Summary
Larry, the perennially absent stagehand, is paradoxically the invisible linchpin of a provincial theatre: his vanishing acts coincide with clockwork precision, yet the instant his lanky silhouette re-emerges the entire proscenium unspools into surreal entropy. A rolled rug belches him onto the boards; the apoplectic stage manager, already teetering on the precipice of self-command, entrusts him with a lacquered can of gunpowder intended for the leading lady’s boudoir. One illicit cigarette, one fallen match, and the manager’s seat explodes into a comet-tail of tweed, leaving the poor man to bolt, half-clad in checkerboard lingerie, through a gauntlet of scandalized chorus girls. In the catacombs Larry hammers the tyrant to a beam, then yanks the wrong lever: the prima donna, mid-aria, plummets into a vat of obsidian paint like Icarus into the sea. From the fly-loft Larry becomes a demented deity of fog machines and sandbags, dousing the star in counterfeit mist until the entire revue collapses into a single, magnificent, slow-burning catastrophe. The curtain falls on a grinning saboteur who has, without ever intending it, staged the most honest show of his life.
Synopsis
Larry, the stage hand, invariably is missing when there is work to be done. But when he's missing things run smoothly. Inadvertently, the rug is unrolled, on the stage and he appears, the stage manager loses control of himself and upsets Larry and everything else, including a can of gun powder which he is gallant enough to carry for the leading lady to her dressing room. The stage hand disobeys the rules of the house and lights a cigarette, dropping the match in the string of gunpowder. The explosion eliminates the seat of the stage manager's ample trousers. Striving to change to another pair he rushes into the dressing room of the chorus, from which he is rapidly thrown out - out onto the stage in his checkered lingerie. To escape his retaliation Larry nails the manager down the basement, but opens a stage trap by accident. The primadonna in the midst of her act is precipitated from the stage down into a cask of black paint. Larry seeks safety in the loft from which altitude he manages to ruin all the acts on the bill. When the star calls for artificial fog, he gives him a barrel full of it and wrecks the show. They all strive to get after him, but Larry comes out victor as the picture fades.
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