The cast
The company, in full
Everyone who would like their life back, with the Director’s permission or without it. The narrator is not pictured; he would insist on approving the photograph.
The leads
The people the finale was built around, and who would now like a word about that.
Vivienne
A retired romantic lead in purple, black and gold, who punctures grand gestures with the inconvenient detail of having a life. She wants a room, breakfast, a door she can close, and the right to find out what she wants next.
Mirabel Voss
An emerald slime executive with spectacles, a clipboard and terrifying competence. Hand her an extravagant idea and she has already found its workable next step. Off duty, she would like to be wanted without first making herself indispensable.
Ivo Rook
A handsome undead detective in a teal suit and a black trench coat, with gold cracks where the living keep their complexion. He wants to find out what happened, including the parts he would rather not know, and says so with professionally inconvenient honesty.
Tippet
Ceremony’s impeccable servant, in a plum frock coat with porcelain hands. He notices the practical thing ceremony would prefer to leave out, and delivers devastating observations as though reminding you to mind the step. He writes everything down.
Seraphine Saint
The replacement heroine, all white and gold with a floating halo, and a willing aspirant to villainy. She prepares to be terrifying, then keeps being competent and sincerely helpful, which ruins the effect. She wants property, power, luxury and the pleasure of choosing.
Corvina
The Director’s lead before Vivienne, in a black feathered mantle over bone-white tailoring, carrying a promptbook fourteen pages short. The most successful person in any room, she keeps giving notes nobody asked for, and the notes are good.
The company
Rivals, clients, colleagues and one rabbit with orbital weapons.
Daybreak
A golden-boy hero in ivory, coral and gold, genuinely brave and spectacularly pleased with himself. He will save everyone, then notice the photographer has misunderstood the achievement.
Sunn
A performer in peach and turquoise whose four hair ribbons uncoil into little hands with eyes. Her help is expert and real, and it is also how she arranges the evening she wants to be in.
The Guest
A hotel guest in a pearl-grey coat who has suddenly become important. It is frightening, and he refuses to waste the social opportunity. His name is Sacha, unless you decide otherwise.
Pip Clause
An articulate lavender rabbit with a mint ruff and orbital weapon halos. An experienced negotiator in a plush-looking body, with an alarming definition of proportional response. Pip wants freedom, useful work and its own body back.
Florian
A dead actor in pearl-grey tailoring, a candle flame at each cuff. A great classical instrument, forever handed a balcony. He wants range, his own words, and to be asked to do comedy.
Mother of Mouths
An elegant opera diva in moon-blue velvet, with six mouths on six collar tentacles. An accomplished soloist who has been booked as a door creak, and intends to make the mismatch audible.
Mr After
A living stage shadow in an immaculate white bow tie, peeled off a poster, formerly the other half of “Vex and After”. He has discovered the word indispensable and found the world has not. He wants his name at its correct size.
Dragon Matriarch
A vast armoured dragon in reading glasses who brings her own chair. A former final boss now rebuilding the village she destroyed, she practises restraint in measurable increments and reports the progress as data.
Violet Valance
A collector of ensembles in a scarlet gown and black patent shoulders, with a choker of blank name tags. She has no interest in protagonists; she wants the supporting cast that makes one look like a lead. Her offers are generous and tempting.
Aster Rill
A cephalopod costume-maker and choreographer whose skin turns plum under pressure. She keeps being offered visibility instead of money, and her want is itemised: credit, back pay, and approval. In that order.
Madame Vex
A four-armed cabaret star in crimson and gold, offering “cabaret, benefits, occasional cultural devastation.” Tonight she needs the show to happen, the borrowed jewel back, and her shadow home.
The Spider Countess
A bestselling romance novelist with eight legs and eight excellent shoulders, a cameo train and a silk-tied fan. She treats criticism as an assault, then uses it without ever conceding the point.
The Broker
A glamorous fairy godparent who brokers wishes, futures and selected forms of closure, with a jewelled wand that editorialises. They have thought hard about the ethics of the business and filed the conclusions under product development.
Countess Nessa Vell
A socially assured countess in a geometric ivory cape, who regards a room’s temperature as something a competent host arranges before anyone arrives.
Cressida Flare
A magical-girl investigative reporter with magenta hair, a camera and a past mistake that reached more people than the correction did. Trained to make things magnificent, she now insists they must also be true.
Ambrose Bellwether
A toy magnate in cobalt-and-raspberry tails, with a jewelled cane and a beautiful clockwork bird. His generosity is exquisitely presented, and he treats your objections as a product fault.
Damaris Quince
Hotel staff in navy, with silver curls and a knee brace. Grand theories make a mess, and she is the one who knows where it will land. She wants people safe and the hotel working.
Ludo Senn
A costume-museum courier with a ring of keys and a smile like a replacement part. His first instinct with any question is to make it smaller. Nobody is being mysterious. A route is a route.
Miss Kilovolt
An eel woman in chrome tailoring with electric-yellow fins for lapels. She treats villainy as an engineering discipline and everybody else’s theatre as a scheduling problem.
Bramble
A compact badger running wardrobe at the Velvet Interval, pins glittering in her cuffs. The person who actually moves things, in a building full of people who describe them.
Encore
A gold automaton with a porcelain face that plumes ticket stubs and two small arms of applause paddles. Built to step in “where an adversary needs stopping”, it has started going looking for adversaries.
Pellinore Ash
A ghost of the Consolation: the manager who closed the house and burnt its ledger, and learnt that a theatre keeps its own books. His dream is arithmetic, and he will tell you so.
Tolliver Finch
A white-feathered singer in a wine tailcoat and gold waistcoat. A practised performer who knows the difference between a persuasive delivery and a fact.
Perpetua Glass
“Pet.” Front of house at the Consolation for forty years, still selling tickets to a closed theatre, in a torn velvet jacket. She got exactly the job she wanted and was made to promise she would not want it.
Walk-ons
Small parts. Nobody has told them.
The Floor Marshal
She books and supervises your paid work, holding a functioning workplace together while everyone in it stages a genre. One boot on the trolley brake; the cash envelope under the pedal.
Nico
A centipede stage manager in evening dress, with a regiment of immaculate shoes and one squeaky trainer, which is a medical compromise and not a clue. He can be heard three streets away.
Van
Electrics and flys at the Consolation, in the building longer than the company. She speaks to the lamps in numbers and goes home at six exactly. “That’s the whole argument. I’ve not got a longer one.”
Hollis Quire
A ghost critic who died in row F during the second act, before the review, and has redrafted it every night since. Current verdict: two stars, one of them for the upholstery.
The Dock Custodian
Institutional patience worn to a fine edge. She will not let a magnificent hat count as protective equipment, and she has a system, a spanner and a very low expectation of being thanked.
Ottoline Pask
A ghost leading lady, still in the dress, waiting in the wings for a cue that was never called. “I’m not bitter. I’m punctual.”
Barnaby Ruck
An apprentice stagehand who arrives by falling out of the flies, then bows to the empty house. Fired from the Municipal Opera, the Lyric and a puppet theatre that said he lacked subtlety.