ACT 1 - MURDER
2:20pm Opera house
Abigail Ansley is finally on stage. Her true love Lawrence Connor stands beside her as they act, yes finally act, Shakespeare’s Othello.
That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world: my heart's subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord:
I saw Othello's —
Abigail stares at the masked man who has walked on the stage. He has a gun. His strangle seemingly familiar eyes are crazed with desperate passion. Everyone starts to panic, rushing for the door. Chaos breaks out in the theatre.
In a rage he shoots Lawrence. He collapses to the ground in a pool of blood. She rushes over to him, hold on, hold on she begs - but it is no use. Her love stares longingly into her eyes - until he is gone. She feels as though the mist itself is screaming, so suddenly, so apparently from all sides at once, until a deadly silence falls.
In a red sea of panic and despair she bursts into the eccentric streets of Wellington. Her gown rips a red seam that cuts through the flesh of the city. She seeks the murderer. She tries to remember him, he was in black, yes thats right, a rose perhaps… She runs to the shoe factory where people may know of such strangers.
ACT 2 - HUNT
2:40pm Hannah Factory
Have you seen him - the man who killed Lawrence - the man dressed in black, the one with the rose? Let me in, let me in, she demands. Up and down the building she goes, seeking him. Loud the voices and the steps of trade, a hustle and bustle about. The dark passages seem cold, the walls closing in. A whisperer thinks he has seen the masked man at a place called the Working man's Club on Cuba St.
ACT 3 - SECRET PETALS
3:15pm Working mans club
Out on the streets, she notices that something is happening. The city is full of life with sweet smells and a rumble of beats - a festival perhaps, is the circus in town? Maybe the one with the baby elephant? The city has awoken; yet an air of murder pulls through the night. She must get to a higher vantage point. She must find answers.
Atop her stage, she spreads her soft limbs among dreaming flowers. Red petals fall to the ground and secrets find their way into foreign hands. The people of the city can join her, come seek the man, come find him.
And then she sees him - the masked man - the murderer - lurking in the shadow of the stage. She calls to him - why did you kill him? He appears again and yells something to her, come down he says, come. In a flurry of red madness, she rushes to find him.
Down on the streets she finds herself alone once more. The masked man has disappeared, but still she believes he is watching her - what does he want, why is he here? Where did he go?
ACT 4 - LOSS
4pm Left bank
As she wanders her garment fills a blood red landscape into the city. The monumental woman of the night, searching for lost answers, for lost lovers. Tangled, uncanny thoughts - who is he, why does she know him? Something about desire perhaps. Something about the fears, the fires of youth. Exhausted, she collapses. The sky turns red in her eyes. She must find a place to rest. She realises she cannot return to her theatre, her old abandoned life starts to creep back. She decides on the old Peoples Palace, where friends may reside.
ACT 5 - ILLUMINATED
6pm CQ Hotel - The Peoples Palace
Rugged she stands, no garlands of bright flowers. She gazes into the rumbling city as the sky slowly turns to dust. The night brings new people and music - laughter and song echo throughout the streets.
Yet she aches of pain. Lawrence is gone, the reality she lives is so hard to believe. A monster inside her is screaming, she wants to be free of this mayhem. As she stares into the night, pieces of memory start to fall into place, the murderer’s eyes - she is certain she knows him - but how. Suddenly her worst nightmares begin to surface, could he be a man of her past, a past she hoped to leave behind? Could it be possible, the roses, the mask, the eyes…
ACT 6 - RED MONSTER
6.40pm Albemarle, Mayfair Gentleman's Club
A crowd is gathering outside the old Albemarle, the Mayfair Gentleman’s Club. The graceful building stands quietly in the night, with its old dark stone facades and the round turret on top. It is almost as if it lived in another time, another place far from now. But behind those doors lives a time Abigail once left, a time she sort to run from.
She looks up to the roof to see him, the masked man. He is here, calling to her. Her fears begin to come true - it can only be one man. One man who claimed her once, one man her sold her to the city. One man who will never let go. She wants to fight, to fight this wrong love - this truth, but she must know, she must see, she must go to him.
She takes to the stairs, up and up she goes. The ladies of the night glare at her. The sphinx of the city, the dark city - the place of lost dreams. Her gown now drags behind her, clinging to the sharp stairs. The dress that once set her free is weighing her down, seeping its way into the building.
She reaches the roof top. Her head drops on her hands, and for an instant she struggled with an almost irresistible impulse to put her hand in his. She faces the man she knows she must not desire. And now not only is he a man who commands her struggling heart - this is the man - the murderer - the one who took her Lawrence. The man who stole her life.
She subjects herself to her city - she belongs to the city now - the strong queen city of the south. Her gown desperately clutches to the side of the building. Her moral gown of beauty. Under electric skies in the glamour of the night-time city, she accepts her fate. She gives herself to the reality, time collapses into darkness.
* All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.