Free Web NovelChapter 204: Chapter 187: The Beginning of the Great Performance
"I almost married a lawyer once. I was nursing him through his appendectomy.
"We were about to be engaged, but it developed into peritonitis, and then he passed away."
"Then he was a lucky lawyer indeed."
On stage, the main character made his appearance, sitting in a car and delivering a few simple lines of dialogue.
"Hahaha..."
The audience roared with laughter, amused by the male lead’s sharp and biting words.
They had never seen a protagonist like this—old, overweight, suffering from illness, and with a tongue laced with barbs.
He was a far cry from the typical protagonist of most plays.
With the exception of pure farces, where the protagonist might be made into a bit of a clown,
in other genres—be it drama, tragedy, or romance—the protagonists were almost always positive, optimistic, resilient, and full of heroic spirit.
Even when humor was incorporated into a protagonist’s character, it was never done like this, through insulting and mocking people with what could be described as Hell jokes.
’Heh, a little interesting,’ Sir Turt chuckled, caught off guard by the sudden deadpan humor.
But he quickly remembered his position. He was here to tear the play down, not to be a good audience member.
So he took out his notebook and wrote:
A caustic protagonist who lacks personal charisma;
Humor forced into a suspense script, clashing with the overall tone, breaking immersion, and pulling the audience out of the experience;
The humor is vulgar and low-brow, relying on the basest form of mockery and ridicule, like a drunken hooligan in a bar telling crude jokes to harass young women passing by on the street, revealing the author’s poor taste.
Just because he couldn’t reveal the plot didn’t mean he couldn’t pass judgment.
He wrote down points of attack in his notebook, gathering material to provide to professional writers after the show.
When it came to finding fault, ordinary critics were no match for him, the Chairman of the Drama Guild.
His specialty was ignoring a work’s strengths and magnifying its flaws.
There are two ways to evaluate a work. The additive method: as long as the strengths are good enough and the flaws aren’t too hard to accept, you add points.
And the subtractive method: no matter how good the strengths are, as soon as a flaw is found, points are mercilessly deducted.
He subscribed to the latter.
With just the few points he had written in his notebook, he had enough to dock *Prosecution Witness* down to a seven-out-of-ten piece.
But that wasn’t enough. A seven was far too high.
He was aiming for a three or four.
The kind of score that screams, ’Watching this is a waste of life’—the sort of "unparalleled disaster" that only appears a few times a year in the theater world.
As he jotted down the note about the author’s poor taste, he deliberately flipped through the introductory pamphlet provided by the theater.
The author wasn’t the Master, nor was it Zog. If it had been Zog, he would have to be more careful with his criticism; after all, the case of the screenwriter who was beaten up after satirizing *Tom and Jerry* was a recent memory.
’Crude. Utterly lacking an intellectual’s dignity.’
’How could a literary matter be resolved with such violence?’
But Sir Turt had to admit, he was indeed afraid of being suddenly clubbed from behind.
"Agatha Christie?"
The author’s name was unfamiliar.
He had never heard of a new playwright by that name popping up in the theater world.
The playwriting profession had a clear career path: study under an established writer, work as an assistant, then a ghostwriter, and only then could one publish a work under their own name.
So, he should have already heard of any author able to get sole credit for a work.
The surname wasn’t familiar either; it didn’t sound like it belonged to any noble family.
’Probably one of the Master’s new apprentices,’ he thought.
After confirming this, Sir Turt relaxed, preparing to thoroughly ridicule this Agatha.
He could never have imagined that his ridicule would be like punching at air, forever unable to land a blow on this Agatha.
The perspective then followed the protagonist back to his office, introducing his identity: Sir Wilfred, a renowned defense attorney with plenty of minor flaws. He was a chain-smoker but also possessed a wealth of experience, sharp intuition, and a passion for bizarre cases.
This creative technique of giving a main character minor flaws was a very effective little trick.
Insignificant quirks don’t detract from a character’s charm; on the contrary, being less than perfect makes them feel more relatable to the audience.
When the lawyer, initially intending to refuse the potential client, saw the cigars in the man’s pocket, remembered that his own cigarettes had been confiscated by his nurse, and took the case purely out of a nicotine craving, the audience erupted in laughter again.
"Too real! My wife confiscated all my smokes. I’d agree to anything if someone gave me just one."
"Really?" an audience member next to him chimed in. "I did two years in prison. If you wanted a smoke in there, you either had to pay a hefty price, or you had to keep the Beastman gang members company..."
"You didn’t...?"
"I didn’t have the money. But it wasn’t that hard to bear."
The first man breathed a sigh of relief, having felt a phantom pain for a moment. "The craving isn’t that hard to bear, right? Quitting has its benefits. I’m about to quit myself, buddy."
"No," the man said grimly. "I meant the Beastmen weren’t that hard to bear."
On stage, the scene shifted to the law office. Unlike traditional scene changes that involved pulling a curtain, the crew of *Prosecution Witness* demonstrated astounding technical prowess.
As the lawyer pushed open his office door, the entire stage began to rotate, bringing the office set, which had been at the side, to the center.
It wasn’t even done with the Zog Group’s commonly used Illusion Technique; the change was accomplished purely through mechanical structures.
A wave of gasps spread through the audience. They hadn’t expected to see a visual spectacle at a suspense drama.
