The Buddy Hackett Tenor

We all remember Buddy Hackett, right? The roly-poly comic was a fixture on sitcoms and late-night talk shows during the 60s, and headlined in Vegas for many years. He also appeared in a few musicals, including the film version of The Music Man (he sang a song called "Shipoopi," whatever the hell that means...) His comic trademarks were rubbery facial expressions and a spittle-spewing speech impediment, and live performances which were quite raunchy. He was never a favorite of mine, but his name has popped up regarding my gig at Wayside. When I was chatting about playing Sancho with our musical director, Steve called the role a “Buddy Hackett tenor,” and though I had never heard that term, I knew exactly what he meant.




Sancho Panza is written as a tenor, but does not, thankfully, require the pure sound of, say, Phantom of the Opera’s Raoul. Instead, it’s a character voice. The role, as written, is too high for my voice, which is much more comfy on lower baritone notes, a fact which did not seem to dissuade the Powers at Wayside from casting me. I’m glad they are taking a chance.

Our first week’s rehearsal was spent on music, and Steve proved himself to be one of those musical directors who cares more about the overall sound of the piece, and the comfort of the actors, than strictest adherence to the score. He has, quite magically, turned a huge musical into a chamber piece, with lots of guitar, bass, and exotic percussion, and the occasional clarinet and trumpet. He transformed the existing orchestrations, written for who knows how many pieces, into ones being played by only four people, and sometimes less. You would think the sound would be disappointing, but you would be wrong. The rustic, environmental sound which we are hearing from “Pitland” (which is onstage with us, as the music is being performed by the actors), suits our show far more than the larger, more Broadway-type sound normally accompanying the piece. It’s extremely exciting.

As for yours truly, I’m plugging along. In the choral numbers, Steve has wisely moved me to lower notes, and my solos are coming along, too (Sancho sings three numbers alone, and contributes to four or five more). But time is of the essence. We have been sharing director Warner and music director Steve with Totem Pole Playhouse, where they are remounting Cotton Patch Gospel ( I wrote about seeing the show last month here at Wayside). Two weeks of simultaneous rehearsals have not made it easy on anyone, and with apologies to Ray and Larry, my buddies in Gospel, I couldn’t care less how prepared their Totem Pole show is.

I want more Me of La Mancha Time.

This second week, we have been staging the musical numbers (there are more of them than you remember), and we’ll soon be heading into our final week, where, miraculously, this huge monster will come together (and during which I will be turning from sidekick into onstage prop master...tech rehearsals, for me, will be presenting another adventure in itself).

Onward.

Isn't this illegal?

I've been passing this sign every day for a week, and finally had to take a picture. I know Dwarf Tossing (and its nasty descendent, Dwarf Bowling) were all the rage a while back, before it was outlawed, but apparently Strasburg did not get the word:
I have not seen any Little People out here in Strasburg, so I can only assume that the sign means they are being used as the pigskin.

Detox

I have arrived in Middletown, VA, the scene of my next crime. Though it's only a quick 90 minutes from Capitol Hill, it's a world away. The town has only one stoplight, and Wayside Theatre is apparently its biggest business. There is a definite small-town feel to the place; just take a look at all the flags which appeared this weekend, lining Main Street about 20 feet apart. There is no parade planned or anything, the town just puts up flags for every national holiday.

My digs couldn't be nicer, a rustic cabin in the hills of neighboring Strasburg. Well, it's actually a guest cottage on the expansive lot of one of the benefactors of the theatre. It's secluded from the street (and from the outside world) by several acres of woods.

From the outside, it doesn't look like much, but inside, it's a terrific bungalow with huge kitchen (about the size of my bedroom at home), and a great room with homey furniture and, um, interesting touches. (Note the Christmas tree in the corner, and the ladder going nowhere.) I currently sit at the desk placed against a window, through which I can see a rabbit hopping by. The sleeping chamber is a loft above the living area, reached by one of those staircases which is so steep, it's almost a ladder. Really, despite it's surroundings, the place isn't all that rustic (how could it be with a full kitchen, including microwave and laundry facilities?)

