I have loved DBH the movie for at least thirteen years, but we do need to applaud the changes made so that it can exist on stage. My favourite of these changes, unfortunately, is the most obvious.
Helen pushes Madeline down the stairs.
Why is this my favourite change? Many reasons but largely because of the hospital scene. Not only because Helen fills out Madeline's patient intake form, but because of how the movie and the musical differ when using the line: The morgue?! She'll be furious!
In the movie, Ernest delivers the line as the terrified husband who knows and fears her wrath. He's also quite sentimental towards Madeline despite being the reason she's basically dead. It's an incredibly domestic reunion when a pouting Mad is pulled into Ernest's arms once he unzips her body bag.
But the musical gives this line to Helen, who delivers it smugly and with a laugh. The domestic familiarity and fear Ernest displays in the movie is instead filled with schadenfreude because Helen knows Madeline and knows how much she's going to hate being sent to the morgue. She is the one in this scene who knows Madeline best, even above her husband.
When they reunite, we still have Madeline in Ernest's arms, but in the musical, the pair can't get away from Helen. She's there to roll her eyes at the sham of a marriage. She is the reason for the mess because it was her, not Ernest, who pushed Madeline down the stairs.
This is just one example of how they shuffle the original text to ensure that this is a musical about two women and their "friendship".
The National Pastime (Saving this from my drafts folder).
In like August I started a WIP that will die a sad death in my drafts (it's at 14k words and I hate almost all of it) but there is this one section I'm really proud of and I'd like to have somebody read it.
So, if you'd like to do me a favor and read a little something about the girls attending a baseball game and Mad stealing Hel's clothes, then please enjoy this excerpt:
Helen waits three weeks to hear back from Ricky. She’s appalled by the fact that she’s waiting at all but the date she’s forced to go on with Mrs. Winkler’s nephew is an absolute disaster and none of her friends are returning her texts. He seems to be her last hope.
She almost throws her phone across the room in relief when it lights up from an unknown number.
yo helen, its ricky jnr. u wanna get tht beer?
Helen wonders if he’s drunk as she reads the message. She was sure only teens texted like this.
Hi Ricky. Yes, a beer sounds great.
She’s not sure whether the capitalization and punctuation will scare him off. Call it her writer’s spirit but she clings to technique and precision in all aspects of her life.
She’s aware that this could be considered a fault. It had gotten her into trouble before.
A poorly phrased description in a menu had led to an email correspondence between her and the customer complaints department that eventually led to the customer service representative asking her if she could save them all some time and summarize her thesis into bullet points the next time she felt the need to send in a complaint.
In an act of retaliation, she'd printed out her fifteen-page response and plastered it onto the outside of her local chain while locking the doors from the outside using a bicycle lock. The papers showed up and captured a stunning image of Helen scowling at a manager in front of a wall of her own writing. In response, the franchise banned her from every restaurant they had in the tri-state area.
Madeline bought the copyright to the photograph and the picture of Helen still hangs on both of their office walls to this day.
Despite her fears, founded or unfounded, he responds quickly.
gr8. See you @ 2 tmrw.
He follows this up with a picture of two baseball tickets. Helen hates baseball and had only suffered through it because her father had played on his high-school team. They were a Yankee’s household through and through. From the tickets she can see that they're scheduled to play tomorrow and Helen decides that if she’s going to be forced to watch the sport, then she’s going to look the part.
She gives up fifteen minutes later. The jersey her dad gave her is nowhere to be found. It’s unsurprising really; she hasn’t seen the thing in a decade. She wonders if it’s been pilfered, and then she has a suspect immediately.
“Madeline Ashton’s phone, this is Stefan.”
Madeline’s third assistant; she’s moving up the world. Last time she’d had to speak to the fourth assistant's assistant. Getting through to Stefan immediately meant that it was a slow day in the land of Madeline Ashton. Maybe she’d get an audience with the queen.
“Stefan, so glad I reached you.”
“Oh Helen! She’s just in the tub. Madeline, you've got a call.”
The honor of talking to her highness immediately? It must really be her lucky day. Although, conferences in the bathroom are less Elizabeth and more Churchill.
“Stefan! Who is it?”
Madeline’s voice is shrill from the other end. Helen hears giddy whispers before some water sloshes and suddenly Madeline’s voice is bright and full on the other end of the line.
“Hel. It’s been too long.”
“I called you two days ago, Mad.”
