Thursday, July 3: 7 pm
I got to start this show off by hitting another of my top priorities:
Lily Ockwell's Romola, the only Romola (barring Katie Lusby's
long-defunct version) that I had never followed. Thanks again to the
magic of earlier-starting weekday shows, I found her in the Horse and
Stars, chatting quietly with the Barman (Daniel Whiley). As soon as
I walked in, though, she broke off and headed for the Grocer's, where
she reacted more aggressively to the taste of the orange slice than
anyone I've ever seen before. Once she made her way into the
Secretary's office, the fun began. I'd heard she was the goofy, dim
Romola, and that's basically what I got.
She poked around the office, fell off her chair, and then began to
type. Ah, the infamous Lily-Romola typing scene I had heard so much
about, where she would mistake the “ding” from the typewriter at
the end of the line for the sound of the phone ringing. She typed
with two fingers, slowly at first, then quickly and aggressively –
clearly just typing gibberish, unlike the others. She reached the
end of the page and then – nothing. I saw her eyes quickly dart to
the phone and back. She started over on a new line, typing even
faster. She hit the end of the page and – nothing. Again. Third
try, third end, third nothing. Finally she metaphorically threw her
hands in the air and picked up the phone anyway. Ah, well.
Soon we began our journey into the studio, which meant a stop off at
the Doctor's office. This was my first look at Doctor Booth, the
meanest, crankiest Doctor of all. Romola asked if he was Mr.
Stanford (an easy mistake to make, admittedly), then ran into the
wall on her way out of the room. There she is, amiable, silly, and
dumb as a post. Once we got downstairs to the actual Mr. Stanford (Adam
Burton), though, some of the nuance started to emerge. She seemed to
hunger for his affection and approval in a way that none of the
other, more reserved Romolas ever did, launching into the kiss with a
shocking ferocity. There's an emptiness inside her, and it's not
just between her ears. Stanford, in turn, seemed a little more
concerned as well – rather than simply tell her to go to Studio 5,
he tried to prompt her to remember on her own where she needed to go.
He failed completely, of course, but I for one appreciated the
effort.
Up in Studio 5, I got to revisit the only scene of the loop that I
had seen previously. I was particularly focused on how she handled
the car keys, and I was delighted to pick up on a new detail that I
hadn't noticed the last time around – when the voiceover
instructions came through, she shut her eyes and retrieved them
blind, her hands extended zombie-like in front of her (I did notice
that last part the previous time). Such a striking example of just
how under control she is.
Once we moved into the Seamstress's (Annabeth Berkeley) workroom,
Romola's facade began to crack even further. She kept up the silly
front, commenting on how she liked having people play with her hair,
and how fun it was to have someone put makeup on her – but the
mounting panic underneath was becoming more and more obvious. The
juxtaposition was surprisingly effective – I could feel my guts
clenching up in response to her stress. When the Doctor finally
chased her down to her shrine in order to give her the pea, I was
surprised to see that silly, goofy Romola had transformed into a
wild, panicked beast. She was by far the most frightened Romola I'd
seen in that scene, lashing out with her arms, eyes flitting
desperately for an escape – her facade was entirely gone; she was
reacting purely from the brain stem. It was awful to watch. And
also kind of amazing.
Once she had been successfully drugged, she headed out into town,
where she picked a white mask standing right next to me for the 1:1.
Drat. Generally speaking, I don't mind missing out on 1:1's, as I've
had them all at least once now. But Romola is a special case,
because her 1:1 really is the end of the story, and it feels kind of
like the film broke at the last reel if you don't go into the motel
with her. Still, nothing to be done. Especially as, a few moments
later, one of my friends nudged me and whispered, “didn't stand a
chance, man. That was Felix,” once again demonstrating just how
oblivious I am to the white masks around me. How had I not realized
I was sharing a loop with the creator of the show (not to mention one of my
friends, evidently. And another friend as well, I later found out)?
I had a plan for the second loop already in mind, so I decided to let
my Romola experience end there. But it was not quite time – we
were still slightly pre-reset, so I headed over to the Gatekeeper's
office. I found him (Nico Migliorati) drawing a gate on the back of
a sheet of paper. Then he went off to close the gate, and I quickly
abandoned him, so that I wouldn't be stuck on the wrong side. The reset was over, and now I had somewhere to be. I headed off for the Horse & Stars to find
Dwayne (Luke Murphy). Yes, that's right, Dwayne. Time to bite the
bullet and do a loop with him, just because I'd never done it before.
