THE ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT – Part Sixteen

I’ve found, over the years, that I invariably fall in love with the people I’m playing opposite. Elsewhere in these ramblings I’ve written about the “sizing-up” that goes on during the first days of rehearsals and that seems to happen no matter what. But this “falling in love” is something else, something that happens surprisingly, gradually and very securely as one eases into the playing of the piece. These are the deep relationships that evolve on a number of levels. My ‘Bobby’ to Patsy Maxson’s ‘Amy’ in “Company” and everything else we did together”, my ‘Happy’ to Russ Fast’s ‘Biff’ in “Death of a Salesman”, my “Deadeye” to Paul Massel’s ‘Captain Corcoran’ in “Pinafore”, my ‘Noggs’ to Lorne Kennedy’s ‘Nicholas’ in “Nicholas Nickleby”, Tracy Dahl in EVERYthing we did together!, my ‘William’ to Miriam Newhouse’s ‘Mary’ in “How The Other Half Loves”, my “Peron’ to Jayne Lewis’s “Eva” in “Evita” all fill my heart even as I think about them from this point in Time. Trying to understand what makes this happen is another thing altogether.

On one hand, there is the person, the human being I meet and discover a point of entry or a commonality to share, whether it’s an outlook on or an approach to life. It might be a personality trait or idiosyncrasy to which I find myself drawn. On another hand, there is the character they’re playing. Sometimes, I think I subconsciously overlay the words and personality of an appealing character onto the real human being compounding my attraction. And then, on yet another hand (!) is the person’s talent. This is perhaps the most serious of them all. Love comes out of respect and in all the cases above (and there are many more) I have deeply respected their abilities, their devotion to the craft and the way they use their talent to give a depth to a character and to themselves. Most of the time, it’s a combination of all three that touch me deeply. And miraculously, as has been pointed out to me many times, these connections are invariably apparent on stage. I think there’s something mystical in those connections that an audience picks up on and makes them comfortable, puts them at ease and allows them to trust us. Rainbow Stage gave me an opportunity to experience that magic once again.

Sigmund Romberg’s “The Student Prince” is an old warhorse of an operetta, a form of theatre popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their stories usually revolved around some kind of royal personage falling in love with a commoner and facing challenges of all kinds. The music was syrupy and sentimental and appaled to folks of a certain age. “Prince” had some wonderful songs like “Serenade” (“Overhead The Moon Is Beaming”), “Golden Days”  “Deep In My Heart, Dear”, the unfortunate “Come Boys, Let’s All Be Gay, Boys” (the connotation being very different when it was first written) and so many more. In our production, ‘Prince Karl Franz’ was played by Brian Gow and I played ‘Dr. Engel’, his tutor and guardian.

I didn’t know of Brian. He had been brought in from Toronto and hadn’t done much Theatre. I had listened to Mario Lanza singing “Serenade” for years and had fallen in love with both the voice and the song. In fact, I’d sung it many times myself in my more tenor-y days (even then it was a bit of a stretch) and was anxious to hear how this new young guy would do it. The first days of rehearsals at Rainbow are usually devoted to the music and, as usual, it was the ideal opportunity to do the “sizing-up” thing. The singing in “Prince” is all “legit” and there’s no escaping it. It’s an Operetta after all. Since all my scenes were opposite Brian and since I had to sing with him, I was very anxious to hear how he would tackle this iconic music. They started with “Deep In My Heart, Dear” (my favorite song in the show) and I held my breath. One phrase in and it was all I could to hold back my tears. This lad had a voice from heaven with a clarity and tone beyond his years and a beautiful vibrato that would break your heart! Oh! My! God!  We launched into our “Golden Days” duet, our voices soared and meshed, and I fell in love with him right then and there, thanking the heavens that I got to sing with him!

The relationship between ‘Karl Franz’ and ‘Engel’ is very deep as the isolated young royal, immersed in University life away from the Court, blossoms into a man filled with confidence and kindness. All their secrets are shared and there is a profound trust between them, a sort of father and son against the outside world. With that as our foundation, Brian and I began to build that relationship in real life. We had immediately gravitated toward each other and, over the weeks of rehearsals, spent a great deal of time talking about our lives, the challenges of working in the Theatre and of dealing with that in day-to-day existence. As our personal bond grew, so did the bond between “Karl-Franz” and ‘Engel’. Our scenes were such a joy to play and all the peripheral activities in the hall halted when we were on stage. The real world disappeared.