There is one thing both towns of Strasburg and Middletown lack: a Starbucks. Hard to believe there is a place in this country without one. Call Ripley's. I am not a coffee drinker, so I never go into such places, but I wouldn't mind one here, as where there is a Starbucks, there usually follows Internet. Here at the cabin, the previous tenant (the lovely and talented Larry) took his Internet Access with him when he left (though his guitars are still here. Wonder what they might fetch on EBay...) I had no idea how addicted I was to the Web, but now that access is gone, I have realized that I spend A LOT of time out there in cyberspace. These days, I can only get online at the theatre, so I'm going through a bit of withdrawal.

It's a quiet period for me. There is no television service out here, though the owners of the cabin offered to reinstate it for me. It did not seem worth the effort or the money, so I declined their kind offer. The television has a working DVD/VCR player, which will suffice for me. (I confessed a while ago that I am slogging my way through all four years of Dark Shadows; I'm currently up to the period where the vampire goes back in time to prevent the ghost from becoming a werewolf...this show is seriously disturbed...)

Well, the lack of entertainment options out here should be a good thing. There is nothing to distract me from the task at hand, conquering this monster show. Stay tuned.

Friday Dance Party: The Terminator

I admit to being nuts about Dixie Carter. I’ve been her fan for years, and I mean YEARS. I recall, decades ago, seeing her on The Edge of Night, and wondering how the heck somebody that unique was ever hired in the cookie-cutter world of soaps. Carter spent only a few years in daytime before graduating to prime-time and Broadway roles. She had two failed marriages (including one to Broadway star George Hearn) before settling into one of the more stable Hollywood matches, with Hal Holbrook. Dixie found her metier in sitcoms, co-starring in the short-lived On Our Own with Bess Armstrong, and in Diff’rent Strokes, in which she created the role of Maggie Drummond (the role was later played by Mary Ann Mobley). Her appearance in another short-lived series, Filthy Rich (above),brought her in contact with two women who would figure prominently in her later career, Delta Burke and writer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. The latter created the Sugarbaker sisters of Atlanta for Carter and Burke, and Designing Women was born. The show was often compared (usually unfavorably) to The Golden Girls, as their runs roughly coincided. Both shows featured four strong comic actresses, but otherwise, had few similarities.

It was through Designing Women that Carter became a star. Her characterization became famous for her lengthy and often hilarious diatribes on any number of issues. Here’s one of my favorite clips, in which Carter’s “Julia” is trapped on a jury, endangering her planned dinner with Jimmy Carter: Dixie’s role on Designing Women was an avowed liberal, and her rants were often political in nature, a direct contrast to Carter herself, who describes herself as a “libertarian,” but is in fact a Republican. She had a deal with the show’s creators that, anytime she delivered a particularly left-leaning speech, she (the actress) would be rewarded with the chance to sing in another episode. (Dixie Carter is an accomplished singer, appearing in musicals throughout her career and headlining her own cabaret act.) This week’s Dance Party is one of those “paybacks” from Designing Women. In the episode, a slightly tipsy Julia Sugarbaker dedicates a sweet song to her son on his wedding day: 

Dixie Carter turned 70 years old this week.

Letter from Beyond

These pages have been dormant for several days, as I have made the journey to rural Virginia and have leaped into rehearsals for Man of La Mancha. Getting online is not possible in my digs (which are absolutely swell, I’ll describe them later), so contributions to this site will be a bit more random for a little while (how could they be MORE random? I’ve always just written when I wanted to, rather on a time-table, but whatever). I’ll be checking email and posting items from the theatre in the coming days, so stay tuned for the riveting story of my first week’s rehearsal, playing a tenor role with a baritone voice. Ack.




Oh, and if anybody interesting dies, it will be a while before their obit will show up here. Tragic, I know.

As I write this, from my rustic cabin in the woods of Old Virginny, I am watching a family of squirrels frolic under a tree. This woodland variety seems far removed from the crazed city dweller I dealt with in DC, the one stuck in my stove’s exhaust vent. Oh, there goes a bunny! Gotta go.

