Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to adventure, murder and intrigue a plenty – after all her adventures, could this be the final episode?
Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to adventure, murder and intrigue a plenty – after all her adventures, could this be the final episode?
The Masquerade of Death
In a long running series that kicked off with living pantomime worlds, prostitutes in ancient Babylon, sentient sailing boats and green eyed monsters, it is surprising that I can safely call the Masquerade of Death the strangest play yet. It throws almost all conventional storytelling methods out of the window and constantly ‘resets’ the story at critical moments to start telling something new. It’s not an adventure, it’s not even a fairytale, its half a dozen misremembered ones mashed together as a giant allegory to something else.
The final scene puts everything into perspective, giving the rational (and only possible) explanation that the entire story up to that point has been a dream. This isn’t like most ‘dream’ stories though where death is meaningless, it becomes quite apparent early on that there is danger here, just one pertinent danger, and Bernice’s soul (and franchise) is at stake.
Stewart Sheargold seems to have decided to write a story pitting himself, as the author, against the whole concept of Bernice Summerfield. He takes time out to highlight her inconsistencies from writer to writer, glorifying her clichés and the constant wittisisms that have now become so commonplace they’re expected. To do this he pairs her up with Adrian Wall, who has been woefully underused on audio since the Green Eyed Monster. In a way it makes sense, Jason had his fun in the Grel Escape, and despite everything else there are still some unresolved feelings between Adrian and Bernice that need settling. However, for a play as allegorical as this the absence of both Jason and Brax completely does seem odd (although it is possible Brax’s influence makes a brief appearance).
In a way it’s a shame that Jason and Brax don’t appear in this fairytale land, although references to their possible ‘characters’ in the play are mentioned. Giving Adrian time with Bernice is important, and perhaps repeating the same set-piece two more times would have made the joke wear thin, but if this was meant to represent Bernice’s psyche then we’re only seeing one side of her.
The Player clearly represents one half of Sheargold, constructing scenes and imposing dialog to create an adventure, whereas the Spinster represents the other half of his mind. She keeps track of the story, drives the heroine forwards and, at the end, provides a deux ex machina for Bernice to escape by. In terms of a writing perspective there’s a goldmine of jokes and references here, carefully deconstructing the process of writing itself and turning it into a massive joke. The Player may have been overacting slightly (read a lot) but here it fits. There are no people here, just ‘characters’ and ‘roles that need to be fulfilled.
That said, aside from being utterly bewildered for the first twenty minutes where I attempted to force ‘conventional’ storytelling methods to this drama, once the penny dropped I absolutely adored the creation. The verbal swordfight at the end is Bernice Summerfield gold, the dialogue sparkles throughout and there’s a brilliant sense of invention and comedy to the whole thing. It’s also refreshing to have a story with no ‘old’ monster, so we get something brand new and exciting.
9 / 10
A debate on Gallifrey Base forum has given me a few more thoughts I’d like to go over on this story
I think my love for it may be due to my personal ambitions as a writer. I’ve written everything from short stories to full length 200,000 word novels and I am familiar with the process of creating something. Plotting, rewriting, redrafting, adding in characters after the fact and removing them completely – fully formed creations that never existed because you realised too late that they just don’t work…
Also, I broke my rule for of this runthrough. Usually I listen to them once. For the earlier plays, Series 1-4, that didn’t matter because I can remember listening to them years ago when first released. For series 5 I haven’t had that luxury, but this one needed a second listen so I could get it right in my head. The first time round I hadn’t got the situation twigged, the second time round I loved the beginning all the more knowing what was going on.
It’s not perfect, but compared to most other ‘it’s all a dream in your head’ stories, I loved it. And personally I’d consider it only as much of a dream as ‘Oh No It Isn’t’ wasn’t real. The threat imposed by the Player is real, her possible death is real, just the frills and spills (which are nothing more than cosmetic additions to core fundamental plotting when you consider it) are make believe, and most have at least some level of metaphor for real things. To be honest this came as close to mimicking that original play as I’d ever dare tread, replacing the outright comic wordplay with something a little more subtle and overdramatic, but otherwise exactly the same.
(Incidentally, have you read Dave Stone’s Slow Empire EDA book? I picked it up about a month ago and made my way through it… Weird, but, having read some reviews online… Although they both go about it in VERY different methods both Stewart Sheargold and Dave Stone have attempted similar things – deconstructing the very format in which the story is told. Here Stewart Sheargold muses as a writer about possible situations to throw his heroine in, looking for new and innovative ways to excite readers and pose potential dangers, forever battling with his temptation to actually kill her but failing to in the end because the brand is stronger than the single writer.
Dave Stone on the other hand tells a digital book, where the beginning and the end are fixed but at no point in between does anything actually happen. The adventure is forced, the journey from A to B passing through C, D and E only happens to fill out the extra few pages to make it a novel. In neither story are there any real characters besides the main protagonists, and does anything happen which will change the way you see the world in the end. Both are, however, bold and interesting experiments in storytelling.
I really do feel that Masquerade of Death comes out slightly better in the fact it’s actually enjoyable. The Slow Empire is intellectually interesting ‘after’ the fact, but at times can feel a real slog to read through).
SPOILERS FOR 2008 DOCTOR WHO: SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY
A question?
Do you count Donna’s experience in the Library to be a dream or real? Same as Oh No It Isn’t, dream world but inhabited by many people… That doesn’t mean that anything that happened inside it was remotely real though.
It’s an interesting question though… Do ‘dream sequences’ that happen to multiple characters mean more? And just because you say its not real, although that doesn’t necessarily mean danger isn’t real, do you really loose all tangible sense of menace in your story?
In fact for me, the turning point in masquerade was when I realised that Adrian wasn’t sharing the dream with her, he was a character created by her. Up to that point I’d been sitting there sulking, because Harry Myers is usually brilliant and I’d thought he was really sub par at the start. Then, once I’d twigged, things started turning around.
That doesn’t apply to everyone of course, but as this is a very intellectually stimulating story, its worth giving out some thoughts on the matter.
(Incidentally this is one week after the finale of Ashes to Ashes. I loved that series, and Life on Mars before it. Does that mean anything?)