Halfway through the piece, the ‘Prince’ becomes ‘King’ and must leave the Doctor behind as he ascends to the throne. Their leave-taking is heartbreaking for both of them and while ‘Engel” reappears for a moment as a ‘ghost’ later on, this is the last time he is seen. News of his death comes later in the play. This farewell scene always did both of us in. The Prince exits leaving ‘Engel’ alone on stage as the lights fade. It was hard to hold back the tears and, as they say, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house”! It was entirely satisfying!

As the run progressed the inevitable routine settled in. One develops and trusts an inner sense of timing both on and off stage knowing when one is supposed to be in a particular place at a particular time. It’s just something visceral that becomes a part of the performance. One Sunday night toward the end of the run, and for the first time in my career, I missed an entrance! Even now, the embarrassment and shame well up inside me. There was no excuse for it even though afterward folks tried to blame the Tannoy and Stage Management. I was signing posters on my regular perch in the Green Room area (the “perch” pictured above with Celoris Miller, myself, Jack Shapira and a very young Donna Fletcher) for some of the Ensemble folks and it suddenly struck me that I had been sitting there much longer than usual. One of the Assistant Stage Managers walked by and said “Aren’t you supposed to be on-stage?”

Reality stopped! I really can’t remember how I got onto the stage. I did remember hearing words I’d never heard before as I dashed to the entrance and bolted on to the set. There was nothing subtle about it. I was out of breath and hadn’t prepped to go on as I usually did so my first line, a rather innocuous question to the Prince, was now filled with a strange urgency and a touch of inexplicable anger. A performer’s responsibility is to maintain that suspension of disbelief for everyone involved, the audience as well as the other performers. I had missed about 15 seconds, an eternity on stage! I realized that Tim Seabrook (playing the Prince’s valet) and Brian had been making up dialogue about going to back to Court, normally a fraught exchange that happened between me and the Karl-Franz.

It was about that time that my own reality caught up to me. Like those Norman McLaren multi-image ballet dancer films, after-images of me running on to the stage started slamming into my back like so many Richards piling up behind me. I began to sweat and, while all the lines were back to normal at that point, what I had done began to settle in on me. The scene lacked its usual pathos; there was no doubt about that. I finished up and left the stage walking to my normal waiting position in the dark for my re-entry at end of the Act. I started to feel ill inside. All the emotions started to well up in me trying to get to the surface, but I controlled them for the moment. I remember I kept flicking my finger off my thumb, a nervous externalization I had never experienced before, and my head was spinning. I went back out for the last little bit of the scene, the curtain came down releasing us from the last bit of the fantasy and I began to cry. The folks in the scene rushed to me asking what was wrong, but I superficially pulled myself together and went backstage to apologize to Brian and Tim.

As they walked toward me down the hallway, I said “I’ve never done that before”. That’s when the tears came in earnest and I began to sob. Brain rushed to me and wrapped his arms about me saying over and over again, “Don’t, don’t. It’s alright.” I could feel Tim’s hand on my shoulder. I just stood there and wept.  Later, the guys told me that the whole experience had been “thrilling”! Brian told me he had been losing focus that evening and this was the shot he needed to bring him back. Apparently folks in the orchestra didn’t even notice anything out of the ordinary had happened but that didn’t mean much as they usually read books or magazines during the times they weren’t playing. Then the jokes started: “Join the club”, “So Richard Hurst isn’t perfect after all!” trying to cheer me up. Gradually and just a bit reluctantly, I appreciated it.

I’ve always prided myself on being in control in most situations. When the reins get away from me, as they did that night, my ego takes over and punishes me. I had betrayed a trust with my fellow performers, in particular Brain. I had let him down. That memory has never left me and, as I noted in my Journal the following day I vowed to “never miss another entrance as long as I live”. I kept that vow … for twenty-one years.

(A sidebar: The show closed and, as always, the intensity of the relationships faded. Fortunately in this case, my elevation to Equity Councilor necessitated trips to Toronto three times a year and, for the next nine years, Brian and I would meet up and we maintained that close connection. Unfortunately, my Council tenure ended and, despite the best of intentions, we lost track of each other. If anyone reading this knows where Brian Gow is now, please let me know. I would appreciate it.)