“Like I said, far too long. You must be missing me terribly”
She follows this with a slurping sound and Helen knows she only makes it when she’s on her second glass bottle of wine. She’ll have to talk quickly if she wants to avoid the impending tears.
“Anyway, Mad, I just called to ask if you know what happened to my Yankee’s jersey? The one Daddy printed for me. I can’t seem to find it.”
“Oh? What do you need that for? Some sports day benefit for illiterate children? You know your hand-eye-coordination is terrible, Helen.”
Despite the dig it’s a rather friendly interaction for them. Likely aided by the wine. More sloshing sounds come from the other end of the call, and Helen can picture Madeline, raising her leg to watch the muscles shift, water sluicing off her pale skin, the droplets catching the candlelight.
It’s not difficult at all to draw the mental image. It had become a familiar sight after the hours she’d spent sitting next to the tub when they shared an apartment; Madeline was too clingy to be alone for any longer than necessary, and Helen obliged her whims far too easily. They’d spent hours in the bathroom, her on the floor and Madeline in the tub, talking about whatever crossed their minds.
“I’ve been invited to a game.”
A slight choking sound is followed by some more sloshing before she hears the phone being raised in the air and Stefan whisper-shouting a conversation with Madeline before telling her,
“Let me put you on hold, Helen.”
When her friend speaks again, Helen knows she’s probably in a pink robe, draped elegantly over the nearest cushioned surface.
“Tell me more about this game. Has one of your book clubs finally decided to climb out of the dingy church basement and make their way into the sun?”
As an insult it’s rather weak on Madeline’s part and leaves Helen with too much room to maneuver.
“I thought sad church basements were more your forte. Which rehab was your last stint in? South Carolina?”
“It was a health spa for mental rejuvenation."
“If a quack walks like a duck.”
“Don’t be mean to me now. I want to hear about the game.”
She can hear the puppy eyes through the phone and so she obliges,
“It’s a date.”
“You’re not dating anyone.”
And how could Madeline possibly know that? Whenever they do this she never asks Helen a single question.
“It’s a first date.”
Her voice is far too proud for the two texts and three-week waiting period she'd endured before the date but she indulges herself.
“Nooo. Not even you're pathetic enough to accept a last minute ticket to the ball game. Did all his friends drop dead?
Is it entirely possible that Helen is a fill-in on a long list of people whose lives are so busy that they can’t drop everything on a Saturday to attend a ball game? Perhaps. Is she going to concede this point to Madeline? Hell no.
“Actually, he’s been really busy and he knows how I feel about the Yankees. It’s really quite sweet.”
Does Madeline remember that Helen actually hated baseball? The worry shoots through her the moment the lie leaves her lips, but she perseveres.
“Do you have the jersey or not, Madeline?”
Not that the information would help her now. The last time she’d visited L.A ,Madeline had given her a tour of her newly designed home and had made a pointed comment about the sheer size of the walk-in wardrobe. It was the size of Helen’s apartment. To the foot. It was entirely unlikely that the blonde would know where the jersey was, or that she would still have it if she was indeed the thief.
Her wearing it tomorrow was off the table. Helen would have to stick to her trusty navy Yankees cap but at least she’d know about her jerseys’ fate.
“We’ll just ignore the fact that you only endured those games to spend time with your dad, will we?” Madeline asks.
For a woman who was entirely self-obsessed it was infuriating how Madeline could do that. How she could remember just enough to skewer Helen when she least suspected it.
“Fine, I’ll call Stefan back later. If any of your assistants have a working knowledge of closets, it’s him.”
She hangs up before Madeline can protest the solution. Really, she has no idea why she bothered her first. The woman would do whatever it took to unsettle her.
A quick dinner, followed by her pills and an extra large bowl of ice-cream to help quell the nervousness in her stomach, and she’s calling Stefan again, this time on his private line.
“Helen, I’m off the clock.”
There’s a deep bass line muffled on the other side so Helen can be rest-assured that she hasn’t woken him up. Not that any of Madeline’s assistants sleep; they have to keep up with her partying after all.
“I know. I’m sorry Stefan, but Madeline was being entirely uncooperative earlier.”
“This is news?”
“No, no, I know it’s to be expected but I just have one small question then I won’t bother you again.”
She hears as a door opens and closes and Helen wonders for a moment where Stefan is at nine-fifty on a Friday night while she sits in her apartment fighting her cat off her bowl of ice-cream.
“Fine, one question. Make it quick though. I have ten minutes before the molly kicks in.”
She won’t need nearly that long.
