There was no down time to fall into once back home. Despite the fact that I’d been in LA for only four days, the work had continued to pile up, so the morning following my return found me at my desk as the sun rose. The one saving grace was that the house was pretty well in order. It had been a year since moving in and now everything was where it was supposed to be. There were decorating details that kept popping up and needing attention, but my office was perfection … and that was the “saving grace”. My deep-seated need for organization and order had been made manifest in the space on the lower level, a large, bright and comfortably appointed room. I could sit at my desk with everything within arm’s reach, feeling in control and able to handle just about anything.

By now, Sam had me quarterbacking (as he called it) a ridiculous number of projects. We still had shows on the road – Manilow, Jann Arden – along with some bewildering productions – “The Masque Effect”, “Frank – A Life In Song”, “The Heroes of September”, “The Wonder Of It All” – which had bubbled up from nowhere and were verging on going back to the same place. There were some odd one-offs we’d been hired to contract like the CFL Half-time Show and the Canadian Intensive Care Fundraiser. “Forever Swing” was still touring as was “Patsy” (the “big version”) and “Anne of Green Gables”. We were overseeing the recording sessions for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s “Sleeping Beauty” Tour, and preparations had started for the oddest job of the lot – the four-day Wedding Celebration of an Alberta Oil Baron’s daughter, for which we’d been given an astonishing music budget of $100,000.00 – and we were bringing musicians and performers in from all parts of the country.

Of course, ground work continued for our Broadway entree, the premiere of the stage version of “Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang”. Sam was hell-bent on taking over John Monaco’s contracting empire in New York and “Chitty” was to be our major advance into that fray! We’d long had this show on our roster, but using it to “take over” seemed dicey, at least in my mind. But Sam didn’t think like that … it was another “damn the torpedoes” approach and I was along for the ride. I kept my nose to the grindstone with budget proposals, payrolls, hiring and contracts for most of the daylight hours. In the evening I sat back and took solace in the fact that I was making good coin doing it and in a physical environment that made me very happy and content. But there were a lot of other things going on at the same time.

Rainbow’s “West Side Story” was close to starting rehearsals. With the Cast hired, I shifted my attention to the many production elements I wanted firmly in place before walking into the Rehearsal Hall. I needed all our tech staff to know exactly what was going to happen in advance of hitting the stage, for both my sake and theirs. It was a huge show and being prepared for all eventualities would put everyone’s mind at ease. Lighting Designer Scott Henderson and I had already established the lighting plot for the show, and I’d met with Paul Skirzyk, my Stage Manager, and set preliminary lighting cues. The look of the production was firmly in my head, and I could see how it was going to happen. There was no question I couldn’t answer and having it all in hand was another hurdle out of the way.

I jammed a day into the schedule to work on a film. It was called “The Many Trials of One Jane Doe” and was based on a true story about a woman who had been raped and refused to remain a victim. I had been cast in the role of ‘Dr. Jaffe’, the rape psychologist who testified at the trial. I had one nice scene in the court room as a witness for ‘Jane Doe’ and then another with the Defense Lawyer who cross examines me about my lack of knowledge of police procedures. This Defense Lawyer was being played by an actor named Gary Lewis, who, for some reason looked very familiar. Had I seen him in a movie or TV show? I just couldn’t place him. We’d been introduced briefly and after a quick rehearsal, began filming. The scene starts out calmly enough but devolves into an extended combative verbal exchange. Everything went as it should have … until it didn’t. As we approached the end of the scene I suddenly got an odd feeling that something had shifted. The Lawyer looked at me quizzically for a moment, tilting his head and squinting, like a switch had been flipped on inside him, as if he had suddenly switched gears. Then, out of nowhere, he began firing questions at me, questions that weren’t in the script. They just kept pouring out of his mouth, a torrent of words that wouldn’t stop. “Who do you think you are?” “You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?” “This is all for show, isn’t it?” “You’re just wasting the Court’s time, aren’t you?” This verbal assault took me completely by surprise and I started to yammer. “What?” “Er …” “Um …” “I …” I looked around the room. No one was yelling “cut” and we were hurtling down this uncharted road. He had a very thick Scots accent and his voice got louder and louder until he was yelling at the top of his lungs, his face getting redder as his fury increased. The word “apoplectic” came to mind as I watched him, mesmerized, as the veins at his temples bulged. He moved in very close, and I could see the spit on his lips flying in every direction. What the hell was this! There was no escape. He had forced me into a corner, and I started yelling back. “I’m not the one on trial here!” “What right do you have to talk to me this way!” I could feel my back getting tense and the skin on my head tightening. There was a tiny part of me that knew we were acting but with our eyes locked we were well down the rabbit hole and in mortal combat. Eventually someone yelled “Cut!” and that was it. He backed off and I managed to swallow and get my breath as the room erupted in activity and noise. I looked at him and smiled a little as if to say, “You bastard!” He smiled back, leaned in and shook my hand. “That was fun”, he said. I agreed and we laughed. It wasn’t until later that I realized that Gary Lewis had been ‘Billy Elliot’s’ Father in the film. I was very glad I’d not known that in advance!

