The Tempest – Theatre Tallahassee Production – In Review
Shakespeare’s plays have, in my experience, typically been something of a classroom activity, and more specifically high school than anywhere else. We read Romeo and Juliet and watched the movie, we read Hamlet and we watched the movie, we read Othello and watched the movie. I have yet to read any of his comedies in their original forms, but I did see 10 Things I Hate About You, which undoubtedly counts. To this day I can count on one finger the number of times I saw Shakespeare performed on stage.
That one time was a couple weeks ago at Theatre Tallahassee, with their performance of The Tempest. Little was known of Shakespeare’s final play, by me, before I had gone to see the show. I have never read The Tempest, watched the movie, or glossed over the wiki page, which might have been a mistake, but I’ll get to that later.
If you are like I was, and are unaware of this The Tempest because Kenneth Branagh hasn’t made a film adaptation of it yet, here’s the gist of it. Prospero once was a Duke until his title was usurped from him and he was banished to an island where he became a magician. By chance the very people that screwed him over happened to be sailing by, so with the aid of a local fairy and a storm he maroons them as well. Now, separated from each other, they wander the isle as Prospero confronts them in turn.
It’s a plot that feels like it’s skipping directly to Act 3, where the bulk of the narrative is lost in backstory and all that’s left is for the former Duke to figure out what to do with his usurpers. It’s a decision that’s purposeful to the themes of the play, but it does mean that the beginning is filled with extensive exposition. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but I admit that my Shakespearean English is rusty.
Back in college I was given a choice: I could study Shakespeare in depth, or Chaucer, or Milton. I didn’t know Milton, I was tired of Shakespeare, and I was pretty sure Chaucer wrote stories about rabbits. As it turned out, The Canterbury Tales was not a series of stories about rabbits. There was a point in the semester when my Chaucer group had to recite the original text to the class, and I remember one girl was reciting one of the more comedic sections. Even after studying the section, and knowing the context, I still found myself not able to laugh at a single joke, barely understanding what she was saying as she was saying it.
Shakespeare’s English is nowhere near as removed from modern English as Chaucer, but there were still times in which jokes didn’t land because I didn’t understand what was being said, or that I was too focused in trying to understand the dialogue that I was paying less attention to the performances. I had never read The Tempest, nor seen it performed. It was fresh, but looking back I feel as though that I should have read the play first before seeing it live.
I would have known the story and the plot beats beforehand, but it would have made it a lot easier to pay more attention to the individual performances of the material, rather than focus so much on trying to understand the material itself, because the performances were great. Ray O’Neil was excellent as Prospero, Maxwell Allen was a fun Trinculo, and it was good to see Charles Burden again, this time as Stephano (I had last seen him in The Mystery of Edwin Drood as Durdles, and at least on that night Durdles did it). Dianna Baxter without a doubt was a standout as the fairy Ariel, with a performance that matched the constantly changing temperance of her character.
The Tempest isn’t the most interesting Shakespeare story, but it has its complexities. Is it about redemption? Is it meta tale of a playwright saying goodbye to the craft? There’s discussion to be had, but before you watch the play be sure to read the script first, especially if your Shakespearean English is as rusty as mine.
The Slow and Laborious Death of the Spirit – A Short Story – Fiction
The devil is real, this I know to be true.
He’s right over there in fact. He’s sitting on the old and worn-out, off-brand, second-hand lazy-boy recliner set in the corner of the living room. It’s not his, rather, it belongs to our other roommate Pedro, but he sits there more often than not.
He waves to me.
I wave back to him
He asks me if I could sacrifice a goat in his name.
I ask him where he even expects me to find a goat, let alone afford one. Goats are probably expensive.
He suggests a chicken, then.
Does it have to be a live chicken, I ask? Would a rotisserie chicken do, like the ones at Buy’N’Cheap down the street?
He says rotisserie is fine, as long as it’s the original flavor, and not the lemon pepper. The devil doesn’t like the lemon pepper.
*
Most of the things in the apartment belong to Pedro. Of the three of us he has the good job, working as a bus boy at the O’Harlequins Pub and Eatery on Seventh and Talbot. They share tips between the whole staff, and on Friday fish nights he rakes in the cash.
Pedro says he just saw the most perfect, prime location for his future restaurant on the way home from work the other day. He was driving along when he saw the vacant lot just across the street from Starbucks, where the old Donut Hole used to be. It would be the perfect spot for Pedro’s Roadside Grill.
The devil asks if that’s the Starbucks on Lawrence and Mill Street.
Pedro says yes.
The devil says they’re building another Starbucks there.
Pedro says that there’s already a Starbucks across the street! He sighs and sits on the couch, and asks the devil what he’s watching.
The movie Bloodsuckers From Space, a tale of vampire aliens, plays on the TV screen. The devil prefers vampire movies, Pedro likes zombie films, I like ghost flicks. It’s a trifecta that’s never in the same place, so we rotate sub-genres of horror.
Pedro says they all share the idea of immortality in death, an eternal existence beyond the grave.
The devil says that there is a difference, that ghosts live forever in the past, zombies live forever without a future, while vampires always live in the present.
Pedro says there is a difference, that vampires live without a future, bound by their addiction to blood. Ghosts are bound to their haunting, while zombies don’t even need brains to wander.