“Do you know what happened to my Yankee’s jersey? It’s got Sharp on the back. I swear Madeline has it.”
A loud inhale is followed by a groaned out, “No, no, no please don’t.”
“Stefan?”
“Helen, you can’t. I won’t let you.”
His tone is almost frantic and Helen wonders if he’s underestimated the potency of the drugs.
“Stop hyperventilating and tell me what’s wrong.”
“You can’t take the jersey back! The last time she started a run without it she got laryngitis!”
She has no idea what he means and realizes that this conversation is like trying to play darts blindfolded and upside down while the board is spinning.
“It’s one of the last gifts my dead dad gave me.”
“And I am sorry for you but you know how superstitious she is. She wears it to bed every night for a month before a theatre run. For a week before shooting any movies. If you want it...if you take it back… it all falls apart!”
He’s getting hysterical again and Helen can feel her own anxiety spiking in sympathy.
“Fine, fine, I get it. She can have it. I just needed to know I hadn’t lost it.”
“Oh thank you thank you thank you. Why are the walls melting?”
And as much as she loves Stefan, she has no desire to walk him through mild psychosis. Her own bout had been bad enough. She hangs up and takes her bowl to this kitchen while Mozart scolds her for her greed. His anger doesn’t last long and he follows her into bed.
As she tucks herself in half an hour later, she finally remembers why she had suspected Madeline of having the jersey at all.
They were, what? Twenty-one? Living in their tiny one bedroom apartment that they were paying for with catering tips and whatever Madeline could scrounge up on a chorus girl's salary.
It was, however, the night before her first real role. All three swings had suffered some form of injury, and she had volunteered at the last minute to save the Sunday matinee. It was a shot of pure luck, one that felt orchestrated if Helen was being honest, but Madeline had decided not to waste her shot. It was Saturday, and she'd been rehearsing her lines since four in the morning. Her constant pacing, along with the incessant singing, was slowly driving Helen mad.
“Madeline! Enough! You’ve got to stop with this obsession or the lines will drive you crazy.”
It halts her pacing for a moment and Helen thinks she might have expressed her frustration adequately until Madeline’s lower lip begins to move.
“Madeline, don’t you dare. Put it away.”
It’s too late though, and Helen is exposed to the full power of a pouting Madeline Ashton. It’s only seven in the morning and it’s too early for this. She finishes the tea, adding an extra bit of honey to Madeline’s before making her way to the door.
“Whatever. I’m going to buy more milk.”
Before she gets to the store, she stops at a newsagent and opens one of the papers.
“Huh, the Yankees are playing today?”
She asks the guy, who already looks exhausted despite the early hour.
“They are. Final home game of the season. What I wouldn’t do to be there today instead of here.”
Her dad had said a similar thing on many occasions.
It's always in the early hours like this, when he’d force her to go jogging with him or wake her up with some awful smoothie concoction, that Helen misses him the most.
She pays for the paper and goes back upstairs.
“Madeline. Put your cleats on, we’re going to the ball game!”
Madeline looks calmer now as she sits with the script in front of her, sipping daintily from the mug of tea.
“Helen, it’s seven thirty in the morning. Tone it down.”
She ignores the irony. She will not be deterred.
“No Mad, this is a brilliant idea!”
The idea had been one of her worst so far. Not only did she need to break into her rainy day piggy-bank to make sure she had enough money to pay the exorbitant fee the scalper wanted, Madeline insisted she had nothing to wear.
“You look so cute and here I am, not looking the part at all.”
“Mad, if you wear my jersey, will that shut you up?”
“Oh Helen, I thought you'd never offer!”
That's how they make their way to the stadium, one too many trains and a bus ride from hell where Madeline insists that none of the seats are clean enough and decides to use Helen as a perch instead. She smells faintly of vanilla and sweat and Helen will remember that smell for decades. Every time she gets on a bus she'll feel the phantom weight of Madeline in her lap.
Not for the first time that day, Helen wonders if she should have left Madeline at home and gone to the library instead. She feels it the most when she hands the money over to a guy in a trench coat despite the building heat of the mid-afternoon sun. Luckily for her the tickets appear to be real. She has lost Madeline during her foray into the criminal underbelly of the Bronx.
“Helen! Yoohoo!”
Madeline’s standing in front of a stand, an array of t-shirts and other merchandise on display.
She walks up to the stall where Madeline is talking to a guy who is a year or two younger than them, wearing a navy blue t-shirt and sporting hair so oily it looked like a slice from Gino's.