I found out that I wouldn’t start filming the second season of “2030CE” until the third episode in the middle of August. That was perfect for me. “West Side Story” would be open, and I could get a bit of time “off”. I was tugging at the bit to find out what was going to happen to ‘Victor’ and the crew. But everyone was very tight lipped. I could wait.

Robbie was now at home and on the mend. We’d done many walks, his vision was clearing up, his balance had improved greatly, and he was in good spirits. He’d relaxed and was taking the time to get better. The fact that he’d accepted that this recovery was going to take time had gone far to aid in the healing process. That set everyone’s mind at ease, and it was time to focus on “West Side Story” completely.

Sam knew that when I went into rehearsals, MSI took a back seat. I had mornings free to do the payrolls and urgent stuff, but he understood that the rest of the day was out of bounds – no frantic calls, no unreasonable demands, no get-this-done-right-away messages. The preparation I’d already done for the show allowed me to walk into the Rehearsal Hall that first day ready and open to whatever was going to happen. The cast, arrayed in front of me for the Meet and Greet, was beautiful. They were beautiful human beings both physically and spiritually. I could see and sense that when I walked into the room. There was a calm excitement in the air, nothing jangly or tense, but a feeling that they’d already been joined emotionally and psychically just by being cast in the show … and that feeling never left. With Bill (Robertson, our choreographer) at my side, we launched into something that quickly became magical and substantial.

The read-though and sing-through were beyond my expectations. Everyone was focused and committed, understanding that we were on sacred Theatrical ground. There’s a tiny bit of comedy scattered about, but, like everything else in the show, it’s tinged by an underlying desperation and danger, and, from the outset, we realized that everyone’s path is the same and where this was going to end up, unavoidably, because the characters don’t make the choices to change it. Hope rises from time to time only to be dashed, inevitably and absolutely. This was serious stuff, and everyone knew it. To make it all the more compelling, Bernstein’s music mines the story’s emotional depths, and our cast was inspired by what they had to sing. It was music they all knew very well and now they were getting to sing it “for real”. At the auditions when Nena (Lazo, now playing ‘Maria’) had walked in, I’d said a silent prayer that her voice and acting ability would match her beauty. They did. Combined with Nick Matthew’s winsome good looks and his miraculous tenor sound, they made a perfect pair you wanted to root for despite the great odds they faced. It was all magical. When Bill’s choreography started to take shape, the energy and excitement surged at rehearsals. There was no fooling around. The dances were very difficult, demanding complete focus. I knew the cast was serious because the wild summer camp partying that usually went on after rehearsals and on weekends was essentially non-existent. They were tired and drained if only because of the emotional outlay they were expending each day. There was no time for frivolities. Peter Huck (‘Bernardo”), Randy Ganne (‘Riff’) and Robyn Wong (‘Anita’) were spectacular, sexy and beautiful. I found myself on a constant high. One late afternoon on the third day of rehearsals, I was outside the theatre having a smoke. I looked up at the sky and found myself thinking that this was already a great production. I don’t know how I could tell that was the case except perhaps in my heart, but I knew that everything had aligned and was working in the right way.