I say there is a difference, that the real life of a zombie is forgotten, that the real life of the vampire is replaced, while the memory of a ghost lasts forever.
We watch them all just the same.
*
The devil drives an old, beat up 1998 Dodge Stratus. The front headlight on the driver’s side is askew. The rear turn signal on the passenger’s side no longer blinks. On a hot day the air conditioning could easily lead to an engine fire.
It’s the only car to the three of us. The devil drives, Pedro sits in the front, and I sit in the back. We step in the car, lock the doors, and roll down the windows to beat the heat. The devil turns the ignition and the engine sputters to life.
The devil turns on the radio and old country music begins to play. Outside there is the sound of traffic, a congested mix of car horns and brakes screeching and engines due for an oil change months ago. There’s someone shouting at someone else but I can’t tell who for what before they’re gone. There is a clicking noise, every so often, as the devil taps the right turn signal on and off to emulate its function.
The devil drops Pedro off at O’Harlequin’s first. The evening has barely begun but there’s already a crowd, the parking lot almost full. Pedro slips out of his seat and I take his place.
For a while we just drive, with nothing but the traffic, the voice of Kenny Rogers, the wind coursing through the open windows, and sometimes the clicking of the turn signal to keep us company. There’s a traffic light that turns from green, to yellow, to red, and the devil pulls to a stop just over the white line.
At the corner, standing on the sidewalk, there’s a man carrying a sign that says, “PLEASE HELP”, and below that it says, “GOD BLESS”. I hope the devil doesn’t notice.
He does.
The devil shakes his head. He asks if I think God even cares, that a person, that any person, would need help. The devil asks would God even help them.
I tell him that I don’t know.
He asks why I don’t.
I tell him that they haven’t gotten to that bit of training at work.
The devil says that all that man wants to do in life is to elevate himself from his position, but you know what happens when you try to elevate yourself?
I guess that you get to a higher elevation.
The devil shakes his head and says that you get cast out of heaven.
That’s something I don’t like about the devil. He’s always making it about himself.
*
The sun was already setting when we pulled up to the Package Pro Mail Center downtown. I barely step out of the car before the devil has already begun to speed off. I button up the vest of my uniform and make my way to the back, to the mail room.
The manager, Tina, is there. She says there’s a new product coming soon, and we would all have to train and prepare for it. She says it’s luxury packaging, for those that want a guarantee that their box would arrive with extra care.
Scott asks how much that service would cost.
Tina says it would depend on distance and weight, but based on their typical sales domestic usage would start at around three hundred dollars for bronze, five hundred for silver, and seven hundred for gold, to transport a single package, up to fifty pounds. The price, would of course, go up from there.
Dhruv says he can’t afford that.
She laughs and tells Dhruv that these services aren’t for him.
*
The devil likes the pier, the old, wooden one down the street from The Fried Fishery. It extends far out, where in the early morning darkness the creaking boards are barely visible beneath our feet, and the water is pitch black. Somewhere behind us there are the lights and the noise of the city, but out here, in the darkness at the end of the pier, they seem so distant.
There is a line of boats on either side of the pier, anchored and tied down. The devil says that he owned a boat once, a fishing boat like those. He’d go out in the morning, just before the sun would start to rise, dock just after the sun went down.
He would catch fish, he would sell fish. He sold fish so that he could afford to catch fish so he could sell fish so that he could afford to catch fish, until the day came that he couldn’t even do that.
The devil sold his boat that day.
Pedro likes to look at the city lights from the pier. He says the city is a place of opportunity, a place where anyone could make anything of themselves. It is a place where a person could change the world.
Pedro’s grandfather moved to the city decades ago in search of that dream. There were opportunities for the right person to come along and pick them up and make something of them. He died poor, with nothing to his name.
His father searched for that dream, deep in the heart of the city. There were fewer opportunities then, at least for the individual person, but for someone with capital, a company with money, there was opportunity to be granted. He died in debt.
Pedro wonders if there are any opportunities left. The sun rises and the devil pulls his Dodge Stratus around.
*
The devil sits back in Pedro’s second-hand, off-brand lazy-boy recliner set in the corner of the room. Pedro sits on the couch, and I sit next to him.
Cemetery Beneath the Moon plays on the TV, a zombie werewolf movie in which the werewolves are actually zombies, risen from the grave, and the zombies turn into werewolves in the right light.
The devil waves to me.
I wave back to him.
He asks if I would sacrifice a goat in his name.
I ask him where he would expect me to find a goat, let alone afford one. Goats are probably very expensive.
The devil asks Pedro if Pedro would sacrifice a goat in his name.
Pedro looks shocked. Sacrifice a goat, he asks, in this economy?
Misery – Theatre Tallahassee Production – In Review
There is an art to adaptation, the challenge of taking something from one from of media and translating it into another. Just because it worked in the book doesn’t mean it’ll work in the movie, just because it worked in the movie doesn’t mean it’ll work in the video game. Even adaptations that seek as much authenticity to its source material are going to be affected by the change in media, so it’s always impressive when an adaptation not only works, but works in a medium that you wouldn’t expect to see it in.