I picked Luke Murphy's Dwayne because I knew Luke to be a strong,
charismatic performer from Sleep No More, and I hoped that maybe he
would mitigate the fact that I am absolutely, totally, physically repulsed by
the character of Dwayne. More the fool I.
He was just finishing getting dressed when I found him, and I
followed him out into the arcade, where he dropped off a rose in
front of the drugstore and battered on the door, which is why the
Drugstore Girl (Lucia Choccaro) came out to watch him dance. Finally
have that missing piece of the puzzle. Since I had arrived with
Dwayne, I actually had my pick of viewing positions for the dance
with Mary (Laure Bachelot) and Faye (Miranda Mac Letten), and I
decided to try “right next to the benches” for the first time.
It was an interesting new perspective – I sacrificed my view of
the first portion of the dance, but got a much better look at the
back half, and picked up on a bit of choreography that had previously
eluded me. Near the end, the three of them all sit down together,
and Dwayne puts his arm around Faye – but his hand comes to rest on
Mary's shoulder. She does not react well to this and gets up, while
he desperately clutches and tries to hold on to her. That's what
inspires her to leave, and more importantly, to pull Faye away from
him as well – she's actually looking out for her friend. It's a
nice bit of character work that I really can't believe I never
grasped before.
Once the ladies had departed, we returned to the Horse & Stars
for a fun rendition of “Don't Fence Me In,” featuring Harry
Greener (James Traherne) on the ukelele. When Conrad (Ben Whybrow)
joined them toward the end, Dwayne gave him a long, lingering look
that I couldn't decipher – it was either “I know who you are and
what you're doing, and I'm scheming about how to use that to my
advantage” or “HELLO NURSE! . . . and I'm scheming about how to
use you to my advantage.” I suppose the end result is the same
either way.
Then we moved over to the other side of the room for Conrad's
Cabaret. I took up a spot right by Dwayne, trying to see things from
his perspective. It was here that I finally identified this look
that he makes extensive use of. It's kind of a squinty smirk, the
sort of look that just makes me want to punch him. I hereby christen
that look the “squirk.” Oddly enough, he actually dropped it for
a moment when he first saw Mary come in – but it popped right back
up as soon as he started scheming again.
Speaking of Mary – there was something wrong with her when she came
into the bar. It took me a minute to figure it out, but then it hit
me: she was alone, and William was nowhere to be seen. It made
Dwayne's scheming with the Barman and Conrad all a bit silly – he
conspired with the both of them to put on some sort of show with each
other, in order to. . . what? Entertain Mary while he spoke to her?
Distract all of those invisible masked ghosts? Kind of weird.
After that came the first of two completely new scenes to me, as
Dwayne sat outside his trailer, drinking and reading a postcard. It
was kind of funny seeing him there – every time I go to that
trailer, I'm in the company of either Faye or Romola, so I really
associate it more with them than him. He actually felt a little like
a trespasser.
Then he was off to find Mary again, and take her in to the Studio. I
got caught behind a crowd and took an alternate route, zipping
through the clothing maze and arriving at the door of Studio 5
literally seconds before they got there. Smooth. The dance they
have in Studio 5 is such a bizarre juxtaposition – on the one hand,
it plays as a sweet, romantic date. They frolic, they play house,
they fall in love. On the other hand, it's a really sleazy
seduction, and Luke plays up that aspect of it for all that it's
worth, squirking and scheming through the whole thing. There were
several points where it almost looked like she tried to run away, but
he physically manhandled her back into the dance.
Also, when he pulled out a bracelet from the dresser to give to Mary,
he went ahead and pulled another one for Faye out at the same time.
He already knew he was going to play them both. In the middle of his
scheming and seducing, he was already planning his next conquest.
I hate him so fucking much.
After Bulldog, I moved quickly to the dressing area to find a good
spot where I'd be able to catch all of his dialogue with the various
ladies passing by. Normally I miss a lot of it because I'm either
hanging around by the locker room watching Faye or positioning myself
to leave the room – or both. Thus, I got to see him hit on Andrea,
with a cheesy “You just get prettier every time I see you.” Then
Faye came by, and I got to see him hit on her, with a cheesy “You
just get prettier every time I see you.”
