What do You think about Night At The Vulcan (1998)?
Night at the Vulcan, by Ngaio Marsh, b-plus, Narrated by James Saxon, Produced by Audio Partners Publishing, downloaded from audible.com.At the venerable Vulcan Theater, tensions are runninghigh on opening night. There are the usual problems, certainly: muffed lines, a late curtain, egos butting heads. But the show must go on! And it does,then the entire production is upstaged when the leading man is found backstage, dead. Was it suicide or murder, Scotland Yard's inspector RoderickAlleyn takes center stage in a puzzle that might be a macabre encore to a long-ago murder in the same backstage room. James Saxon is particularly wonderful as a reader for this book, which is about the theater and the inflamed egoes of the actors. He plays their exaggerated personas extremely well.
—Kathleen Hagen
Originally published on my blog here in October 1998.Opening Night, something of a return to form for Ngaio Marsh after a series of somewhat disappointing stories, is closely related to the short story I Can Find My Way Out, with which it shares a setting. Following the murder at the Dolphin Theatre which is the subject of the earlier story, it has lain empty for the best part of fifteen years. In the superstitious business of acting, nobody wanted to reopen such an unlucky theatre.Eventually, it is acquired by well-known actor Adam Poole, to put on a new play by the distinguished author John James Rutherford. He is joined in this by Helena Hamilton, famous as the leading lady to many of Adam Poole's performances though rather older, and her husband, the once great now alcoholic actor Clark Bennington, resentful of the old love affair between Adam and Helena.The play calls for an actress who resembles Adam, and Bennington insists that his neice Gay Gainsford is cast. This suits no one other than Bennington, for she is not interested in the type of symbolical drama Rutherford writes, is helplessly out of her depth, unhappy about having to change her appearance to more closely resembly Adam (whom she is not very like and finds it difficult to give the impression of resembling by apparently unconsciously copying his mannerisms on stage). She was far happier playing in regional rep, doing parts she could understand and which suited her. She becomes even more uneasy after the appearance on the scene of Martyn Tarne.Martyn Tarne, a young actress from New Zealand seeking work in London, is really the main character in the novel, which is told from her point of view (though in the third person). She is distantly related to Adam, but doesn't wish to presume on their kinship, so that his theatre is the last that she goes to looking for work. She has missed the auditions, but overhears a conversation by chance and volunteers to replace Helena's usual dresser, who is ill.That in itself would not be a problem, but she rather unfortunately possesses a startling resemblance to Adam, sufficiently so to provoke rumours that she may be a result of a love affair of Adam's from a tour of New Zealand twenty years ago. Her appearance and her aptitude for the part earn her the role of Gay's understudy, and pressure mounts for her to play the part outright, particularly from Rutherford. This culminates when Gay refuses to go on for the first night, and Martyn has a great triumph.The theatrical fairy story is immediately overshadowed by the death in his dressing room of Bennington, in a marder got up to look like a suicide inspired by the earlier Dolphin murder.Perhaps a little on the soft-centred side to rank with Marsh's best novels, Opening Night is nevertheless an excellent example of the crime fiction genre; reading it is an enjoyable experience.
—Simon Mcleish
* * * 1/2Down-on-her-luck Martyn Tarne (yes, "Martyn" is a female name, which threw me off a bit until I figured it out) is applying for theatre work in England, having recently arrived from New Zealand. She's down to two shillings and a few-odd pence and is seriously considering sleeping in a homeless shelter for the night. However, luck is upon her when she arrives at the Vulcan Theatre: the dresser for the noted Helena Hamilton has been taken ill, so Martyn steps into the breach. But the theatre has a bit of a gloomy past: five years previously, someone was killed by the gas fire in the dressing room. The actors, being a superstitious lot, don't talk much about it. Imagine then how much it rattles them when one of their number appears to have committed suicide in much the same manner as the previous death. Or is it really suicide...?This is a slow-burn book with a slightly rushed ending. The slow burn is at least diverting: Marsh, being a playwright, knows all about actors' foibles and quirks and is adept at describing the atmosphere of a theatre in different stages of a production. Anyone who has worked in theatre will recognize themselves at some point in the story (for me, I definitely remembered the nervous thrill of opening night and how it all feels slightly unreal). Once the death occurs, Alleyn and the troops come in and simply talk their way to a solution, which seemed a bit anticlimactic. So if you're planning to read this I would say the characters are a bigger draw than the actual plot.
—rabbitprincess
