Autumnal Droppings, Part II

I had hoped to start the weekend off by catching the "Naked Cabaret" performance at the Warehouse, but their final shows were unexpectedly cancelled. I was greatly disappointed to miss it, as I'm sure Steve Cupo and his gang were putting on a good show (fully dressed, the title refers to emotional nudity).







Saturday night, I caught the wonderfully wacky Ray Ficca in "The Jungle Book" at Imagination Stage in Bethesda. The story is familiar to anyone who grew up in the sixties, since the Disney cartoon was a classic. (Nobody actually reads Kipling anymore, do they?) This version was a more academic, less overly comical approach, and even livewire Ray, as the villainous tiger Shere Khan, was more subdued than in other, more comic pieces. I appreciated the fact that director Kate Bryer chose a costuming concept which allowed the actors to be seen, rather than be hidden by Animal Wear. The house was full to the brim with kids and parents, who eagerly joined in the audience participatory moments in the piece.













Sunday afternoon I made the schlep out to Front Royal, VA, to catch the world premiere offered by Wayside Theatre in their temporary home: "Shadow of the Raven: The Stories of Edgar Allen Poe." This new piece is very much a hybrid, with lots of laughs and even a puppet show which goes terribly wrong (Punch decapitates Judy). It also aims for some frights, turning a bit Gothic in Act II. The action throughout is interspersed with music and song, the whole thing springing from one of Wayside's longtime artistes, Steve Przybylski (I wouldn't venture to pronounce that last name without coaching). I'm not qualified to judge music, but I particularly enjoyed the goofy round-robin among the characters, as they each sang Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" to the tune of a different popular song. I also enjoyed the presence of the writer / composer himself onstage, dressed as Harpo Marx and occasionally insinuating himself into the action. The whole piece is held together by the solid performance of my buddy Larry Dalke, ably supported by Vaughn Irving, both of whom I worked with in "Black Coffee" a year ago. Vaughn enthusiastically made the most of what is largely a reactive role. (And his Punch-and-Judy Snuff Puppet Show is pretty funny.)



I've already written about the temporary digs the Wayside folks have fashioned out of an industrial building, and I was impressed again by the roominess and the landscaped charm of the place. I just hope their audiences follow them to Front Royal...

I'm Missing a Gene...

...in fact, more than one, but the one I'm thinking of tonight is the "Love Of Halloween" Gene. All others in my tribe have it, but I do not.

Halloween was never one of my favorite holidays, though I enjoyed it well enough as a kid. I grabbed this still photo from an old home movie from those medieval times, depicting one of the several Halloweens in which I went begging for candy as a clown.

That outfit was hand-sewn by my glorious Grandmother, and was so well-made that it was handed down for many many Octobers. I believe both my sisters in turn wore the thing, though I imagine I carried it off best. Orange always was my color.










By the time I hit my teens, Halloween was just an excuse for a party. I've uncovered a few snaps from those years, all of which reflect a grumpy attitude from yours truly. This must have been a costume for a party in college, and what a bad mood this particular Saint Peter was in that night. Perhaps it was the unusually cool weather in Heaven: note the pink turtleneck. (That's another gene I do not have that others in my tribe do: a fashion sense).






Here's a snap from around the same period, dressed as some sort of Roman Something, busy on the phone at the Sears Complaint Department, where I worked through college and beyond (no wonder I was grumpy). Note the recurrence of the turtleneck.




It seems to have taken orders from a boss to get me into any kind of costume during those years. Here's a half-hearted effort to be a hillbilly at my first waiter job (note the guest check in the left hand, and, once again, the grumpy attitude).

(this must have been during my Tommy Tune period...)

In this last photo, I have clearly given up on any kind of creativity regarding the holiday. Rip a hole in a sheet, slap on a mask, and be done with it all. (I have fond feelings toward this pic, however, as it was the last one I can find with my mother...I do have THAT gene).











I recall only one fun Halloween once I became an adult. A creative friend threw a party in which everyone was to come as their favorite villain or murderer. I came up with the perfect costume (wish I had a pic). I attended the party as Alex from "A Clockwork Orange." The outfit required only one eye made up with false eyelash and mascara, a bowler hat, a cane, and white shirt and slacks. I was a hit at the party and at the bar afterward...





I'm certain I have not dressed up for Halloween in over 20 years, and I'm sure I know why. I spend so much of my life dressing up in silly clothes, pretending to be somebody else, that I am just not in the mood to do it for fun.