God damn it, Dwayne, seriously? The same line? Hatred.
I missed the second half of the scene, out in the hallway, because I
was too far inside the room to get past the rest of the white masks,
but I still saw him slip that bracelet onto her wrist. Then it was
out to town, where he had his “romantic” dance with Mary on the
car, but by this time, I was so keyed to just how dominating and
controlling his choreography was that it felt like borderline date
rape. Once it was over, he wandered to the cinema for the second of
the new scenes, a sort of emotional breakdown dance in front of the
“Leader of the Pack” poster bearing his name. I suppose I should
have felt a little bad for him at this point, but not a chance.
Fast forward a bit, and we come to the hoedown, and his final
seduction of Mary just outside. I never thought I'd see something
more horrible and cruel than Vinicius Salles' wipe/zip/sniff move
after he finishes with Mary, but the way that Luke's Dwayne literally
pulled out and shoved her aside in the same motion, while staring
into the bar at William (Ygal Jerome Tsur), managed to top it. And here I thought there was no way he could actually shock me with his loathsomeness. It also cast a bit of a
new light on the whole story. He seemed so intently focused on
William, and so completely dismissive of Mary, that I wondered if he
was ever really interested in Mary at all – or if the real goal was
just to hurt William. Perhaps because he is more consciously playing
his role in the greater story than most of the others, or perhaps
that's just how nasty and cruel he is. I don't really know for sure
– but either way, in that moment, I somehow managed to hate him
even more. I stuck around for the fight, then took off. I'd had
enough. No more Dwayne. I came away very impressed with Luke's
performance, which really was full of fascinating little details and
choices that really brought him to life – but every single one of
those details and choices just made me hate Dwayne even more, to the
point where I was eventually no longer able to enjoy it. I was just
flat-out angry and miserable.
The antidote to my anger was to track down another of my top priority
performances – Sam Booth as the Doctor. When I arrived in the
medial suite, he was locked away in a 1:1, so I just poked about the
room for a minute until he emerged. I was surprised to see what
looked like a smudged, black “X” on his forehead – clearly this
Doctor was going to be a bit different from the rest. I immediately
started thinking of cults and Manson-esque markings, not realizing
just how hilariously wrong I would turn out to be.
He rushed over to the door to peek in on Romola's makeup session,
then grabbed a pea and went down to the hallway – so I wound up
watching him drug her for the second time that night. It was, if
anything, even more harrowing than the first. I have no idea how she
managed to up the intensity and terror even further, but somehow, she
did. Then we were off to the basement for the new Lila/Doctor reset
scene! I love that in the last couple of months of the show, they
were still adding new material. Once out of the stairwell, the
Doctor made a beeline for the foley room, grabbed Lila's bag and
clothes, and then went out the back, which marked the first time I'd
ever seen a character enter the back half of the foley room, if only
briefly. He headed into one of the unused rooms behind the Temple
Anteroom, which I had previously thought to be empty, but which I now
saw had some sort of industrial apparatus built into the wall. Lila
(Kath Duggan) came in, signed a form that was hanging on a pillar,
then stripped down to her underwear and stood in the Vitruvian Man
pose, just like Wendy and William during their examinations. The
Doctor switched on a UV light and proceeded to spray her down with
air from a massive compressor. The best description would be that it
was some sort of decontamination, but the purpose of it is beyond me.
Afterward, Lila departed and we headed to the Temple for the reset
scene with Stanford, which was downright surreal – almost like
seeing a doppelganger. It went largely like the last time I saw the
scene, but Sam and Adam added in a little extra bit – a strange,
brief, twisting, mirrored dance just before the mutual eyeball
examination.
Afterward, the Doctor grabbed the mannequin, posed it as if dancing,
and waltzed down to the 1:1 room with it. There, he slowly extended
the mannequin's hand to a white mask and used it to pull her inside,
as if couldn't be bothered to take her hand himself. I waited around
for a while until he finally emerged for a dance that wasn't really
very dancey with the PA (Stephanie Nightingale). Then he proceeded
to make the most drawn-out journey possible out of the basement, crawling
around behind pillars and even briefly getting himself stuck behind
one. Finally, we escaped the basement and emerged into Studio 2,
where Wendy (Katherine Cowie) was just leaving the birthday party.
