, this probably wasn’t the best time, but if Oliver could tell him something about his brother’s score—for example, that it had been awful—Hugh might feel better about the hand he’d been dealt.

  “Hold on.” Hugh beckoned Oliver over to the piano, which had been rolled out of the way under the stage, since there was no piano part in the orchestration.

  “I recently found out that your brother was supposed to be the musical director. What happened?”

  Oliver shrugged. “He got another gig.”

  This wasn’t the answer Hugh was expecting, but perhaps it was the official version.

  “So it had nothing to do with his original score being jettisoned? You see, I just figure whatever he wrote had to have been better than this.”

  Oliver’s lip curled slightly. “You can’t believe everything you hear.”

  “Then it’s not true?”

  Oliver flicked the strap on his backpack. “I didn’t say that. It’s complicated.”

  “Places for act one.” Kelly’s voice came over the monitor.

  “Anything in particular you’re worried about?” Oliver asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Any places where you’re particularly concerned about balance?”

  “Oh, right. The brass in ‘Stars and Stripes’ and ‘Liberty Bell.’ And ‘Semper.’”

  “Okeydoke.”

  Oliver waved cheery hellos to a few musicians as he left the pit. Hugh felt like he’d bungled his assignment. He should have given his approach more thought. At the very least, he shouldn’t have initiated the conversation right before places. He suddenly had a new appreciation for Isobel’s investigative forays. Discreet questioning was harder than he thought.

  But not as hard as a full orchestra dress rehearsal without a sitzprobe. It was time to focus. He rallied his confidence and took his place on the podium.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.” He smiled at the assembled faces. “Great work yesterday. Today’s watchword is balance, so you’ll be seeing a lot of this.” He lowered his left hand, palm down, to indicate that they should play softer. “Oliver is out in the house taking notes. As soon as the lights go to half, we’ll start with the overture.”

  The house lights dimmed. Hugh raised his baton and concentrated on giving his upbeat in the correct tempo. Getting off to a good start was critical, and the dress rehearsal was the only time the musicians would be focused on him. Once they knew how it went, Hugh could conduct stark naked with a parrot on his shoulder and they’d bury their noses in their books and play on regardless. He knew that phenomenon well enough from his own time playing keyboards in the pit. He’d done one run of an Off-Broadway show for so long he’d taken to reading a mag
azine while he played the score from muscle memory. But this early in the process, he retained some control, and the truth was, he loved the dangerous feeling that it might not work and it was up to him to make it happen. The excitement of putting all the musical elements together for the first time was more thrilling than being in front of an audience. That was for the actors. This rehearsal was for him.

  He brought down his baton, and the orchestra pealed out the beginning of “The Washington Post.” For the overture, he didn’t have to worry about balance, and he coaxed and gestured, encouraging his players to be bold with the dynamics. He was especially proud of the overture. He’d arranged a medley of Sousa’s most famous marches, plus a few obscure ones that he was fond of, like “Nobles of the Mystic Shrine,” which segued into…

  He raised an eyebrow at the principal flutist, who had played her solo obbligato four bars early.

  “Measure forty-six,” he called.

  She ignored him and continued playing. He was still trying to get her attention when the trombones clashed with the tuba. A few bars later, the horns and trumpets went astray.

  “Stop! Stop!” Hugh waved his arms and the players obeyed, bewildered. “I don’t know what happened. Let’s go back and pick up at measure forty-six, please.”

  He gave the upbeat and the orchestra began again. To his horror, it sounded exactly the same. He rapped his baton on the stand and turned to the flutist.

  “You’re tacet. The obbligato comes in four bars later.”

  “I have forty-six to forty-nine marked as cut.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  She pointed to her music. Hugh hopped down from the podium and looked for himself. There were pencil marks through the four bars in question, with the Latin word vide, meaning “see,” divided up on either side as vi: and de:, the standard method of marking cuts when there was no time or budget to reprint the parts.

  “There is a four-bar cut, but it’s at the end, remember? Please put those measures back in. Anyone else have those four bars cut?”

  “I’ve got fifty-two to fifty-five out,” said the principal trombone.

  “And I’ve got sixty-one to sixty-four,” said Woodiel, the lead trumpet.

  “No.” Hugh tugged on a lock of hair in frustration. “There are only four bars out: ninety-seven to one hundred, and that’s for everyone. If you have anything else cut, erase those marks.”

  “Can we go on, please, Hugh?” Ezra called from the house.

  “Yeah, sorry. Just have to fix this.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “And I don’t have another opportunity,” Hugh snapped. “Skip ninety-six to one hundred, please. Everything else stands.”

  With some players still erasing their parts, Hugh raised his baton and got the overture back on track. He finished with a triumphant flourish, waited for a smattering of applause from the house, and then segued into the opening number, to the tune of Sousa’s “El Capitan” march. The ensemble, costumed as the good citizens of Washington, DC, circa 1854, gathered and began to sing:

  The Sousas’ child is born—

  It’s a boy, and everyone’s happy now!

  Though girls are sweet,

  Antonio is a happier pappy now.

  Talia stepped forward for her solo and was met with a massive cymbal crash, followed by a full orchestral crescendo. She gave Hugh a reproachful look and shook her head to indicate that she had no intention of competing with the wall of sound. Instead, she mouthed the words and exaggerated her gestures.

  Still keeping the beat going, Hugh called out, “Folks, that’s too loud, and there’s no cymbal there, Greg.”

  Hugh’s arms were moving independently of his brain, which was trying to make sense of what he was hearing. They’d fixed every wrong note they’d found at yesterday’s rehearsal, and he certainly didn’t remember any mismarked cuts or stray cymbal crashes.