Is there such a thing as a Halloween Grinch? That would be me.

Theatre Droppings, Autumnal Edition, Part I

With those Mice and Men finally put to rest, I am feeling the urge to check out what everyone else is up to around DC.

While performing the Steinbeck, I was able to take a few busman's holidays and catch a couple of local shows. The first was one of my favorite Sondheim musicals, "Merrily We Roll Along" at Signature Theatre. "Merrily" has always been a problematic piece, since it's told in reverse chronological order. So, we meet the leading characters when they are middle aged, jaded, cynical, and drunk. Hard to care about people like that. But the score may be Sondheim's most accessible, and most heartwrenching. After its well-documented failure on Broadway, the authors tinkered with the thing for decades (I saw one of the first remounts in La Jolla, CA way back when, with Heather Macrae in one of the leads...it wasn't much of an improvement, but it did alert producers that they were better off casting actors who could carry the "mature years"). They have apparently finally settled on a finished script, which received an excellent production at the Kennedy Center's Sondheim Festival a while back. Raul Esparza and Michael Hayden were stellar as Charley and Frank.

The Signature production had glowing assets in its unusual set and in Will Gartshore and Tracey Olivera playing Frank and Mary. I also enjoyed the actress playing second wife Gussie, whose name I cannot recall but was apparently a replacement for the original performer who had left the show. I did not get much chance to see the performance of the woman playing Frank's first wife, other than her bitter rendition of "Not a Day Goes By" on the courthouse steps. I hoped she was able to lose the crummy and distracting wig for Act II, as she "youthened" into the ingenue who first captured Frank's heart, but I don't know, as I left at intermission.

The Sig made one large miscalculation in the gent playing Charley, who seemed to be playing at the role instead of relaxing into it. As Charley carries a lot of the heart, and the hurt, of the piece, his quirks, which did not seem organic, made it difficult to relate to him.

I was sorry to miss the terrific section of Act II in which the gang begins their careers, including one of Sondheim's sharpest numbers, "Bobby and Jackie and Jack," about the Kennedys. And I will always think of that final sequence on the rooftop, as the very young Frank, Charley, and Mary announce that it is "Our Time" while Sputnik zooms overhead.

At KenCen, I wept at that moment of youthful optimism. I hope the Signature production was able to create the same.

I also caught another musical, this one in Baltimore, the aptly titled "Menopause the Musical." No one could be surprised at what this one is about, it's all there in the title. The production was a strong one, and the show could be enjoyed by all, though it is clearly aimed at women approaching "that certain age." Parody lyrics are placed upon existing songs of the sixties, and they are all a hoot. The show has been a huge success all over the country, so I suppose I don't know what I'm talking about when I say that the writers have shortchanged their show by creating characters meant to be archetypes (they carry names such as "Earth Mother" and "Iowa Housewife"). But the highlights of the show, at least for me, are the few times that the characters reveal something specific about their lives, talking about their children or their spouses or their mothers. These instances feel like the only real moments in the piece, but they are few and far between. The terrific cast includes my buddy Barbara Pinolini, veteran belter Monica Lijewski, and hilarious Jen Timberlake, and they do a bang up job. I, and the other three men in the audience, enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and the large contingent of women in the house went wild.

Coming up next, more Autumnal Droppings: a kid's show, a spooky tale, a Shakespeare, a Marlowe, and a BOOM...

Of Mice and Men, the megamix...

The reviews are in for our production of the Steinbeck classic tale of Dustbowl Depressives. They are, as they say, "mixed-to-good," with only one real pan, which ironically, is being quoted in our ads. And even that poor response, from the Washington Times which nobody in the arts reads anyway, has done what every other critic in town and in cyberspace has done, which is rave about the performances.

And for the actors, that's a good thing.

The money review, The Post, was pretty much a rave, with the critic singling out each and every actor in the play. Except me. But I'm not bitter. I'd rather be ignored than panned.

No such luck for me in this online review, though I have to thank the critic for at least mentioning that I was really really good in something else. But, "out of his range" in this one. I don't dispute that for a moment.

And the reviewer hit the nail on the head when he claimed Christopher Lane is giving a "towering performance " as the gentle giant, Lennie. He is. Take a gander at this snap from the moment in the play which Aristotle would call the climax: the moment after which the ending becomes inevitable.

(That's Chris Lane towering center stage).

