Welcome to The Empire Theatre.
'It's the jewel of the north, The Empire. Lord Lassiter bought it for his second wife, Lady Lillian and she supervised every detail of the restoration. There's not a finer theatre in the country'.
But The Empire is not just a theatre. From music hall to vaudeville, from revue to grand musical spectacular, it holds a special place in the nation's heart. For its audience, for its actors and singers, for the stagehands, the front-of-house staff, for its backers and its debtors - and above all for its owners - it truly is a palace of dreams.
And for young Jack Treadwell, struggling to adapt to civilian life after the horrors of the trenches, it's a lifeline. When he receives a letter out of the blue inviting him to work at The Empire, he leaps at the chance. After all, it's owned by the family of his former commanding officer, Edmund Lassiter.
But as Jack soon discovers, it is not just the actors who are donning a disguise. With whispers of a cover-up, a scandal and sibling rivalry, tensions rise, along with the curtain. For there is treachery at the heart of The Empire and a dark secret waiting in the wings. Can Jack discover the truth before it is too late, and the theatre that means so much to them all goes dark?
Following the lives and loves of the Lassiter and Treadwell families, from the aftermath of the Great War and the Roaring Twenties to the dark days of the Second World War and the Blitz, Michael Ball's debut fiction series charts the story of the high notes and the low notes of British musical theatre in all its glamour, greasepaint and glory.
Look. No one is saying Michael Ball isn't an absolute legend, because he is. I've adored everything I've ever heard or seen him do, and Ball and Boe are permanently on my Christmas wish list. In fact, let me just run and see if this year's CD is showing up online yet...yes! Together in Vegas! Awesome!
Right, where was I?
Right, right! The Empire. Michael obviously has a deep, deep love of theatres and the people who populate them. The scenes set backstage are amazing. The characters are great. The fact that the bad guy is only a bad guy because he loves theatre a bit too much - wonderful. I want very much to see Hamlet!!! - I wonder if the RSC are showing anywhere near me any time soon?
However, the shenanigans were not my favourite part of the story. The prologue introduces us, very rapidly, to a lot of people who will later be varying levels of important to the story. In my proof copy, there's no spaces or definition between people, so one line is about Jack and the next is about Lillian and it took me a minute to catch up each time. Likewise, there's a cast list at the start, but in my proof it's all messed up so I couldn't track who each person was. Neither of these will be a problem in the finished copy, of course. The first half also goes by much slower than the first while pieces are being moved into place, but once it takes off it really takes off and by the end I was quite out of breath.
I don't know how closely Michael based the characters on people he's known - I'd be interested to learn who Usher might be! - but if this does ever get filmed, and I think it would be perfect for a Christmas evening movie, I'd like to suggest Michael as Ivor. He could do it perfectly!
I really did enjoy this, and I look forward to reading more in the series. I really don't know how Michael fits everything in!
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