“Ok everyone, take your places. Make up! Make up … Where’s my wife?”
The curtains separate at the old performing arts building in Kyiv’s Podil, revealing a bare-chested Publowsky in a Viking helmet blowing a drinking horn center stage.
“Kill The Ferret. Kill The Ferret. Kill The Ferret – Kill him dead!” he sings to the tune of Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries.”
Enter Lemurov, stage left, dressed in black, head to toe, like a weeping widow, and carrying a handful of daisies.
“No, No. I will not let him go. I will not let him go! Let him go. Let him go. No, No. I will not let him go,” he sings to the tune of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
From the prompt corner, a tense but euphoric Jim Hidshits, the play’s pear-shaped director, can be seen waving a script to one of the other actors waiting in the wings.
In the VIP box sit Boss Lard and Welsh Losser dressed in smoking jackets and commenting on the spectacle in progress as well as theater in general, particularly as it relates to public relations and ultimate messaging.
“Overdone is all that comes to my mind,” says Losser in between curt sips of cheap brandy, some of which nevertheless dribbles down his chin.
“I’m told this is a tragedy, Welsh. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out who’s supposed to die. The fat man’s already singing, and the lady – if one can really call him that – looks like she’s already buried someone.
Enter Josh Davies, stage right, with a large scythe in one hand, and the other holding the black weeping mask of Melpomene over his own face, which is painted white in the expression of the classical comic mask of Thalia.
“Kill a Ferret? What’s all this talk about killing a Ferret?” Davies begins his soliloquy. “They’re pesky little creatures to be sure – no one can deny. But I could no more imagine taking one’s life than taking candy from a baby or lying to my poor ol’ mother.”
Back in the VIP box, Losser lifts slightly out of his chair to surreptitiously break wind.
“It’s garbage, I’m telling you – cheap tripe peddled by the basest of minds in search of instant and undeserved recognition,” he says, while leaning his head toward but not looking at Lard.
“Cage one of the buggers – yes, I might do that,” continues Davies, flashing his white painted face to the audience at the end of each sentence, as if to say: ‘Do you really believe what I’m saying, ha, ha.’
“Did this son of a bitch ever work for me,” asks Lard, pointing at Davies and also not looking at his companion in the VIP box. “I realize that he’s all painted up like a partygoer, but that voice sounds familiar, and quite frankly gives me the willies.”
“But only so as to admire its crafty character close up,” continues Davies. “To look into its beady eyes and find something almost human.”
“Do not let him go. Do not let him go!!” echoes a phonograph from backstage, prompting Davies to hunch his back and approach the edge of the proscenium stage, scythe raised in parallel to his vulture-like neck.
“I’m a farmer of sorts, you might say,” says the saggy-assed thespian, now addressing the audience close up, almost intimately. “I’ve tried my hand at everything from rhubarb to rutabaga, from pigs to possums, from vestal virgins to Viagra.”
A yelp is released from the rear of the parterre, and a yellow-turbaned figure can be seen awkwardly making his way to a side exit.
“But there’s nothing like a Ferret, dear friends and foes. For it lies in lies, and hides behind the truth. It talks the talk, but you won’t catch it walking under any circumstances. Indeed, the varmint is partial to crawling, out of sight – or occasionally riding a bike, in the other direction, if you follow my meaning…”
“Damn it, Losser, I think I’ve shit my pants. Did you bring any diapers with you by any chance?”
From the prompt corner, Hidshits can be seen frantically peeling away pages of the script in search of Davies’s lines, while Publowsky looks over the director’s shoulder scratching his head.
“But best of all it flies!” shouts Davies, now pointing up into the upper reaches of the theater’s balconies, where Ferret Light Aqua Fresh can now be seen swinging on a wire back and forth between the cheapest and all but the cheapest seating sections.
‘Heh, heh. You won’t catch me paying full admission,’ he seems to be saying.
In a corner of that same balcony section sits a half-sized woman bound and gagged with frightened eyes. The Ferret had originally planned to carry her off into the theater’s rafters before a horrified audience to achieve heightened dramatic effect, but soon scrapped that idea after realizing that, small as she was, the woman still outsized him significantly.
Publowsky, having thrown off his Viking helmet, and taken on the noble gesture of a rescuer, is promptly coaxed back into an armchair and served a cool alcoholic refreshment by Hidshits and stagehands anxious to let the show go on.
Lemurov, now center stage and still clutching those daisies, emits a desperate sigh and then faints in full site of Davies, who gives him a look as if briefly considering to hack him up with the scythe before his exit.
Lard is still being helped into a pair of three-cornered briefs for inconstant older men by the always accommodating Losser when a resolute knock is heard from the other side of their box.
Before either of the PR executives can respond or even take up a more dignified position, a shot rings out.
The assassin, stiff-haired but now dressed in a dark suit rather than a paper loincloth, then leaps down onto the main floor of the theater, injuring his leg in the fall.
“Boss Lard’s been shot!”
“Animal Boy did it.”
“Losser’s covering his ass.”
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, August 12, 2013