With barely a word, he led her upstairs for her examination, after
which he settled into his office for inkblot making time.
The theme of the loop thus far was definitely “Slow.” Everything
was done slowly. I was amazed at how little had actually happened
given how long I had spent with him. It was even a touch boring,
which made me quite sad. At least he wasn't just spending the loop
as a 1:1 machine, like some Doctors. Better to watch him go through
the motions slowly than to be repeatedly separated and left in an
empty room. This scene marked a bit of a turning point, though –
here he started using the slowness and silence to great effect.
First came the creation of the inkblot itself, made up of a brief
splatter of red and several black Es and Ms. Once it was done, he
stared at it, then he glared at it. Nothing happened for the longest
time, and then he slowly turned it sideways, just as he does for
Stanford at the reset.
Bam! Shocked by what he saw, he leapt to his feet, knocking his chair
over and scaring the living daylights out of a poor white mask so
badly that she screamed out loud. Yeah, that was worth the wait.
Then things got really weird. He took another look at the blot, then
locked on and stared directly at it. Slowly, slowly (yes, we're back
to that), he began to unzip his pants, and he picked up his chair and
sat back down at the desk. Still staring at the blot, he started to
stroke himself under the desk. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I had heard about this scene before, but part of me refused to
believe it actually happened. But there it was. Then he started
leaning in toward the blot, dropping his head lower and lower toward
the desk. Slowly, slowly. . . still moving his hand underneath. His
eyes closed, his forehead touched down, his hand finally came to a
stop.
Yes, I just watched the Doctor fall asleep while masturbating over an
inkblot. And managed to solve the mystery of the ink-smudged
forehead, all in one fell swoop. He slept there for what seemed like
an eternity, until the Seamstress arrived for a chat, and he sprung
to life, shouting “. . . nothing!” Once again, a moment worth
the wait. The whole conversation after that was so snippy, flat, and
dismissive – I was beside myself with amusement. Once she was
gone, he composed himself just in time for Romola's arrival, and
followed her down to the shrine – scenes I had witnessed earlier in
the show. Then it was back to the medical suite, where he sat down
to read William's file for. . . well, for a while. Eventually he
jumped up and shined his light at the door, at the exact moment that
William burst through it – impressive timing.
After William's exam, he grabbed some pills and headed to Studio 5,
where the Infidelity Ballet was in full swing. While the cameras and
lights were on Wendy and Frankie (Conor Doyle), he slipped up on to
Andrea's (Fania Grigoriou) stage to force-feed her some pills. The
Seamstress had to restrain her while he did it, and I was pretty
creeped out by just how much she seemed to enjoy it. Then we headed
back down to the shrine just in time to catch Dolores (Sarah Dowling)
as she arrived for treatment. The flashlight chase down the hallway
is always surprisingly harrowing, no matter which side of the scene
you wind up on. Confession time: as we raced down the hallway, I did
a little bit of shoulder barging and pushing. Not a lot, but some.
In my defense, they were trying to merge very slowly into moving
traffic. If we were driving and the same thing had happened, they
would totally have gotten the ticket. But still, I felt a little
bad. Sorry, everyone.
Once Dolores was rejuvenated, the Doctor headed over to his
consultation room for the first time since I had started his loop.
He stopped at the door, unlocked it, then looked slowly around the
room, his eyes briefly locking on almost everyone. It was impossible
to tell what he was thinking. Then he threw the door open and said
“I will see you know.”
See who? No one moved. But hey – fortune favors the bold, right?
I stepped inside, and he closed the door after me, locking me in for
what would prove to be my very last 1:1 at The Drowned Man. And it
was a doozy, equal parts hilarious and terrifying. I actually came
out a little unsteady – but fortunately, we were into rerun
territory, as the next thing that happened was the Doctor/Romola/Pea
scene at the shrine, for the third time that night. Once again, I
think she found a way to ratchet up the intensity just a little bit
more. I have no idea how.
Then it was down to Studio 2 for the murder, and the Doctor grabbed
someone from behind just as he stepped through the door. I continued
onward, satisfied with my Doctor Booth experience, and settled in for
the finale.
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