Work Text:
William de Worde, newsletter-writer, took out a fresh sheet of paper and sharpened his pencil to begin drafting a report. He wasn’t sure it would be worth including. He just knew that he couldn’t bear not to write it.
New Ankh-Morpork Popular Cultural Development Unlikely to Cause End of World
In recent months, the Ankh-Morpork Opera House has been performing a new style of opera, written in Morporkian rather than the traditional Brindisian, Quirmian or Dwarfish, with engaging tunes which audience members frequently go home humming or whistling.
However, unlike many trends in popular entertainment in recent years, such as Moving Pictures or Music With Rocks In, the new ‘musicals’ as they are becoming known, have not provided a portal for eldritch abominations from the Dungeon Dimensions to enter the world, nor involved the use of enchanted musical instruments mysteriously acquired from wandering shops. To date, their only noticeable effects have been to please audiences, provide the Opera House with enough revenue to replace dangerously faulty pieces of equipment, and elicit requests to the composer that his songs may be performed in music halls and taught in schools.
Neither the Opera House nor the Patrician’s staff were willing to comment on a rumour that Lord Vetinari has purchased a score of the first musical to be performed, Miserable Les, for private reading.
(William crossed out the last paragraph. None of the rulers who read his newsletter had any reason to be interested in the fact that the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork preferred to read music rather than listen to it, with the possible exception of Lady Margolotta of Überwald, who was the nearest that Havelock Vetinari had to a friend other than his dog, and undoubtedly knew far more about him than William did.)
Dr John Hicks, head of Post-Mortem Communications at Unseen University, said, ‘I’ve gone to these shows night after night and subjected them to every possible magical test, and there’s nothing occult about them. Which is a pain, because as a Dark Wizard I’d like to be able to justify studying them. I suppose I’ll just have to take up amateur dramatics in my spare time – mwahahahaha!!!!!’
These musicals, of which the four so far to be performed are Miserable Les, Hubward Side Story, Guys and Trolls and ’Tis Pity She’s an Instructor in Unarmed Combat, are all the creation of the Opera House’s recently appointed Director of Music, Walter Plinge. Mr Plinge has no formal composition training, but grew up in the Opera House where his mother worked as a cleaner until her recent retirement, and where Walter himself worked full-time as a caretaker from the age of thirteen. He says that he grew up listening to operas and wrote his first opera when he was seventeen, but that until recently he hadn’t felt confident enough to show his scores to anyone, let alone attempt to have them performed.
Mr Seldom Bucket, owner of the Opera House, denied that the Director of Music had used his position of power to get his work staged. He said, ‘No, we’re putting these on because they’ve got good tunes and words people can understand and they make money, which is more than any show we’d done lately has.’
(William wondered why he was writing this. What was its relevance to people who just wanted to know whether it was safe to go on trading with Ankh-Morpork? The previous Seriph of Al-Khali might have wanted to know, as he loved anything to do with storytelling, but he had disappeared years ago, and was almost certainly dead. There were rumours that he had taken a job in a pub in Ankh-Morpork and was married to a barmaid there, but that was just one of those ridiculous stories, like the one about the talking dog, or that the lead guitarist of The Band With Rocks In hadn’t died in a cart crash but simply left fame behind to work in a fish-and-chip shop in Quirm. William dealt in news, not gossip that almost certainly wasn’t true and was no business of anyone except the people involved if it was.
On the other hand, the King of Lancre might be interested in reading about Plinge as someone who, like himself, had unexpectedly risen from humble circumstances to be thrust into a position of power. And King Verence’s own brother, Tomjon Vitoller, was an actor living in Ankh-Morpork, after all – the star actor of the same theatre company that had Hwel Swingaxe …)
Mr Plinge’s first work, Miserable Les, is based on the true story of the Treacle Mine Road Rebellion, with the character of the hero, Les, inspired by Sergeant John Keel of the Night Watch. However, Plinge says he has no idea where the ideas for the plots of his other musicals came from, only that they were there and he needed to write them down. His work displays creative genius on par with that of Hwel Swingaxe, playwright in residence at The Dysk Theatre.
Audience members have commented on the similarity of plot between Hubward Side Story, a tragic romance about a dwarf and a troll in modern-day Ankh-Morpork, and Swingaxe’s play Starcrossed, about teenage lovers from feuding families in Genua in the Century of the Griffin. However, the notebook in which the original score of Hubward Side Story was written came from a stationer that went out of business before Starcrossed was ever performed, and Mr Swingaxe says he is sure that the two are unconnected.
Swingaxe commented, ‘Lots of the ideas in these musicals are ones that I’ve seen in my dreams but never told anyone about, let alone written down. Maybe the old Ephebian legend is true and there are gods of writers who keep sending ideas to us until someone actually uses one. Plinge did a lot better working the mask, the cats and the roller-skates into a show than I did.’
William screwed up the paper into a ball and threw it into the wastepaper basket. He was a newsletter-writer, not a writer of entertainment like Plinge or Swingaxe. He was there to write reports that it was in someone’s interests to read, not reports of things people might be interested in. He took out a new sheet of paper and began writing a report on the golem liberation movement.
Before he went back to his lodgings, though, he took out the screwed-up ball of paper, smoothed it out, and put it in his pocket to take home. It might not be news, but he was glad he had written it, all the same.