There was one element about which I found myself feeling a bit sad, maybe even guilty. Our rehearsal pianist was Danny Carroll. He was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, accommodating, very funny and, best of all, an incredible musician. Bernstein’s score is immense. It’s huge even for a 23-piece orchestra. For a single musician playing what is called a “piano reduction” it is an absolute monster. In the second week of rehearsals, I could see him at the piano massaging his hands whenever he wasn’t playing. He had been playing for ten days, eight hours a day non-stop, at dance rehearsals, vocal rehearsals, scene rehearsals. I approached him one afternoon and asked him if he was alright. While I knew academically that it would a difficult job, I don’t think I understood what kind of toll it could take on someone physically and psychically. Danny was (and still is) usually undaunted by anything you put in front of him, but this was beyond the norm. The score was thick and intense, and every page was covered with musical complexities far beyond the regular musical theatre fare. He told me he would go home at night and soak his hands in Epsom salts trying to reduce the swelling after eight hours of pounding out the heavy dance rhythms over and over again. I asked him if there was anything I could do. Should we get another player in to give him a break? He wouldn’t hear of it. I let Bill know what Danny was going through and he thought he could pull back a bit with the dances. Fortunately by that time everything had pretty well been staged and we were getting closer to runs, but it really didn’t let up all that much for him. But Danny rose to the occasion, mustering on with his good humour and great stamina. I will always admire him for that singular effort and commitment!

The opening was an utter glory. There were some technical issues with the lumbering sets we’d been saddled with, but no one seemed to mind. Well, I minded. All I saw were four stage hands on stage between scenes pushing mightily to overcome the inertia to get a huge piece of scenery moving and taking much too much time. But the audience was as committed as the cast was and ignored the intrusion. The singing was beautiful, text-driven, so that every note was attached to a feeling that came from somewhere deep inside. Every dance step had been imbued with meaning and intention. The story was at the core of it all and propelled each moment with clarity and purpose. There was a moment at the very end when I thought my heart would burst as ‘Maria’ walks off stage following ‘Tony’s’ dead body carried high above the heads of the two gangs. A solo trumpet rises above the muted orchestra playing the two plaintive signature notes from “Somewhere”. The cyc turns blood red behind a silhouetted skyline floating in the middle of the river. Members of both gangs lift ‘Tony’s’ body high above their heads and start walking off stage. The lights slowly begin to fade as ‘Maria’ falls in line behind the cortege, the rest of the cast following behind her, all disappearing off stage as everything goes black. There was a long moment when the whole world was suspended in silence and awe. Then, a single person started clapping, unleashing the avalanche of applause from the house. Early on, I’d decided to have the curtain call done in silence. I didn’t want to break the spell that we’d created by having the orchestra wail into “America”. The whole cast slowly walked back onto the stage as a group and then took their calls. As they acknowledged the pit, the orchestra began playing “Somewhere”. They took one more company bow and left. I was overwhelmed and in love with every one of them. I could see the pride on all their faces. They knew they’d done something extraordinary.

I went back over and over again, standing way up in the rear of the theatre. That excitement we’d all experienced at opening never diminished. There were no “improvements” or let downs – it was all as I’d left it and that was probably because they were so proud of their work. As well they should have been. There had been no wrangling through the process … well, dear Peter Huck tested the water from time to time but that was only because (as we both acknowledged) he was, after all, Peter Huck and had been sent by God to keep me humble. At the opening night party I took great pleasure in watching him choke up with emotion as he made a gift presentation to me. The whole experience had re-confirmed to me an important thing I learned from working with Richard Ouzounian and with Robbie Paterson. Be available! Put yourself at the disposal of the people who are working to make your vision happen. It doesn’t work any other way … for anybody. Relinquishing ego is sometimes difficult but always crucial to communication and collaboration. The projects that were ahead (and there were a lot of them) benefitted from that foundation.