Friday Dance Party: On the Acheson, Topeka, and the Sante Fe

Like his co-stars Burt Lahr, Jack Haley, and Margaret Hamilton, Ray Bolger’s career will always be defined by his appearance in The Wizard of Oz (the film turns 70 years old this year). But he had a booming stage and film career back in the day, and was a first-class hoofer. His dancing never rose to the elegant heights of Astaire’s, and he never achieved the athletic muscularity of Gene Kelly, but as a character dancer, a “clown tapper,” if you will, he was lots of fun. If you needed a dancer who could bring goofy charm to a routine, Bolger was your man. The limited dancing he exhibited in Wizard of Oz did not reflect his full toe-tapping talent, so in his honor, and for no particular reason, enjoy this week’s Dance Party, from The Harvey Girls, in which he goes all out with a song made famous by his Oz costar: 

No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of this Blog

My next gig begins on Tuesday (about which I did some Happy Dancing here), and in preparation, I've been spending some time in DC. (Wayside Theatre is only about 90 minutes away from my condo here.)


There was an unexpected adventure today. I had a surprise when I awoke this morning. Scratching. No, not me with bedbugs. There was a loud scratching sound coming from the kitchen. Investigation revealed that it was coming from the cabinet above the stove. Now, everybody knows I'm a scaredy cat, and I hesitated to even open the cabinet door. But I could not imagine what had gotten into the cabinet, or how. And the sound did not appear to be something scratching wood, but rather, something scratching tin foil.

I screwed my courage to the sticking place (thanks, Lady M) and slowly opened the cabinet door. Nothing had disturbed the mountains of Tupperware, the fondue pot (don't make fun), the box of steak knives, the empty jars, the large jug of Costco cinnamon sticks, or the popcorn popper. (Yes, I choose to organize my cabinets eclectically, rather than, you know...logically.) But I could hear that the scratching was louder and more frantic.

There was no doubt. There was an intruder trapped in the exhaust piping of my oven hood, which snakes its way through the center of that cabinet.



It was a freaky, freaky sound. Imagine Bruiser, the Legally Blond Chihuahua, racing around on a cookie sheet. Long fingernails on aluminum. Icky.




I was sure it was a squirrel. In the last year or so, the tree right behind my unit has grown exponentially, and its top branches now flick my fire escape. I like this development, and hope in another year or two, that tree may be tall enough to mask the building behind mine, which is too close for comfort. But the tree has now allowed the squirrel kingdom easy access to my fire escape, which they use with abandon. Last year, I had two pots of basil growing out there, and I frequently (like 8 times a day) discovered a rodent rummaging around in there. And once, I walked over to the open window to come face to face with a squirrel which had clawed its way up the screen and just froze, meeting me eyeball to eyeball.

In short, there are some crazy-ass squirrels in DC.

And I clearly had one of the loonies in my exhaust piping. The outside vent has been a haven for birds for years; there is always a bird's nest being built or settled into around springtime, and it never bothered me. But for some crazy reason, this mad squirrel leaped from the fire escape stairway into the vent, scrambled a few feet into the building, then was surprised when the passageway took a steep drop into the exhaust tube in my cabinet.

This problem consumed my day, a day which I had earmarked for running errands in order to get ready for my gig at Wayside, which, as I said, begins Tuesday. Instead, I had to deal with this crap. I went to the gym and the post office, hoping (irrationally) that the squirrel would find its way out of my vent, but no such luck. He simply had nothing to grab onto and climb out with.

I called around to several outlets which advertised pest removal, but had no luck getting anyone on the phone. This is a common problem I have whenever I have to find a professional to come out and do something around here. It seems like nobody really WANTS to perform the services which they advertise they perform. I finally called our building's management company, headed by a woman I do not like, and who does not like me. I know it's hard to believe somebody doesn't like me, but there it is. She put aside her animosity toward me, and gave me the name of the "trapper" she has used before.

Hours later, I had a grizzly old coot in my kitchen, dismantling my exhaust piping above the stove.

With his bare hands, he removed a live squirrel and THREE live birds from that vent, and tossed them, one by one, out the window. With each throw, he hollered, "You're free! You're free!"

He then used a blower and blew out the passage, which was packed full of twigs and other nest stuff. He capped the outside vent with a cage material, to prevent anybody else from entering my condo uninvited, and left a bill for $320.00

Thankfully, the condo association will be picking up the tab on today's adventure, but there's one thing they can't do: get rid of the lingering aroma which the technician left behind. This guy smelled worse than anybody you might encounter in a New York subway car. But I liked him anyway. Remember, he saved everybody's life, and was genuinely excited to release the intruders into the outside world.

"You're free! You're free!"

I'm lighting scented candles.