Take Stephen King’s Misery, for instance, the story of a writer imprisoned by his nurse. It was a book first, a movie later, and since then it has been adapted into several stage variations, most notably the 2015 adaptation from William Goldman. This version is noteworthy because Goldman also wrote the film adaptation, it premiered on Broadway with Bruce Willis as Paul Sheldon, and it was recently performed at Theatre Tallahassee.
If you’re not familiar with the book, the movie, or the play, Misery is the story of an author, Paul Sheldon, recovering from a car accident. A nurse, Annie Wilkes, who also happens to be his biggest fan, had pulled him out of the wreckage and has taken it upon herself to treat his injuries, but it’s not long before her bedside manner turns from caring to sinister.
It’s a story that, in scope, does make itself very well suited for the stage. There’s only a few characters, and only a few locations (mostly just Annie’s home). It’s not that surprising that anyone considered adapting the story to the stage. As I walked into the theater I was still wondering as to how they were going to present not just the house, but the violence, as little as there actually is.
The broadway version had the house on a rotating platform, spinning around from the bedroom that Paul was locked inside to Annie’s kitchen, along with a section for the front of the house. Theatre Tallahassee doesn’t have that kind of space, instead initially presenting only the bedroom, close to the front of the stage. A wall blocks off the view of most of the stage behind the bedroom. A door on stage right exits the bedroom, and a door off the corner of stage left acts as the front of the house.
The bedroom is where the majority of the story is told, and having it so close to the audience gives a stronger intimacy to the performance. Paul is trapped in this space for a while, to the point that I had all but forgotten about the actual depth of the stage, and that he does leave the bedroom to explore the rest of the house. When that happens, when we switch from the bedroom to the rest of the house, the stage lights turn off, just for a moment, and the back wall is shifted out of place and rolled off stage, Annie’s kitchen finally revealing itself.
The lights are used both to cover the shifting of the house but to also fill in the passage of time and cover up the violence (specifically the hammer scene). The movie had already reduced the violence in the scene from the book, and as for the direction of this production the implied violence: the swing of the hammer, the screams – they are effective enough.
That’s what enables Misery to work just as many wonders on the stage as it did on the page. It’s an excellent story by itself, brought to new life through fantastic performances from its lead actors. Patrick Vaughan spends most of his time wavering between shocked and incredulous, but has standout moments dragging himself across the floor. Megan Preston as Annie is equal parts delightful and delirious, and there’s something about the direction that makes her seem even funny at times. It’s a sense of playfulness that makes the darker and demented aspects of her character just the more sinister when they pop up again.
There’s an art to adaptation, and that challenge of taking something from one media and putting it in something else can lead to things that only make sense because of the new medium. For Misery there’s were two things that stood out to me as oddities that exist because of the adaptation to the stage.
The first: Paul slept with his head against the headboard, instead of on the pillow. It makes sense for the show, because it allows his profile to stand out. If he was sleeping in bed like a normal man with two broken legs and a dislocated shoulder he’d probably be under the blankets and with his head against the pillow, but that doesn’t play well for an audience.
The second: the repeated visits of the sheriff. In the book and the movie the sheriff’s search for Paul Sheldon goes on in the background, away from the Wilkie residence. For the play it makes sense for the story to be fully localized at Wilkie’s house, but that means that the sheriff’s subplot all but disappears, unless he comes a knocking over and over again. It stands out because as a character it seems like he never quite develops, stuck in a repeating loop until his real moment to shine.
These quirks of the adaptation by no means hinder the show. It was already an excellent story in its own right, given new life on the stage, held up by great direction, excellent production and fantastic performances.
Tiny Beautiful Things – In Review
Have you seen Tiny Beautiful Things?
It’s a play adapted by Nia Vardalos from a book of essays written by Cheryl Strayed. It’s different, not necessarily because it tries to be different, but because of what it’s adapting from and to. There’s a run of the play over at Theatre Tallahassee, though at the time of this writing there are only three more performances left.
The book is a true story, or to put it more accurately, it’s a collection of true stories. Its author had, for a time, adopted the internet persona Sugar for the purposes of an advice column, and the book features questions she received and answers she gave.
That’s what makes the play fundamentally different from other plays. It sets up its lead character Cheryl Strayed as a new writer to take over the advice column, but for the most part that acts as a plot device to present the questions Cheryl, or to be more specific Sugar, receives. Cheryl’s identity as Sugar acts as the overall plot, but the focus is on the individual stories and her responses to them.
It’s a small play with a small cast delivered almost entirely in monologue. Over at Theatre Tallahassee Gwendolyn Gay plays Cheryl Strayed, with Tiffany Underwood, Melissa Findley, and Elizabeth Cochran giving voiced to the letter readers, all under the directorial debut of Lauren Herod.
There’s something uniquely powerful about having these letters performed on stage. It’s not that the letters or their essays lack emotion, but their delivery offers emotional emphasis that a casual reading wouldn’t offer.
Have you seen the movie The Princess Bride?
There’s a line from it that has stuck with me, from a scene where it’s just Princess Buttercup and the dread Pirate Roberts, and Buttercup tells him, “You mock my pain!”
To which Roberts says, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Then they proceeded to tumble downhill for the next hour.
It’s a line I’ve quoted many times since then. Was there traffic on the way to work? Is the store out of regular M&Ms, and all they have is the fudge flavor? Is the ice cream machine broken at McDonalds? Life is pain, highness.
