Ashes and Roses of a Millennium

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Polidore is a little book about little people in the dark recesses of show business. Both of the story's principals are real. Lenny, the more contemporary of the two, is somewhat more fictionalized than the title character, Polidore. Often, when being interviewed, theatrical celebrities will confess that they occasionally suffer from stage fright. Whether they actually do or not is secondary to the reaction it evokes: it humanizes them. We relate to them, at least briefly, because they've revealed a flaw. The two men whose lives are examined in Polidore are affected by a condition less understandable than opening night jitters. It could aptly be termed "reverse stage fright"; the fear of stepping out of the spotlight. In doing so, they are plunged into a terrifying labyrinth of confu­sion and past horrors. Are they, then, the forerunners of the "Evil Clown" that today's media titillates our darker senses with? The greasepainted gargoyle with a basement full of corpses? No. With one poignantly psychotic exception they killed only the things they loved most, themselves.