I have to give Lisa Mantchev full credit for originality in her first book, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends, 2009), a young adult novel that I picked up for light vacation reading. It's part of the mini-genre of fantasy tales (such as the previously-discussed King of Shadows) which take place in theaters. The theater is a natural setting for the magical, of course, but this book goes the usual theme of real magic mixing with stage magic one better. The name Théâtre Illuminata makes me twitch slightly on grammatical grounds, but the concept of a theater inhabited by the players of all the roles ever created in all the plays ever written is intriguing to me as a confirmed theater geek, and Ms. Mantchev follows through with good enough theatrical jokes to leave me laughing:
Gertrude pointed at Macbeth, who was holding up a cruller and muttering, "Is this a doughnut I see before me?" Then he noticed the raspberry jam on everything and started to shriek.
The heroine of the story is the teenage Beatrice (Bertie) Shakespeare Smith, who is not one of the Players but has been raised in the Théâtre and is now facing eviction. Bertie inhabits a fabulous world where calling for a scene change can remove her bedroom and produce anything from a well-stocked French pâtisserie to a storm scene on an ocean and where the Players must report when a notice to them is posted on the Call Board. Most of the Players have no presence when not playing, but several of them have more life than the others: the fretful Ophelia, irresistibly attracted to any scene with water in it so that she can drown herself; the enslaved spirit Ariel, who possesses a darker and more effective magic than the other Players; the mischievous fairies Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed from the Dream; and Nate, a pirate from (Disney's?) The Little Mermaid. I don't actually remember there being pirates in that story, but I haven't seen the stage version and it's been many years since I saw the film. Nate and Ariel are rivals of a sort for Bertie's interest. I found Ariel more attractive not just because he's the bad boy of the two (with bad meaning some very serious character flaws), but because Nate's gruff "let me protect ye, lass" manner irritated me. I'm not clear on how old the Player/character is supposed to be, but that sort of knowledge/power differential feels more paternal than romantic to me.
The story focuses both on Bertie's attempts to avoid being thrown out of the Théâtre and her attempts to discover her origins and how and why she came there. Given the environment, both quests are expressed through staging plays. Bertie writes and stages her own history, which may be based on memory or may be entirely imaginary, and then decides to create a role for herself as the previously-unneeded Director with a radical restaging of Hamlet into ancient Egypt in a lovely (and loving) poke at the various high-concept versions of Shakespeare that are constantly being staged (most recently for me, Des McAnuff's colonial Africa version of Macbeth at Stratford a couple of months ago.) The underlying power of words is interesting: plays and Players come to life as Bertie writes. Is she creating them? Or were they already there for her to use? What happens when pages are torn from the great Book which contains all the plays ever written? And what if a new play is written into it? It's a wildly different approach to the theater-with-magic, and I admire it for that.
But for all her originality of concept, Mantchev's theatrical knowledge seems shallow: her repertoire in the book is confined to a few of Shakespeare's greatest hits and well-known popular works like Man of La Mancha and Peter Pan. That probably works for people whose interest in and knowledge of theater is limited to what makes headlines, but feels ridiculous to me in a theater that is supposed to encompass the complete works of the stage. I realize she can't tag every major work in history in one novel, especially a YA novel, but a few token references would have been nice, and perhaps inspired the presumed young audience to seek them out.
Not a problem, exactly, but quite noticeable, is that while this is a complete story in and of itself, there are two gigantic loose ends left dangling at the end in what is clearly a setup for a sequel or two. It did not surprise me at all when looking at the associated promotional website for the (here) to discover that it's the first of a trilogy.
I enjoyed it enough that I'll keep an eye out for the other two as they appear.
Read for yourself:
Interesting idea of all the plays there ever are. As new ones are written, are they added?
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | September 12, 2009 at 03:59 PM
Does the story del with archetypes running into variations of themselves found in later plays? If the Théâtre has characters from Burlesque and Vaudeville, it means that the Marx Brothers are around because their early films originally were stage shows. And what of characters from Saturday Night Live skits? ("Huh oh... Toonces just drove the clown car into the orchestra pit.")
Posted by: Serge | September 12, 2009 at 06:29 PM
Marilee,
I think she didn't think the concept through that deeply, but the implication is that new plays can be added, though how it generally happens is not explained.
Serge,
I think it's limited to the classical sort of theater, not burlesque, vaudeville, or comedy skits.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | September 12, 2009 at 09:08 PM
Susan... I figured, but you know how we engineer types are. You should have been there when, at a con, my wife tried to describe her project of a fantasy novel to a scientist: the latter couldn't get past how the magic system worked. Some scientists are like that. Others, like Bill Higgins (aka Bill Heterodyne), could gloss over such details so that they can enjoy the story. That being said, I will look for Mantchev's book next time I could to a bookstore.