The kind of letter that Sugar was responding to, the kind of letter that evoked the kind of essays that were explored in tearful monologue make for a far different level of pain. There’s a common thread among these letters, and even their responses, that the thought of asking for advice or giving advice based on past experiences that the pain, regardless of its cause, is simply easier to discuss anonymously to strangers. There is a sense of people being isolated by their pain. They say no man is an island, but the pain expressed in the letters to Sugar is the kind that makes islands of men.
Have you heard the song Message in a Bottle by The Police?
It’s a song written by Sting long before he went solo, and as long as you know the title of the song you already know half the lyrics. It tells the story of a sad and lonely man isolated on an island. He writes a note, stuffs it into a bottle and flings it into the sea, thinking himself to be alone in his suffering. The thing is that he’s not, as he finds one day that millions of bottles had washed upon his shore. He isn’t alone in his suffering.
The idea of a Dear Sugar column isn’t itself necessarily new or unique to Cheryl Strayed’s work. In the Chicago Tribune they had a Dear Abby and a Dear Amy, and undoubtedly there are countless more like them, Dear Someone from A to Z. I’ve stopped reading the Tribune a long while back and mostly scroll through Twitter these days, and large amount of what gets shared tends to come in the form of an Am I The Asshole letter, and nine times out of ten the answer is yes.
In between those letters there are more stories of pain, of loss that is beyond individual comprehension, of suffering that is either bottled up or ignored until the pressure escalates. Both Gwendolyn and Tiffany have those kinds of monologues in the play: one deals with the loss of a son, the other with the hidden torture by a relative, both exceptionally powerful in delivery and message. Both are not alone in their suffering.
Have you taken a High School Physics class?
If yes, and if you’re still reading, then it’s probably safe to assume that it’s been a while. It’s been a while for me, too, but there’s a lesson I remember from the days when my Physics teacher promised that Physics was fun, long before any University Professor would prove otherwise. It’s a Sir Issac Newton law that states that for every action there has to be an equal and opposite reaction. It’s been a while, so I can’t speak completely for the science here, but the gist of it is that if an object applies force to another object, that object places the same amount of force back.
Relationships between people aren’t so consistent, even if there isn’t any friction to complicate the math, but there’s something special that Sugar had with her readers and her readers had with her. They had reached out to someone, anyone, for a single moment in time, opening themselves up in ways that they couldn’t in their regular life, and she touched back equally open.
Deathtrap: In Review
I’ve seen probably a dozen or so musicals, but to this day I’ve only been to two plays. Part of this comes from a disconnect from live entertainment, as I’ve also only been to one concert my entire life, but also part of this comes from a laziness against the inconvenience of traveling. As a former Chicago resident there were various local theaters, big and small, to go to, I just didn’t want to have to deal with traveling downtown to do it.
The first play I saw was a murder mystery, that much I remember. It was during a high school trip to Washington D.C., over a couple decades ago. A few days ago I watched a second play titled Deathtrap. It was performed on the stage of Theatre Tallahassee, a place that describes itself on its website as “Broadway in your backyard”. It’s a description that is literally true, as there was only a fence separating the venue from a neighborhood of homes. It’s a small theatre with 271 seats, air conditioning, and comfortable plush seating thanks to a renovation in 2013.
There are also drinks, if you’re so inclined.
Right as the curtains pulled open I realized something that I had missed from not pursuing live events: the physical presence of the actors and actresses on stage. From my seat I was a mere stone’s throw away from the two people that were revealed on stage. Have no fear cast members! Not only did I leave my stones behind, I’m also terrible at throwing, and would be more liable to hit the audience than anything on stage.
When the curtains pulled back I was immediately reminded of what a live performance is capable of, and it wasn’t long before the stage was being used to its fullest extent. When it comes to cinema there’s more specificity in what the director wants you to look at, in what the cinematographer wants you to pay attention to. The stage brought along a certain intimacy involved that you don’t get from seeing an actor on the big screen, born from just the close vicinity, but there’s something to be said about how the smaller scale theatre helped as well.
The play performed is titled Deathtrap, written by playwright Ira Levin, and with direction from Matthew Watson. It’s a small, five person play with a single location, featuring Daniel Gray as a famous writer, fallen from grace, Mae Roth as his wife, Jerry Sola as a former student, Melissa Findley as a psychic neighbor, and Matt Marino as the family lawyer.
The story itself is extremely meta, in that it’s a thriller titled Deathtrap about a playwright who is given a thriller titled Deathtrap. This play within a play also happens to involve only five people in its cast with a single location, and is itself the setup for the plot. The older playwright hasn’t written much of note, and this new play is really good, one that would undoubtedly make lots of money.
It’s a play that lures you in with the promise that these are rational individuals capable of compromise and conversation, and when you think your footing is safe and everything is predictable the rug gets pulled right from under you, again and again. The plot is constantly being twisted, redefining who the characters are and what the play within a play means. With fantastic performances all around, it was very easy to get swept up in the story, wondering what was really going on, let alone what was going to happen next.
Before I knew it the curtains were called, the cast came out for their final bows and the show was over, and I must say that it was a lot of fun! While I caught Theatre Tallahassee at the end of their current season, a new one is starting up soon, with showings of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on the unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. I could look up the story ahead of time, but why spoil the surprise?
