Top Dogs from Our Time

This is part of an article that Beatrix wrote about the history and current state of the theatre for Our Time, the socialist/communist journal that she edited from 1941- I just loved how poetic and depressing this got...

"The faint stars gleam through the bomb-split roof of the stage. The old play-bills dissolve in dust down the green room walls. A mouse pops out of the hero’s wig and trickles away under the heroine’s empty hanging skirts. The rotted ribbon on the rapier breaks and down it falls, setting the whole armoury to jangling and tinkling. A fiddle-string parts with a muted twang. Away, up the sky, swings the beam of a searchlight, lengthening, searching, searching… bedding and shortening, till a huge arc splashes on the empty gallery benches, moves down past the grey dust of the circle, opening out in a silver flood, for one second, over the stalls. Row behind row, they sit, bones gleaming through shredded evening dresses, medals askew on arched ribs, feathers moulting and diamonds, still as clear as water, slithering from polished skulls. The empty eye-sockets are set upon nothingness, the grinning teeth laid bare. The light snaps off and throws back the night. The wind gives one last bang on the box-office window and the little mouse, scared, plops through a hole in the big drum".