The time before, during and following “The Student Prince” was jammed with work creating a schedule that leaves me breathless even now as I read the Journal from those days. Passion and excitement overlay an existance as one careens through life with little regard for the pitfalls or potholes that sometime accompany such a rush of forward propulsion. With the constant commercial, voice-over and narration work, the Concert Touring, the networking for jobs and even creating some of my own, I bounded through a period that served to lift me into a stratosphere I had neither planned for nor envisioned but certainly had hoped for. I was consumed with this life in “the biz” and reveled in every moment of it. Having also fully immersed myself in the burgeoning new computer and music technology, I found another creative path down which to travel with some amazing and, eventually, very lucrative results. Those results will take some time to write about down the road. Over the next while, I reluctantly let go of my dreams of becoming “someone of consequence” in the MTC Administration and eased back into the more familiar and satisfying position of a performer on their stages.

While I had worked in the MTC Rehearsal Hall for Rainbow Stage rehearsals, it had been almost two years since last stepping into that room as an actor in an MTC’s productions! It was like the old days as the large cast of “A Christmas Carol” along with the Production and Admin personnel gathered socially for the “Meet The Donut” (coffee and crullers) assemblage for the half hour before starting. We numbered about 50 and I reconnected with folks I’d been away from (professionally) for all that time. It was good to be “Home”! This was my third crack at the ‘Cratchitt’ bat (High School and New York being the other two – as documented in previous entries) so I knew both the role and the story in loving detail and was looking forward to diving into rehearsing this wonderful character once again. My first clue that this was not going to be the regular approach to the process came very early in the schedule.

I guess I had grown used to The Resident Company approach from years earlier when we would hit the Hall running with the aim of getting on our feet with minimal preamble. This wasn’t that! Our Director’s approach was, to say the least, academic. I cringingly remember more than an hour spent discussing “why”, in one scene, the Ghost of Christmas Present offers Scrooge an apple! Have mercy!! The fact was that this was a passing stage direction the adaptor/”playwright” had made up and deserved no extended in-depth conversation as to the action’s psychological, social and cultural relevance! I spoke my thought out loud and our Director told us that he wanted to “explore every possibility” and the talk went on interminably around the table.

The truth is that these endless “bathtubbing” sessions were obviously a way for our Director to learn the script, a fact that became painfully obvious as we got to our feet after four days of tabletalk! I’ve found over the years that there are all kinds of Directors (as documented elsewhere in these pages) and that an actor’s job is to adapt to their approach or suffer the consequences. But this one was a new one for me. We would start blocking a scene and, as if a switch had been thrown, come to a halt as he entered into a trance-like state that lasted for minutes, a phase-out that had us all looking at each other wondering when it would end. I think he was privately picturing options in his head for what we should physically do.  It resulted in a LOT of wasted time. A scene and all its attending elements would eventually be set and we would move on, Stage Management having dutifully set down the blocking. But days later, when we got around to doing the scene again, he would rant and rave that what we were doing was not what he had told us to do (although it had been meticulously documented by our SM). Then, on the fly, would re-stage the entire scene resulting in confusion and a hell of a lot of tension. This went on for weeks but eventually it came together and we moved the proceedings down to the Stage!

Up in the Rehearsal Hall, the designer’s maquette of our set looked wonderful – an elaborate four-ton revolving house-like monolith with upper playing levels and a number of entry doors placed at various positions on the stage level. All this was surrounded by another turntable which turned clockwise or counterclockwise as needed. In the Rehearsal Hall, the structure’s floor plan and the turntable were represented by gigantic circular carpets which the four ASM’s would revolve to new positions for the various scenes and then the actors would take their places, pretending to be on an upper level or making an entrance through an imaginary door. Eventually, this Rehearsal Hall conditioning would translate on-stage into seamless transitions for actors and revolving elements in the many scene changes. At least that was the thinking.

On the stage were greeted with the impressive behemoth but quickly discovered that, contrary to assurances upstairs, there were a number of “kinks” yet to be worked out and the revolve and turntable, at least for a few days, had to be turned manually by stage hands, multiple ropes and a great deal of sweat. We had all grown used to the constant tension in the air, but at least now we had a chance to explore our new digs and get accustomed to entrance positions and exits, the upper balcony platforms, the eighteen inch wide spiral staircases – one for going “up” and the other for going “down” – and door after door after door on the stage level. It took a LOT of time to sort out which door to use for an entrance and I quickly discovered that the combination of walking up or down the inner spiral stairs AS the revolve turned was, to say the least, mightily confusing and stomach-turning! There were traffic jams galore as ladies in vast formal gowns decided they were going to use both sets of stairs to go “up” as I was trying to get “down”. Even when we got into performances, I was never really sure if I was going to go through the right door on deck level and be where I was supposed to be!