P.S.
I’m pretty sure I spotted a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on a bookshelf, upstage left, a black book with gold lettering that does look pretty fancy at a distance.
P.P.S.
Thanks to the rain that night, my N7 hoodie helped me discover a Mass Effect fan out there! Without a doubt, this was my favorite play on the Citadel!
Theory of Relativity – A Short Story – Fiction
Theory of Relativity
by Nicholas Vracar
Alex worked in a nondescript office building in a nondescript part of town, where the colors washed out to bleached beiges and grays across sunlit concrete walls. When he walked into the building he said hello to the receptionist, she said hello back. She didn’t look at him, only her phone in her hands.
His office was in room 305, in the middle of a narrow hall that was just a short walk between the elevator and the stairs. It was a small room, barely larger than six foot by six foot. Inside there was a single office chair, bolted into the floor, and a side table with a red phone and a cup of coffee waiting for him.
On the wall there was a large round clock that ticked with every passing second. All he could hear was the sound of the clock and the air conditioning, and behind him the swivel of the security camera. Alex sat in his chair and watched the second hand, the minute hand, and the hour hand as they spun around. The end of day bell rang, and then he stood up, and left.
*
Alex lived in a nondescript apartment building in a nondescript part of the city, where the streetlights shined bright against the rusted, chipped brick surfaces. The parking garage across the street was nearly full by the time he came home. Toward the bottom, in reserved spots, there were shiny new cars. As he drove higher he passed older second hand, third hand cars damaged by rust and wear, until he found a spot he could park.
His apartment was a small studio consisting of a single ten-foot by ten-foot space with a small adjoining bathroom. The bed was pressed against the shelf which was pressed against the TV stand which was pressed against the kitchen counter which was pressed against the refrigerator.
There was an old acoustic guitar in the corner of the room. He picked up the guitar and tuned it. The traffic noise overlapped a news broadcast from down the hall, muffled slightly by walls and distance. He plucked a few notes: it was the beginning of a song he was writing. The phone rang and he set the guitar down.
*
Alex met his friends in a nondescript bar on a nondescript street, where the neon signs emitted strobing red lights that pulsated along with the music that spilled out, nothing but the blown out sound of bass vibrating across brick, glass and concrete.
Jim and Rebecca were there, along with Bobby, Billy, and Mary Anne. Beers were brought to the table, with the exception of one coke with rum, one whiskey, and two gin and tonics. The waitress came and went, to wherever she was needed most.
Jim and Rebecca had moved in together. Bobby was running a marathon that month, and the beer he held was the third to last one he’d have before he’d force himself into temporary sobriety. Billy was busy with work, and Mary Anne was planning out an island getaway. They drank until their glasses were dry, and then drank some more.
*
He went home and collapsed on the bed. He woke up, the alarm blaring klaxon in his ear. He drove to work, climbed up to his office and sat in his chair.
The longer he watched the clock, the more of the smaller details he noticed. It was a large round clock three feet in diameter, with a gold stripe along a black rim. The center was a stark white, and the black hour and minute hands extended to spades at the points. Every shift of the red second hand ticked softly.
He went home and collapsed on his bed. He woke up, the alarm blaring klaxon in his ear. He drove to work, climbed up to his office and sat in his chair.
Inside the room everything felt loud. There was the noise of the clock, and its constant ticking. There was the hum of the vents, the faint mechanical turning of the security camera mounted in the upper corner of the room.
He went home and collapsed on his bed. He woke up, the alarm blaring klaxon in his ear. He drove to work, climbed up to his office and sat in his chair.
The clock had stopped.
Outside the office there was the sound of footsteps, a cough, and then the door shut and there was nothing but the hum of the vents, and the swivel of the camera. He stepped forward, staring at the stopped clock. He looked up at the camera, and then back at the clock.
The coffee was there, as always, beside the red phone. He slowly sat in his chair and picked up the phone and pressed it against his ear, staring at the clock. Dial tone gave way to a series of beeps and clicks. A voice on the other end said, “Is there any trouble, 305?”
Alex said, “The clock has stopped.”
“We are aware of the issue.”
He looked from the clock to the security camera and back. “Should I be doing anything differently?”
“No, sir. Just keep up the good work.”
There was a click on the phone and then dial tone. He set the receiver back and looked for his cup of coffee. He sipped at the coffee and watched the stopped clock, and listened to the hum of the ventilation, and the mechanical swivel of the camera.
*
At home he tightened the knobs of the guitar. Sometimes he could hear the ticking of the clock, sometimes it was drowned out by the sound of the cars in the streets, the constant stream of engine noise and beeping horns. He heard the sounds of crazed shouting of cable news from a television down the hall.
His notes are scattered on the coffee table, in between spare guitar picks and mugs, empty coke cans and half-filled coke cans. The TV is on but the sound is off as he plucks at his guitar. It takes him a moment to remember the placement of his fingers on the strings, for the weight of the guitar to settle into his lap. He strummed the guitar and sometimes he sang, and sometimes he shuffled his notes around.
