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For the 1,000 at last week's Ludlam tribute, there was joy and sadness in the final scene, from Ludlam's unfinished play Houdini. The master escape artist (to have been played by Ludlam) has been dead for a decade, but his wife Bess (Black-Eyed Susan) is forlornly trying to communicate with his spirit. She will try one last time with a medium named Dr. Saint (Quinton). They sit at a small table, hands joined; behind them is a blank screen. Nothing happens, and Bess sobs that she will never see her husband again. As she speaks, a huge image on the screen slowly comes into focus. It is Houdini -- Ludlam! -- in chains, in a cage, staring out at them. She and the medium do not notice this spectral presence, and the lights fade on them, as the theater audience is held mesmerized in the gaze of the genius that was and might have been. But for AIDS.