Stage fright

Description

A leading metropolitan drama critic is led by an attractive production assistant into a recently discovered nineteenth-century theatre. There, the critic will film a television interview for a documentary on the actor John Wilkes Booth, who once acted on those very boards. The critic, F.F. Charnick, notorious for his venomous reviews, visibly warms to the classy elegance of the British P.A. But no sooner has he downed a glass of wine than he falls drugged and unconscious. When he awakens, he is firmly tied to a Shakespearean throne on the stage of the old theatre with an ominous woman intoning Lady Macbeth beside him. The attractive P.A. has turned into Mitzi Crenshaw, an actress of the "old school" whom Charnick has savaged in dozens of reviews. The critically maligned actress has shanghaied the surly critic as part of an elaborate murder plot against the man who virtually destroyed both her career and that of her actor-husband, Denis Michaelson. After forcing the bound critic to endure several dramatic recitations, Mitzi's husband suddenly arrives on the scene, ostensibly to try to deter his unbalanced wife and release the imprisoned critic. But after an elaborately rigged "scene" between the couple, it is soon apparent that Denis is actually in on the plot and just as determined to wreak revenge against the critic. The theatricalized torture goes through several permutations, inspiring blood-curdling confessions from the critic and ending with the actors granting him a reprieve—but not before his most embarrassing revelations have been taped on video to be shown to the entire nation.

Subjects

Genres

• Drama