He played a little bit of one song and a little bit of another, starting and stopping, fixing and unfixing. There was an album on his table, spread across his notes. There was a song about love, a song about dreams, a song about dreams unfulfilled. He sang about the death of passion into the night until he stopped.
*
The televisions at the bar were mostly tuned to a golf game, a few to a golf commentary channel. One television, off in the corner, played the Chuck Norris film Firewalker. Nobody was watching any of the televisions.
Beers were brought to the table, with the exception of one coke with rum, one coke with ice, one whiskey, and two gin and tonics. The waitress came and went, to wherever she was needed most.
Jim had separated from Rebecca, and they sat at opposite corners of the table. Bobby had sprained his leg the other day and might not be running in the marathon, he wasn’t sure. He maintained his sobriety just in case. Billy was busy with work, and Mary Anne was planning a trip into the mountains.
Rebecca asked, “How’s the music?”
Alex said, “It’s going.”
“It’s going?”
“Yeah, it’s almost there.”
They drank until their glasses were dry, and then drank some more.
*
The clock was still broken, its hands still stuck at four thirty seven. He sat down in his chair, picked up his coffee and sipped while he watched the stopped clock. The coffee didn’t last long, and he sat in silence, and he listened to the hum of the ventilation, and the mechanical swivel of the camera.
It wasn’t that it felt as though time had stopped, it had simply no longer existed. There was the moment he walked into the office, the moment he was out of coffee, and the moment the bell rang at the end of the day, and in between there was nothing. He would count every time the camera shifted and every time the tone of the ventilation changed.
The phone rang, cutting into the silence. Alex stared at the phone, uncertain. It rang again. He reached for the receiver and picked it up. The voice on the other end said, “305?”
“Yes?”
“Management would like to speak with you. Please come to the board room at once.”
He set the receiver down and stepped out of his chair.
*
There was a round of drinks and a round of applause at the bar. Jim reached over and said, “Congratulations on the promotion, man!”
Rebecca leaned past him and said, “Yeah, about time they recognized the effort you put in!” Jim and Rebecca had gotten back together, and sat next to each other again.
Bobby said, “So now you’re making the big bucks?”
Bill said, “His tastes are just going to be too expensive for us now.”
Alex said, “Oh yeah, I’m going to be switching from bottles of Bud Light to Bud Light from the tap.”
Mary Anne said, “That’s far too rich for my blood.”
Beers were brought to the table, with the exception of one coke with rum, one whiskey, and two gin and tonics. Bobby wasn’t running the marathon anymore, due to a fracture in his ankle. Billy was thinking of taking a vacation. Mary Anne was thinking of traveling to Japan. They drank until their glasses were dry, and then drank some more.
He went home and collapsed onto his bed. He woke up, the alarm blaring klaxon in his ear. He drove to work, climbed up to his new office. The number on the door was 414.
Alex pushed open the door and stepped through. Inside the room there was a single chair, and a short table beside it with a red phone and a cup of coffee. Above the door, in the corner, a camera swiveled back and forth.
On the wall there were four TV screens. On each screen there was a view of a person sitting in an office chair, staring at a clock on the wall. Numbers on the bottom right of the screens labeled them as 315, 225, 153 and 219.
He stepped around the chair and sat down. He reached for his cup of coffee and he slowly sipped at it, and he watched the screens, and listened to the ticking sounds of their clocks over the speakers.
THE END
Mr. Mercedes (TV Adaptation) – In Review
Stephen King’s trilogy of books following the former detective Bill Hodges is by itself an odd set of stories. The first novel, Mr. Mercedes, was a cat and mouse thriller pitting Bill up against Brady Hartsfield, a killer behind the wheel of a car used to kill from a case he couldn’t solve. The second novel was less personal for him, so much so that Bill doesn’t even show up until a third of the way in. The third novel has Brady Hartsfield making a return to the scene, except now it’s an unsolved mystery plus fringe science.
When it came to adapting the books into a television show, David Kelley and his team made a variety of choices that were at times faithful to the books, while at other times more faithful to the screen. The result of which is a first season that’s pretty good while also being faithful to the source material, a second season that’s not faithful and is still interesting, and a third season that’s unfaithful and mostly trash.
Without a doubt, it’s the performances that shine the brightest. They’re the most consistent quality in the show. Brandan Gleeson is fantastic as Bill Hodges, Justine Lupe and Jharrel Jerome are great as Holly and Jerome. Harry Treadaway makes for such a sinister villain that every villain that comes after him just seems lesser in comparison. Breeda Wool’s role as Lou gets the most benefit out of the changes made to the second season, because without them she’d wouldn’t have had as much time to shine.
While the show as a whole is titled Mr. Mercedes, each season follows a separate book of the original trilogy. It would have probably been more accurate for the show to have been titled Bill Hodges, as the titular Mr. Mercedes is only a character in two of the seasons, but it works well enough. The order that the books were adapted shows the first major choice that was made in bringing the story to the screen. The first season follows the first book, Mr. Mercedes, the second season follows the third book, End of Watch, and the third season steps back and follows the second book, Finders Keepers.
If you’ve read the books, then you’ll likely know how End of Watch ends, except now that story is in the middle and there’s no way that the season could keep that ending and still carry on. This is part of the reason why the second season is unfaithful. It also goes on to feature a completely different ending for its villain, it brings back returning characters from season one who did not have developed roles in the third book, and completely drops one of the books main subplots in favor of its own invented drama.