Of the various other reviews out there, my favorite has to be from the Citypaper, whose critic was attentive enough to catch the very subtle twist I have been giving my role of "Whit." Hey, the role is written for a kid in his 20s, and since those days are long gone for me, I had to do something to make "Whit" my own...

Bye Bye Bernice

On the heels of the sad death of Merv Griffin and Charles Nelson Reilly, about which I have already written, comes more crummy news; we have lost another quirky character star, Alice Ghostly.










My first memory of Ghostly must have been her hilarious guest starring role on an episode of "Get Smart," in which she played Max's new neighbor ("Call me Naomi!") who constantly sparred with her lazy husband (a pre-"Happy Days" Tom Bosley) and was incidentally a Kaos agent. Her hysterical attempts to poison The Chief at 99's first dinner party were a scream. I later realized that she was in the midst of a long and varied career, including prestige films such as "The Graduate" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," in which she played Scout's snippy neighbor. She was an accomplished stage actress, gracing the Broadway boards many times. One such appearance, in one of the "New Faces" revues, paired her with another of my favorite comics from that period, a man to whom she was often compared, Paul Lynde. They both had a nasal speech quality and eccentric facial expressions, and were in fact sometimes thought to be brother and sister (they were not).








Ghostly's later stage appearances included replacing Dorothy Loudon as Miss Hannigan in the original "Annie," as well as several Tony nominations and one win, in 1965 for "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window." Still, she achieved her most lasting fame on television. Back when live TV was the norm, she appeared in the now iconic original production of "Cinderella," starring Julie Andrews. With Kaye Ballard at her side, she introduced the world to the Rogers and Hammerstein novelty song, "Stepsisters' Lament."







In the late 60s, she joined the long-running sitcom "Bewitched," and remained with the show during its waning years. A decade later, she delighted old fans and made new ones as half-baked Bernice Clifton (with an "arterial flow problem") on "Designing Women," for which she received an Emmy nomination.

I have a lot of respect for the actors who spend their careers "in support," as Ghostly did. I hope she had a happy life (her marriage to actor Felice Orlandi lasted 50 years) and enjoyed the fact that she gave the public so much pleasure.

Steinbeck Surrenders

...or at least, he ought to, considering the massacre I am making of his words.

Of Mice and Men, the classic American tale of horse shoe games and whorehouses, is written in a structure difficult for my modern mouth to wrap itself around.

(Yes, I know the masterpiece is about a bit more than horse shoe games and whorehouses, but these are the major components of my role in the play, so naturally, they remain very important to me.)

I am having no trouble whatsoever with the accent, related to an Oklahoma dialect with hard-hitting "r" sounds, and a tight-lipped delivery. I am, however, having trouble with the odd sentence structure Steinbeck uses. I freely confess that I am more comfortable in a tux, holding a martini glass, and tossing off bon mots.

But I shall soldier on. Lengthy tech this weekend (three days' worth) will be followed by a day off, then we open cold, and fairly unexpectedly, for a house of over 300 9th graders (how old are 9th graders these days anyway? 14 or so?) at the ungodly hour of 10:15 AM. Adding the time required to prep for the curtain, and the hour or so commute from my front door to Olney, and we are talking about a very early and very long day...

Wanna make an actor complain? Give him a job.

Of Mice and Music

The Opus remount is well underway, and I feel lucky to have been a part of it, if only for a short time. The Washington Stage Guild remained upbeat and positive regarding my "desertion" to the previous commitment at Olney Theatre. The show will continue for another several weeks with our esteemed director playing the role I so enjoyed. I look forward to returning to see how the Lazara Quartet changes with its newest member (at right).

I have to confess to a bit of an ego boost when this little item was circulated to the press, as if my leaving the show was really all that newsworthy.

I can't help feeling a depression about leaving a role I love before the show closes. Couldn't be helped, really, and I have high hopes that I will be returning to the esteemed Stage Guild soon and often.

For now, though, attention must be turned to "Of Mice and Men" at Olney. A full week of rehearsal has passed, and truth be told, I already feel quite behind. The other cast members have clearly been hard at work in their off hours, and I, to put it bluntly, have not. So, many scenes find actors coming off the page for large sections of the text, while my dialogue remains firmly in my handheld script. I don't have all that much dialogue to begin with, so the fact that I don't know a single word of it is a bit embarrassing.

Time to hit the books for real. Steinbeck, ready or not, here I come.