“Bucky here was just telling me how the hats are two for one.”
Helen ignores the hats being waved underneath her nose for a moment and realizes that Bucky is busy staring down Madeline's shirt and will do about anything for her number. It doesn't help that Madeline seems to know it too. She's quick to draw him under her spell, chatting away and placing her hand on his forearm intermittently. That jersey had always looked boxy on Helen, it looks like perfection on Madeline. Bucky seems entirely distracted from the very nice tourists who approached him.
When he finally tears himself away long enough to help them, Helen takes her chance, “ Madeline, how do you propose to pay for these?” She whispers the question while Bucky is still distracted.
“Oh, it’ll be fine. Fun, even. Relax.”
That causes her anxiety to spike and she walks away.
“Bucky, that's such a lovely name…”
Madeline continues with whatever it is she that she's up to while Helen finds a shady spot and checks her watch again. Madeline always did this. Turned their outings into a treasure hunt. How much could she take before the men noticed. Like a siren or a succubus.
As time ticks on, Helen begins to grow impatient. They have five minutes until the game starts and need to find whatever nose-bleed seats they’ve been able to afford.
“Hey Helen”
The voice is right in her ear but Helen doesn't get a fright. She'd already suspected it was Madeline behind her. No matter what, Madeline's presence is a calming sensation in the storm of her nerves that Helen finds impossible to miss.
“Please tell me you paid for those?”
Two Yankee's caps, one red and the other navy blue, are clutched in Madeline's hands.
“Don't be boring, Helen. I got one for each of us.”
Madeline likes Helen in red, and has told her so more than once as they get ready for an event or audition. There is a basis to the claim as those were the times she always got call-backs or extra tips. Naturally, her hand reaches for the red cap.
“Nuh uh. Red for your hair.”
Madeline fluffs out her golden tresses before pulling the scarlet cap on her head.
“And blue for my eyes.”
Slowly, she reaches up and pulls Helen's hair out of the haphazard ponytail she’d wrangled it into this morning before placing the cap on her head, adjusting it until she’s happy with how it looks.
“Perfect. A part of each of us to commemorate a day we won't forget.”
Helen laughs at the ridiculousness of Madeline stealing just for this terrible plan. It causes the tightness along her sternum to ease and Madeline winks before grabbing her hand and dragging her to their seats.
It’s one of the best games she's ever attended. They drink cheap beer out of plastic cups and Helen tells Madeline about her dad. How hard it was when her parents got divorced and how she loved spending Sundays with him at the games even though she thinks being forced to watch baseball is an ancient torture technique. Throughout it all, Madeline holds her hand and listens to her. They bicker, of course they do, but by the end of the seventh innings they are both sunburnt and drunk enough to admit that spending even an extra five minutes at the game is impossible.
They take the train back but Madeline declares that it’s too hot to head home just yet and drags her to some hole in the wall that won't survive till the end of the year. She always does stuff like that. Draws Helen into spontaneity with ease. Sometimes Helen’s chest aches with the fear of no longer having Madeline in her life. Will she be happier? Worse? They’d been friends for long enough that she no longer wanted to imagine a life without Madeline. For a moment, she wonders if that’s why Madeline seems so nervous, too. If that’s what her freakout this morning was about. Time was moving them both forward and neither of them could stop it.
Back at the apartment, after a couple hours spent surrounded by generous strangers Madeline charmed into four rounds of free drinks, they both settle into bed. Neither of them has the energy to change but Helen still brushes her teeth and takes her pills, handing Madeline a glass of water as she makes her way to her bed.
“Do you think I can do it?”
She knows that tone of voice and retreads her path from earlier until she’s lying behind Madeline, resting her palms on the blonde's stomach. Madeline rests her hands on top of Helen’s.
“I don't have to think. I've seen you perform it for the last week. You'll be sensational.”
“You promise?”
The hands over hers tighten and so she moves herself closer to Madeline, holding her just a bit closer before speaking again.
“ I do”
“Thanks for today, Helly.”
“You're welcome, Maddie.”
The matinee was such a success that she replaced one of the swings and soon Madeline was invited to do the national tour. Helen kept the place—it was rent-controlled—and Madeline stole a number of her things: CDs, blankets, and, undiscovered until now, Helen's Yankee's jersey.
With this little puzzle finally solved, Helen falls asleep that night with the memory of herself and Madeline eight or nine years ago, wrapped up in each other's arms.
Who knows if any of this made sense but thanks for reading this far! Happy new year!
