Count Olaf's theater troupe is a group of cohorts allied with Count Olaf and his crimes in the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. The members are frequently referred to as Count Olaf's "associates", "assistants", "comrades", "accomplices" or "henchmen". Although nominally an acting troupe, the members' primary occupation is serving as accomplices to Olaf in kidnap, embezzlement, larceny and, in extreme circumstances, arson and murder. Although Snicket states the troupe has ten members (and suggests Olaf may have between 25 and 41 henchman), five original members and three later recruits are the most consistently featured.
When the Baudelaires first meet the troupe, five members are described in detail: the one who looks like neither a man nor a woman, the bald man with the long nose, the two white-faced women, and the hook-handed man. When Olaf burns down the Caligari Carnival, he allows three sideshow freaks to join his ranks: Hugo (a hunchback), Colette (a contortionist), and Kevin (an ambidexter). As the series progresses, Olaf swiftly begins to lose these accomplices: the one who looks like neither a man nor a women is trapped in the burning Heimlich Hospital; the bald man with the long nose is eaten by circus lions; the two white-faced women voluntarily leave; and the hook-handed man joins his vigilante sister Fiona in mutiny. By the time Olaf burns down the Hotel Denouement, only the circus freaks remain. Whether they survive the fire is never stated.
Famous quotes containing the words count, theater and/or troupe:
“Out of all those centuries the Greeks can count seven sages at the most, and if anyone looks at them more closely I swear hell not find so much as a half-wise man or even a third of a wise man among them.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 14661536)
“The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self.... What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myselfa troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required.... I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)