I should point out again that season two was still good.
Season One was faithful to the book it was based on, for the most part. It introduced a neighbor that didn’t exist in the original story, and its ending was cut down in size and scope, probably out of budgetary concerns. Mr. Mercedes is hardly the first show to trim back its adaptation because they simply can’t afford bigger, and to be fair the story is more about the individual characters and their personal relationships.
The second season continued on the same path as the first, adding more characters to give relationships to existing ones, while also building on characters that would have had little screen time otherwise. Jerome has a subplot that goes nowhere and is just forgotten about eventually. It has a new ending, and it ends well, thematically similar to Mr. Mercedes, in fact, but also creating a contrast between the two plots that pushes the story into the third season.
I’ve read that the reason why the third season follows the second book and the second season follows the third book is because the villain in the first and the third book is the same, while the villain in the second book is different. This allows the show to continue the story built by the first season directly in the second, without having to remind anyone of character motivations when season three rolls around. This change, however, means half of the plot of season three was invented for the show, a direct result of the ramifications of season two’s different ending. The other half of the third season follows the modified events of Finders Keepers. The victim is the same and the killer is the same except now the killer has different motivations, plus multiple added characters for the killer to have relationships with. The kid from the book is there, along with his family, except now the timeframe of the story is sped up, leading to a shortened version of events, and his family also has additional new characters to have relationships with. Not only are the two halves tonally different, but they have nothing to do with each other. The things that happened in one half of the plot had no effect on the other.
There’s an art to adapting stories from one medium to the next. The problem comes when you’re no longer telling that story anymore, when you’re telling a completely different story that just happens to have the same characters involved. By the end of season three the story has changed so much, it’s a wonder if the creators were interested in adapting the books at all.
End of Watch by Stephen King – in Review
In Mr. Mercedes Stephen King presented a thriller about a killer who had never been caught, and the former detective in charge of his case using up one last chance to make things right. It former detective Bill Hodges, and Brady Hartsfield: the killer, aka Mr. Mercedes himself. Bill didn’t act alone in Mr. Mercedes, he had the help of Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson on his side. Its sequel, Finders Keepers, follows along with returning characters Bill and Holly and a number of new characters completely unrelated to them. After decades the lost stash of a killer is found, but now that killer is released and he wants what’s his. Bill doesn’t even show up until a hundred or so pages in, and nobody’s really in danger until the end.
End of Watch, the third and final part of the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, is about psychic abilities and hypnosis, and the book goes to great lengths trying to make those things plausible. This results in explanations upon explanations, to the point in which the story is nearly over and it’s still going through its motions, telling more than showing, explaining once again what’s going on even so late in the book. These late stage explanations aren’t really providing new material, as much as going over already known, or implied material, from a different perspective.
That’s probably the biggest issue that the book has: it’s asking for not just the reader to buy into the impossible, but it’s also asking the characters to do the same, so a lot of time is just spent in the how. There is reason for this: the first two books just don’t have supernatural elements. They are grounded stories that don’t have the strangeness that Stephen King books often enjoy. The third book wants to fit in, tonally, with the previous two books, while also expanding on their ideas and themes in impossible directions.
Despite all this excess of explanation, and the sudden supernatural presence, End of Watch still makes for an exciting read, especially in comparison to Finders Keepers. In the second book of the trilogy the danger was always separated from the main characters, either by time or by distance. With End of Watch things start off badly and only get worse from there. It doesn’t take long before danger seems to be constantly looming over everyone.
The supernatural elements, though overexplained, do work, and they’re not just there without reason. End of Watch brings back Brady Hartsfield for one last go around because his rivalry against Hodges was the foundation of the trilogy, but he didn’t quite leave the first book in the best condition. End of Watch looks at how Brady was left off and asks what could bring him back into the plot, what could make him dangerous again. When the possible is gone, all that’s left is the impossible.
In doing so the story pushes its characters into dangerous depths that are just as unpredictable as they are bizarre, but the over explanation does come at odds with this line Stephen King wrote in an article for Entertainment Weekly:
“But nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.”
End of Watch is the kind of thriller that walks a fine line between reality and fantasy. It makes for a strange, yet strong, end to the series, held together by a strong set of characters trapped in near constant suspense.
Quote was taken from this article:
Demon’s Souls (2020) – In Review
On February 9th, 2009, From Software’s Playstation 3 game Demon’s Souls was released into the world. Since then Demon’s Souls, and the various franchises that From Software has developed, have found themselves in a genre of their own. While Demon’s Souls was itself an iterative work, expanding on From Software’s own King’s Field series, it is still looked on as the first of the Souls genre. That said, it has grown old. When it was new it was an unproven difficult game that didn’t have the same kind of budget as its contemporaries. The 2020 remake from Bluepoint Games gives it a fresh coat of paint that preserves the original material while greatly improving the presentation. It runs better, it loads faster, it looks fantastic, and under the hood it’s mechanically the same experience that it was over a decade ago.
The visuals don’t just look fantastic, they run smooth. That was a problem with the original game, and even some of its sequels, is that the framerate was never that smooth, the loading time was always too long. The remake makes the game a better experience than it was when it was new, not only running at 60 frames per second but also making loading time almost negligible.