  The opening number ended without further incident, and as the dialogue continued above him, Hugh leaned forward. “What happened at measure ten?”

  “I’ve got it marked fortissimo,” Woodiel said.

  Several others echoed him.

  Hugh felt his throat constrict. “It should be mezzo piano. And no cymbal crash.” He thumbed through his score. “Looking ahead to the next number, does anyone see anything in his or her part that wasn’t there yesterday?”

  The principal clarinetist, acting as de facto concertmaster in the absence of a string section, frowned at her music. “I’ve got vide marks from measure twenty-four to thirty-two. I don’t remember any cuts in this number from yesterday.”

  “That’s because there aren’t any,” Hugh said grimly.

  A hot flush overtook him as the realization sank in: someone had tampered with the orchestra parts. Which meant he had no idea what the musicians were going to play. His only chance to polish the musical side of things before they faced a paying audience would be a complete waste.

  Using his high-backed stool for leverage, Hugh vaulted over the pit rail and dashed up the aisle. Oliver was already heading toward him.

  “What’s going on down there?”

  “Someone messed with the parts. Added cuts, dynamic markings, all kinds of stuff that’s not supposed to be there.”

  Oliver blanched. “We’ve got to fix them!”

  “It’s our only dress rehearsal. They can’t stop for us,” Hugh said. “Best we can do is go over the parts from the end of the show and fix things moving backwards. We won’t get to go over the numbers we’ve already done, but this way at least we can meet in the middle and have a chance of hearing some of the show intact.”

  “What if we get to a song before we’re ready?”

  Hugh’s stomach sank. “You’ll have to play it on the piano. It’s not ideal, but there’s no point in continuing with cacophony lurking around every bar. I’ll get started with the finale ultimo. Go tell Ezra what we’re doing.”

  Oliver hurried back up the aisle. As Hugh slung his long legs over the pit rail, he thought back to Oliver’s response to his question about Geoff’s discarded score. He had described the situation as “a bit complicated.”

  Hugh wondered what, exactly, that meant.

  SIX

  ISOBEL HANDED HUGH the trumpet part for the overture. “That’s the last of them.”

  Hugh put his hands over his heart in gratitude. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you two.”

  “I’m just glad we could help,” Sunil said.

  Distressed by the clams coming from the orchestra, Isobel had poked her head into the pit at her earliest opportunity. When the bassoon player told her about the mistakes in the parts, she had relayed the information to Sunil. Every break they had during the first act, they’d raced to the pit to help Hugh and Oliver make corrections. With four of them on the case, they’d been able to move quickly and had restored all the parts by intermission. As a result, they would be able to run all of act two with the orchestra, whose members had met the debacle with disinterested shrugs and returned to their reading material of choice.

  Sunil darted toward the door. “We’d better change for act two.”

  “I’ll catch up with you.” Isobel came up behind Hugh and rubbed his shoulders. “You okay?”

  He met her hand with his and turned to face her. “My pulse is still racing, but I’ll manage. It was quite a shock when everything went to pieces.”

  “Took us by surprise onstage, that’s for sure.”

  Oliver approached them from the other side of the pit. “Everything’s back on the stands. We should be good to go.”

  “Thanks, Oliver. You were tremendous.”

  “No problem.” He smiled. “That’s the gig, isn’t it? I’m getting a Coke. You want anything?”

  “A Coke would be great, thanks.”

  “I’d better go,” Isobel said.

  “Before you do…” Hugh pulled her closer and waited for Oliver to clear the door. “I had a brief chat with Oliver.”


  “And?”

  “He said the reason Geoff isn’t musical director is that he got another job.”

  Isobel frowned. “What about the score?”

  “Oliver said it was complicated, but Kelly called places before I could probe further.” Hugh smiled weakly. “I guess I’m not a very good detective. It’s harder than it looks.”

  “You didn’t do too badly your first time out,” Isobel said, trying to mask her disappointment. “There’s obviously something there.” She pointed to the corrected trumpet part in his hands. “Do you think Oliver did this?”

  Hugh exhaled slowly. “As fond as I am of Oliver, I have to admit, the thought did cross my mind. Anyone with a pencil and a sense of mischief could have scribbled haphazardly over the parts. But they were carefully marked with the Latin vide. Whoever it was knew exactly what he was doing.”

  “See that?” Isobel beamed. “You’re not so bad at this after all.”

  “It’s more than that, though,” Hugh said. “Oliver set the parts out last night. He had all evening to muck about with them before putting them on the stands. It’s hard to imagine anyone else going to the trouble, and if his brother did get the shaft, he certainly has good reason to sabotage the musical end of things.”

  “Right, but what about all the other stuff? We’ve moved beyond any chance of coincidence.” Isobel began to pace. “This seems like another move by the same person, and whoever it is not only has access and a motive, it’s someone who knows his or her way around the theater.” She pointed to the ceiling. “Whoever rigged the masking would have to know not just how to loosen the ties, but how to get up there. Does that sound like your average assistant musical director?”

  “When you put it that way, no. So you don’t think it was Oliver?” Hugh asked hopefully.

  “Anybody who knows Geoff’s history with the show is going to suspect Oliver instantly. If he were going to mess around, he’d do something where he wasn’t the number one obvious suspect with motive, means, and opportunity. He’s no dope.” Isobel fiddled with the lace on her bodice. “You know, yesterday afternoon after the masking and the note in my book, I was sure this was all about Arden, but it’s definitely about the show. The note was probably meant for me, the curtain could have fallen on anyone, and Arden doesn’t drink coffee. If somebody was targeting her specifically, why do something that could—and did—miss her entirely and get five other people sick?”