Then “2030CE” wedged itself into my life again … kind of. They had filmed two episodes by the time I’d come available but there had been some massive changes. Cory Sevier, who was playing ‘Hart’, the lead character, had suddenly been prohibited from doing the series by Disney Productions. They apparently had him on hold for a film and wouldn’t let him go. This all struck me as somewhat odd because we’d all been assured at the end of last season that were would be another. But I guess that wasn’t secure enough and Cory had put himself out there and been snatched up by a biggie. I’d looked forward to working more with him this time around but that wasn’t to be. My first episode was called “Get Victor” (that’s me) and it was a “positioning episode” for both me and the story – now that ‘Hart’ was gone. The new lead was named ‘Zeus’, a half-man, half-hawk type character, but our relationship was murky. There was another character named ‘Dax’ whose identity is apparently mixed up with mine, but I must have missed something last season as I had no inkling of his existence until we began again. The episode had a lot of medical stuff in it as we looked for a gene that has caused ‘Victor’s’ longevity and had me mixed up with this ‘Dax’ person. Try though I might, the writers were not releasing any information about what was going to happen. I did find out that ‘Hart’ was now in a “suspension pod’ somewhere but it seemed the creators were making it up as they went along. What this boded for the time ahead was anyone’s guess. I just hung on for the time being.

In the aftermath of “West Side Story”, we learned that the show had been attended by 44,000 people and had grossed $900,000.00, Rainbow’s largest ever box office. I was officially hired as the Director for next season’s Summer production of “Joseph/Dreamcoat”. I’d thrown my hat in the ring as soon as the title had come up and had also expressed an interest in doing ‘Shaw Moore’ in “Footloose” if Robbie was directing during the Winter. “Miss Saigon” was another title being thrown around, so it seemed that Rainbow was looking ahead.  I was also up for a role in a film about the killing of Manitoba Indigenous Leader J. J. Harper. The part was that of Harvey Pollock, the prosecution lawyer representing the Harper Family at the massive trial that followed the incident. Apparently my audition had caught the attention of the Producer in Toronto and Jim Heber (who had been the casting agent for “2030CD” and was now doing the same thing for this new flick) seemed to have a “good feeling” about my involvement.

Where one door opens another usually closes, the converse of the old adage, and that’s what happened with ‘Victor’. He just … disappeared. Vanished. That first “Get Victor” episode in Season Two was my last. I’d waited and waited for my next call, but it never came. In the episode, I too had been put into “cryogenic suspension” as I’d somehow become infested with “nanobots” and had to be frozen while they figured out how to “fix me”. I kept in touch with Jim, but he was as much in the dark as I was. Sadly, while things dragged on with the remainder of the scheduled episodes, the show wasn’t picked up for another season. I think the writing had been on the wall for a while. I’d had great hopes for the show. The story was interesting and challenging and I was loving ‘Victor’. I was depressed for a few days, but YTV had decided and that was it. It seemed so ruthless. Cancellations are the norm in TV and folks get used to living on the edge like that. But “being cancelled” doesn’t feel good and leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth. I think doing feature films is the route to go – a couple of days on set, pick up your cheque and you’re done! And now, it seemed, one of those opportunities was presenting itself.

Everything moved forward with both “Footloose” and “Joseph” as we hit October. Ken (Peter, Rainbow’s Producer) decided that we were going to hold preliminary auditions for both shows that month … a choice that was beyond me. Robbie (who’d been hired to do “Footloose”) and I saw a bunch of people – more for Robbie than me as “Footloose” was up first in the Spring – but some folks turned up for “Joseph” anyway. I cornered Ken with my wants for the ‘Joseph’ and ‘Pharaoh’ roles and he put offers out as soon as I said, “Nick Matthews and Kevin Aichele”. I wanted them nailed down right away, the rest would follow after the New Year. Choreographer was next on the list and there were a few names that rose to the top. Ken would work on arrangements. But there was another bother I had to deal with. The script we’d been sent for the show was the “Original Version”. Rodgers and Hammerstein, the licensors, weren’t holding the one I wanted – the Livent Version, which had a lot of scene extensions and musical expansions. This was the “big production” version, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than that. The show had had many incarnations since its inception in the late 60’s as a little 15-minute “cantata” created for an elementary school in England. It had been expanded to a 35-minute version for the Edinburgh Festival in ’72, then into an even larger production for the Young Vic Company. All these incarnations were still floating around. Ken got in touch with someone in Toronto who had done the Livent Version and he said he’d send it to us. I still wasn’t sure that what we were going to get was what we wanted and that turned into a worry for me for much too much time.