Posted by: Serge | September 12, 2009 at 09:45 PM
From what's been said, it sounds to me as though new plays are added as they go out of copyright. It would certainly avoid problems publishing the books.
Posted by: Neil Willcox | September 13, 2009 at 04:37 AM
But they have The Little Mermaid, which is Disney and still under copyright even if Disney weren't trying to extend copyright forever.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | September 13, 2009 at 06:02 AM
It seems as if Disney's Little Mermaid being part of the répertoire is the author breaking her own rules for the sake of a homage, either because she liked the play, or because she thought her readers would go "Cool!" upon seeing something that wasn't written by and for old geezers.
Posted by: Serge | September 13, 2009 at 09:04 AM
Or maybe this is a different, older, stage version of The Little Mermaid. I've been idly poking at the net and not getting any indications that the Disney version contains anybody named Nate.
(But in any case the same objection still applies to Man of La Mancha, if that wasn't just a hypothetical example.)
Posted by: Paul A. | September 13, 2009 at 10:49 AM
I was in a stage version of "Sleeping Beauty" that managed to have pirates. There are a lot of stage versions of public domain stories. (Is anything going to go out of copyright ever again?)
Personal note: I've been cast as a townsperson Chorus member (and school principal) in "Carousel." This will be the first theater I've done since I was Larry in "Company" back in 2003. Family duties took precedence, and just when I was allowed to try out again, we moved to a new state where I couldn't crack the existing theater communities. As with CNU, I see chorus membership as an extended audition.
Wish me luck. (Ow! My leg!)
Posted by: Kip W | September 13, 2009 at 11:09 AM
Kip W... Good luck!
Posted by: Serge | September 13, 2009 at 11:19 AM
Man of La Mancha was mentioned in the book in the context of a scene change, I think. There are a lot of sets that appear for one reason or another.
I think staging The Little Mermaid would be kind of a challenge in general, due to the need for an ocean. That's one of the tougher staging challenges. (Ships sailing on an ocean, yes. People swimming in an ocean, harder.) Maybe a children's theater could stage it with the use of intentionally nonrealistic stagecraft that works fine on small children but is a little harder for adults to process unless there's a lot of acting talent involved (as in the stage version of Coraline, which managed to make it work.)
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | September 13, 2009 at 08:55 PM
Kip:
Congrats, and break a leg!
Serge:
AARRRRGH. Let me help you out here with some lyrics from the movie version of the stage musical version of The Producers:
CARMEN:
It's bad luck to say "good luck" on opening night
Once it's said, you are dead
You will get the worst reviews
You've ever read!
ROGER:
Even at the Comedie-Francaise,
On the opening night they are scared
"Bon chance, mes amis", no one says
The only word you ever hear is...
ROGER, CARMEN & FRANZ:
Merde!
FRANZ:
It's verboten, vishing "luck" on opening night
Take advice, don't think twice
Or your show will surely end
Up in the Scheiss!
CARMEN:
At the famous La Scala in Milan
On opening night it's a rule
"In boccu lupa" they say with elan
And just for luck they all shout...
ROGER, CARMEN & FRANZ:
"Bah fongool!"
LEO:
I got it!
Now I'll never say "good luck" on opening night
That's the rule, I'm no fool!
What do I say, I beg?
ROGER, CARMEN & FRANZ:
What you say is "break a leg"!
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | September 13, 2009 at 08:59 PM
Kip,
Which part was Larry? I designed Company way back when (not that it took much designing, except for the wedding dress for the patter song) but I could never keep the names of the various married couples straight.
I am unreasonably fond of "Another Hundred People" and "Getting Married Today" and ended up sardonically muttering "Barcelona!" after my last breakup. (That relationship for me was associated with "Telephone Song" and "A Pineapple for Me" from Cabaret, except that it was books not fruit, as previously described. Why yes, I do view my entire life through the oddly-tinted lenses of Broadway musicals...)
There was a great version of John Barrowman and a another guy doing "Have I Got a Girl for You" on YouTube for awhile, but it seems to have succumbed to a copyright claim. Alas!
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | September 13, 2009 at 09:11 PM
Susan... Well, Kip W did ask us to wish him luck. True, he didn't say which kind of luck. Also, I made no reference to the breaking of lower limbs because the last time someone wished me that, that public thing I put together did not go well.
Posted by: Serge | September 14, 2009 at 12:07 AM
Susan... Why yes, I do view my entire life through the oddly-tinted lenses of Broadway musicals
Meanwhile, when I went to Washington DC in 1990, I looked at it thru my The Day The Earth Stood Still visor.
Posted by: Serge | September 14, 2009 at 12:13 AM