About the Author

MAUREEN JOHNSON lives in New York City. She wonders if you have read any of her previous books: The Key to the Golden Firebird, The Bermudez Triangle, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Devilish, or Girl at Sea. It’s okay if you haven’t; she is sure to like you any way. Unlike Scarlett, Maureen does not live in a hotel, but she wishes she did.

Visit Maureen online at www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com

BOOKS BY MAUREEN JOHNSON

Scarlett Fever

Girl at Sea

Devilish

13 Little Blue Envelopes

The Bermudez Triangle

The Key to the Golden Firebird

READ ON FOR MORE ABOUT SCARLETT AND THE REST OF THE MARTINS IN THE FOLLOWING EXCERPT FROM

Scarlett Fever

SEQUEL TO Suite Scarlett

ACT I

Gothammag.com

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”: Hamlet at the Hopewell Hotel

So let’s set the scene, shall we? Hamlet. In a hotel. But not one of the grand palaces or tourist farms—a much rarer breed. A tiny, privately owned hotel. It would be fair, and possibly even generous, to call the place distressed. The floors squeak, a fine layer of dust covers everything, and most of the furniture in the lobby has an astonishing lean to it, so much so that I actually found myself cocking my head to the side at points.

But what is equally obvious is the true style under the decay. It’s there, like good bone structure. The place is an absolute Deco masterpiece: cherry wood, silver lightning-bolt motifs where you least expect them, poison-purple and tiger lily-orange tinted light from the colored lamps. You pass from the lobby into a modest dining room, now converted into a theater. Like everything else, the chandelier is lopsided, but deliberately so, pulled by a wire draped with silver gauze. The walls are bare but alive with the shadows of a hundred small, guttering candles. The room is in decadent disarray, as if a seedy royal wedding has taken place soon before.

Which, of course, it has. Welcome to the world of Hamlet.

Full disclosure: I wanted to dismiss this production as a gimmick, a cheap bag of tricks. Hamlet in a hotel…and next, Othello in an office. Macbeth in a McDonald’s. I’ve seen shows staged in every possible location, but the fact that this one seemed so tied to the establishment—with backstage access to guests—I assumed it was a new step downward in the ever-devolving state of the art.

But this show works. I now think every production of Hamlet should be staged in a broken-down hotel. This is the play where people constantly come and go—royals, courtiers, messengers, servants, students, performers—and events progress from bad to worse to terminal. All is uprooted in Hamlet, no one is sleeping in the right bed, and your stay may be much shorter than you expect. So a hotel…of course! Why not?

This Hamlet is also staged like a kind of carnival—a mad, strange circus. It’s an uneven production, overacted at points (Stephanie Damler doesn’t quite know where to pull back on Ophelia’s insanity, and Jeffery Archson’s portrayal of Horatio set my teeth on edge). But there are some true laugh-out-loud moments, mostly provided by the inspired clowning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, played by Eric Hall and Spencer Martin, respectively. In particular, when Martin careened through the crowd on his unicycle at the start of the show and had an encounter with a closed door—I actually spit-took my drink onto my companion’s shoulder. And I’m not normally a spitter.