The game itself is still strong after all these years, and feels much more streamlined after playing its more open world follow ups. It’s generally also more straightforward with its mechanics and level design. There is no situation in which you need to be cursed in order to fight a specific set of bad guys, or need a specific ring to fight a boss. Levels are obstacles to overcome with whatever weapon you choose and bosses have only one phase of attacks to fight through; they don’t change their styles halfway to become tougher and faster versions of themselves.
There are still obscure elements to the game that have been simplified over the years. World tendency is a feature that only really works if you’re trying to affect it, otherwise it is easily unnoticed. Upgrading weapons and armor requires way too many different kinds of upgrade materials, making it difficult to experiment with different pieces of equipment. Progression can also be tricky, in that it’s not entirely clear what order you’re expected to actually play the game in, which can easily lead you to areas that are probably more difficult for your level.
It also feels slow after having played so many faster iterations of the genre. Not sluggish, though, just slow. There are boss battles which I remember being fast, with bosses zipping around the arena at speeds that I could barely keep up with. After playing Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, and Bloodborne, enemies like the Flamelurker didn’t seem like they moved particularly fast at all. Bosses felt more manageable then ever, despite the fact that it has been over a decade since I’ve seen most of them. The difficulty that remains in the game is mostly contained in the levels themselves. They are sometimes linear, sometimes mazes that sometimes have shortcuts to help you reconnect with later progress and sometimes do not.
Demon’s Souls is still a difficult game after all of these years, but it doesn’t feel quite as difficult as it used to be, not just because Souls games have become harder and faster, but because games inspired by the Souls formula have also been, at the very least, getting faster as well. This remake doesn’t seek to revitalize the experience for an existing audience, but to give a chance for oldcomers and newcomers alike to go back to what made the original great, in a package that glistens and shines.
A Plague Tale: Innocence – In Review
It is the year 1348 and Amicia, a fifteen-year-old girl of the noble de Rune line, wants to be a brave knight. Hugo, her five-year-old brother, has always been ill, and it is that illness that has quarantined him and her mother since he was born. The setting is based historically, within France during the Hundred Years war. That war seems so distant in Amicia’s idyllic home, but then nobody expects an Inquisition (not Spanish, this time). There’s only just enough time, with her parents dead and her home burning behind her, for Amicia to find Hugo and run for it.
At its heart A Plague Tale: Innocence is a stealth game, an escort quest across the countryside and the ruined towns of a war torn France. It borrows elements from history, such as the Hundred Years War. There’s a plague that’s littering the towns with dead, an infection spread by rats, but at best this setting is just historically inspired. The rats, unlike the fleas upon the rats that spread the black plague, literally burst forth from the Earth like a miniature volcano, consuming the flesh of anyone who steps into the darkness, stripping them down to the bone. Also, there’s magic in the form of supernatural elements sleeping within the blood that, much like the phases for which the power awakens, also emerges from the subplot to take the main stage in a tremendous battle involving ratnados.
Until then, and after then, the game does manage to keep the scale of the conflict narrow, focused on Amicia and Hugo, and the travelers they meet along the way. It manages this part by keeping you focused on the smaller scale, where every corner could present itself with some manner of immediate danger. It also manages this because of the pace of the game. While Amicia can take care of herself well enough, she’s not a fighter. She doesn’t have a sword or armor; she only has a slingshot and a collection of rocks to fend off enemies.
She also has a crafting system, in which she can use alchemy to construct various types of rocks using the assortment of collectables found throughout. She can make rocks that start fires, rocks that put out fires, rocks that douse steel helmets in acid, rocks that lure rats, and more. This means a lot of time is spent searching environments and crafting in order to maintain an arsenal, ready for whatever comes next.
Stealth can often feel like a series of small puzzles, where you are less trying to sneak through an area, and more trying to solve to figure out what is the expected path forward. Distractions can be used to move enemies out of the way. Hugo can make his way through smaller openings, and eventually fellow travelers show up with their own abilities. The use of alchemy also becomes an addition to the stealth puzzle, especially as the rats become more prevalent. In the game the rats hate light, love darkness. Navigating areas filled with rats means understanding where light sources are and how to maneuver sources of light. Sometimes that means something as simple as picking up a torch, sometimes that might also mean setting the blade of a windmill on fire and following the light as it passes.
There is combat in this game. Aside from slinging stones Amicia can dodge, and there are situations where she will be expected to fight, to protect herself and to protect Hugo. While the combat technically works, its here that the game showcases its limitations. Enemy movement can be incredibly erratic, and even with the ability to lock on sometimes shots can miss simply because of changes in elevation. One of the most frustrating sequences of the game had enemies coming in on a straight line, but because they were running down the stairs and back up the stairs it became very difficult to acquire and maintain a lock on.
It’s for the best that combat is only a small part of a game that does an excellent job keeping itself focused on developing a satisfying stealth experience, spiced up with the use of alchemy and the environment as a means of both sneaking past enemies and dealing with them. The supernatural elements sometimes try to steal the show, and the combat can feel awkward when you’re forced to do it, but the combination of stealth and story creates a compelling trip with the kind of protagonists you don’t usually see in this kind of game.
Greetings and salutations, folks 