Read Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway Online
Authors: Diana Dempsey
Tags: #fiction, Broadway, theater, mystery, cozy mystery, female sleuth, humor
Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway
MS AMERICA
AND THE
BROUHAHA ON BROADWAY
(Beauty Queen Mysteries, No. 5)
Diana Dempsey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2015 by Diana Dempsey
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
ISBN:
978-0-9906964-4-5
First electronic edition December 2015
Table of Contents
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM DIANA DEMPSEY
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Beauty Queen Mysteries
Ms America and the Offing on Oahu (No. 1)
Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas (No. 2)
Ms America and the Mayhem in Miami (No. 3)
Ms America and the Whoopsie in Winona (No. 4)
Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway (No. 5)
Also available from Diana Dempsey
Falling Star
To Catch the Moon
Too Close to the Sun
Chasing Venus
Ring of Truth
(anthology featuring “A Diva Wears the Ring”)
One of the many joys of writing
Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway
was doing the research. Once I set this New York City-based mystery on Broadway, the first person I phoned for help was Beth Blatt, whom I met in Tokyo 25 years ago and have been lucky to call a friend ever since.
Beth’s work in musical theater has earned her any number of awards, grants, and fellowships.
The Mistress Cycle
, for which she wrote the book and lyrics, won The Directors’ Choice Award at The New York Musical Theatre Festival. Beth is also the founder and CEO of
Hope Sings
, a for-benefit music organization.
Beth introduced me to Mindi Dickstein, a librettist and lyricist whose songs have been performed at the Kennedy Center and as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook. A winner of the Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, among other accolades, Mindi is currently writing the lyrics for three musicals:
Benny and Joon
,
Snow in August
, and
At the Beck
.
Beth also put me in touch with Robert DuSold, an actor who toured nationally with
Evita
, played Javert in
Les Misérables
on Broadway and with the first national company, and lists
Cats
,
Phantom of the Opera
,
Mamma Mia
, and numerous other musicals among his credits. Along with Thomas Caruso, he conceived for the stage the upcoming musical
Southern Comfort
, based on the Sundance Award-winning documentary. A winner of the Jonathan Larson Award,
Southern Comfort
will begin preview performances at the Anspacher Theater in New York on February 23, 2016.
I am so grateful to Beth, Mindi, and Robert for sharing their profound wisdom about musical theater and Broadway. I also thank Aixa Martinez for her unerring guidance on fashion and fur coats and Bill Fuller for the wide variety of help he provided—literary, Broadway-oriented, and otherwise. And thank you again to Rhonda Freshwater for her gorgeous cover art. I don’t know how she keeps outdoing herself, but she does.
And as always, my husband Jed was insightful, encouraging, and supportive throughout. He even came up with inspired ideas for my cover design! I don’t know how many more first-draft manuscripts he’ll be willing to go through (and second and third draft, too), but let’s hope it’s a really big number.
I know a lot of superstitious beauty queens. I myself have never been one of them. But I have the funniest feeling that may change here in New York City.
Trixie Barnett—the reigning Ms. Congeniality and one of my best friends ever—unleashes a delighted giggle. “I still can’t believe we’re watching a Broadway show from the wings! I feel like such an insider.”
“An
Off
-Broadway show,” Shanelle corrects. Ms. Walker, otherwise known as Ms. Mississippi and as dear to my heart as Trixie, can be a stickler for details. “And since we’re consultants for this fiasco, we
are
insiders.”
Unfortunately, Shanelle’s deployment of the “f” word is only too apt.
Dream Angel: The Musical
is the most ramshackle piece of musical theater this beauty queen has ever laid eyes on. And that includes the grade-school productions my husband Jason and I sat through when our Rachel was a wee minx.
How long ago those days seem now. And how uncomplicated. All I had to worry about back then was whether to put an apple or an orange in Rach’s lunch box along with her PB&J and cookie. Now my beautiful girl is four months from graduating high school and departing for foreign parts unknown; Jason is living five hundred miles from our Cleveland home working his dream job on a NASCAR pit crew; and yours truly Happy Pennington is trying to be a great Ms. America, a great full-time personal assistant, a great mom, a great wife, a great daughter, a great friend, and—every so often—a great solver of seemingly unsolvable murders.
Let’s hope there’s no need for
that
anytime soon. I’m frazzled enough. And that’s before we even get into the state of my bewildered heart …
My anxiety ratchets higher still when I hear the opening notes of the sixth song in the second act. I wouldn’t describe any of the songs in
Dream Angel
as good, but this one I find particularly painful.
Beside me, Shanelle winces. “Those lyrics are just plain wrong.”
“We gave Lisette so many ideas for how to rewrite them!” Trixie wails. “Why doesn’t she ever listen to us?”
Shanelle has a ready answer. “Because that woman always knows better than everybody else. Makes no never mind what the topic is.”
This topic, as it happens, is something Trixie, Shanelle and I know a thing or two about: beauty queens. The heroine in
Dream Angel
goes to hell and back—horrible parents, foster homes, even a stint in prison—but despite all that manages to achieve what she desires above all else: a tiara and a title.
“At least Lisette came up with a good story,” I murmur.
Shanelle rolls her brown eyes. “Too bad she has zero clue how to tell it.”
Now that this consulting gig has made me a Broadway aficionado, I know how to describe Lisette Longley’s role in this production. She’s the lyricist and the book writer all rolled into one, meaning she wrote the sung and the unsung words, as they say. A very nice man named Maximilian Pepper composed the music, no doubt cringing every time he heard Lisette’s lyrics. (Note to self: orange and porridge do not rhyme.)
Trixie leans in close, her chin-length copper-colored hair swinging. She’s wearing a fit-and-flare dress in a gray menswear-inspired plaid, perfect for January. Shanelle is adorable in a colorblock pencil skirt in black, red and pink, paired with a black top. Her straightened Afro is held off her face by a very on-trend silver beaded headband. And my brunette self is decked out in my favorite sheath dress, in cobalt blue, with black tights and—you’ll never guess—matching stilettos.
This is New York City, after all. We must be styling. Not that we three are the type ever to let our fashion standards slip.
“The show’s almost over,” Trixie murmurs. “Maybe Lisette really will stay away tonight.”
“Knock
me
over with a feather,” Shanelle says.
Me, too. Lisette keeps throwing such giant hissy fits, even in the middle of performances, that the director banned her from tonight’s preview. But as you no doubt already gather, dear reader, Lisette doesn’t take direction.
Oh, and just to keep you up on the lingo, the previews are the full performances, complete with costume, that precede opening night. They’re to help the cast and crew work out the last kinks, but based on how they go the director may make big changes, like if the audience doesn’t laugh when they’re supposed to, does laugh when they’re not, or at any point throws tomatoes at the performers.
Sadly,
Dream Angel
is in screaming need of big changes. But no way will Lisette allow
that
to happen.
It makes me wonder why Shanelle, Trixie and I were brought in. Why seek advice if you’re never going to take it? Then again, maybe Lisette was only pretending to be open to suggestions to get everybody off her back.