As I’ve mentioned before, I judge all Directors by the Ouzounian Standard of organization and efficiency and this Director was getting failing grades. He was immovable and ungiving, the opposite of what was needed at this fraught time during rehearsals. The teching of the set movements and the complex timing needed was getting very short shrift and, with a show this complicated and behind schedule, the SM team and Crew were at the very edge of mutiny. Even our Stage Manager, the ever uber-efficient and stalwart Jacqui Dawson (she had been come through the RDO school of SM’ing) was affected by it all. At one point she came into my dressing room, closed the door and crawled under the chair I was sitting in! But eventually, and only because there was no alternative, we got into some beneficial tech rehearsing and were happy that a day off was just ahead of us. Surely the set would be in working order when we came back for the final days before Previews. It wasn’t!

I love a crisis! It’s an opportunity to rise to the occasion and, calmly and rationally, collaboratively solve problems. I had been elected Deputy (yet again) and had “officially” been drawn into the chaos because of the rule infringements and overtime that were now happening because of the technical challenges. With our first Preview audience a day away talk of cancelling our first public performance started to circulate. In the Theatre “cancellation” is not a welcome word. It affected a cast’s morale and signaled to the outside world – and paying customers – that the show was in trouble … which it WAS!

I was sitting in the Green Room during another interminable break when my name was called over the intercom to come to the stage. There, clustered with arms folded and heads down waiting for me, were the Theatre’s General Manager, the Artistic Director, the Head Carpenter and our Director! Uh-oh! They told me they were going to look at that afternoon’s rehearsal with a critical eye and make the decision about cancelling. They needed me to approach the cast and ask that the dinner period be drastically shortened (with food being brought in for us at the Theatre’s expense) so that, should they think we were in good enough shape, we could start the Preview performance as soon after eight as possible. We started the run and, miraculously, with only a few hitches, everything went as it was supposed to. At the run-through’s intermission we voted to have Chinese food brought in and everyone was happy … except for one blockhead actor (who actually spent most of his time off-stage during the production anyway) who insisted that all this schedule changing was so the Theatre wouldn’t have to pay overtime if we went past eleven o’clock. The Theatre had already paid us hours upon hours of overtime so his complaint was unfounded and mean-spirited. There are times when I reach the tipping point and this was one of them. I proceeded to explain in front of the whole cast and no uncertain terms that all was being done by the book and if overtime was incurred, it would be incurred. He sulked off as the rest of us dug into the food, psyched and tugging at the bit to perform the show with people watching.

Everything went as smooth as glass! There was one big test for me, a particular entrance that was very complex both in its choreographed timing and in my external physicalization. It was Cratchit’s first entrance into the office. I entered from mid-Stage Left in an obvious hurry walking quickly across the stage floor and seamlessly stepped onto the turntable as the tower began to turn revealing the office.  At the same time, my high desk and stool tracked on from the opposite side of the stage as the lights started to came up to reveal the rest of Scrooge’s office and the entry door. As I hit the turntable (which was turning in the opposite direction) I began to walk in place creating the illusion that I was still travelling, an effect at which he audience gasped because, while they could see the tower turning, they couldn’t see the stage floor and the turntable. I loved that moment! I sped up my gait as the tower started to slow down and approach its final position, walked behind it, in a back door, around the inner stairs, and, in one sustained and fluid motion, came through the door onto the set, closed the door, took off my hat and scarf, hung them on them on a rack, met the desk and stool as they came to their resting positions, sat down, picked up my pen and began writing away in my ledger as the tower came to its proper halt! The audience spontaneously applauded as I remarked “Holy Shit” under my breath! Whew! When it worked, it was magical! And fortunately, it worked most of the time.

Up in the Lobby on opening night I was besieged by well-wishers and people telling me how wonderful it was to see me back on the MTC stage! The sentiments were not lost on me. It had been a hard and unjustifiable two years being away from those boards I loved so deeply and the time ahead was, well, you’ll see.

UP NEXT:  GREAT BIG OPERA