While in Los Angeles, guests of our show stay at the glamourous Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel” was an announcement I remember hearing on TV Game Shows or Daytime Talk Shows during the seventies and eighties. Those words conjured up images of movie stars walking about in the lobby or lounging around the swimming pool, high-end accommodation and lavish room service. Deciding I should experience a little of that “glamourous” life, I booked a room for my three day stint in LA. I would again be officiating for Mr. Manilow, this time taping a CBS TV Special and the DVD/CD “Ultimate Manilow” Collection at the Kodak Theatre right across the street from the Hotel.

            As soon as I walked into the Lobby it was obvious that its Best-By date had long since passed. There was a depressing shabbiness that hung about this vast but dark open space. Renovations had apparently been going on for a long time but had focused on the rear of the building around the pool and an annex. My room was at the front of the building and had not been refurbished. Because of these reno “inconveniences” they’d upgraded me (“at no additional charge”) from my $139.00-a-night Standard Room to a Corner Suite, listed on the door card at $349.00 a night. I wasn’t going to argue. The room was very bright with two large windows in each outside wall creating a panoramic view down Hollywood Boulevard and diagonally across the street to the Kodak theatre (once “Grauman’s Chinese”, now the Dolby Theatre). There was a huge living area with an overstuffed couch and easy chairs, coffee tables, a dining table and chairs, and a large desk and office chair. The bedroom was separate. Signs of years of use (and abuse) were evident upon closer inspection, but since I wasn’t going to be spending much time in the room, I ignored all that and I set up my laptop and printer at the big desk. I kept wondering what celebs had stayed in this room before me. In its glory days, it must have been considered very posh. I ordered in some room service, confirmed some meetings for the days ahead and was in bed by 10:30.

            One of my meetings was with John Nelson, Barry’s Agent, and the following morning we spent an hour going over the Orchestra budgets for the up-coming Tour sites. Like all of Barry’s Staff people, John was extremely friendly and relaxed. He was effusive about the job we were doing for them and that all my budgets had been spot on. In the course of our conversation, I learned there were upcoming projects where they might need our services, one being for a young singer for whom they were arranging a Fall Tour. His name was Josh Groban and John played me a few tracks from his new album. I didn’t know who he was, but became an immediate fan upon hearing his beautiful voice! Only because Sam had told me to, I ventured to ask about Celine Dion. Sam was tugging at the bit to get us into the Las Vegas market and since Caesar’s Palace was building her a new Theatre for a three-year sit, now might be the right time to make the pitch. I’m not very good when it comes to making “sales pitches”. It’s not because I don’t believe in our abilities, but I always feel like I’m imposing upon people, and it makes me very uncomfortable. I reminded him of all our services (which, of course, he knew already) and left it at that. There would be a lot of steps before we’d be at the point of hiring musicians, so I just asked that John keep us in mind when the subject started to come up. I was always surprised at how nice these folks were. They were big shots in the business, but I never got the impression they were anything but real, down-to-earth folks just doing their jobs. I thanked him for his time, and headed down to the theatre for the first rehearsal.

            I arrived very early and found Ron Basile, the “Executive in Charge”, and we hit it off right away. Ron was the Associate Producer of the Emmy Awards and had a lot of TV Specials under his belt. We’d been talking a lot on the phone over the past month, and it was another case of guessing what the face looked like based on a voice. This time, it was a perfect match. He was young, handsome, incredibly friendly and very laid back, like this whole thing was no big deal. We got my laminate taken care of and he took me around to get a lay of the land. Needless to say, I was incredibly nervous as I really had no idea what was expected of me this time round. In New York I had just stayed in the background and watched. This time, I was definitely in the middle of the action.

            The musicians started arriving in the Lobby at 4:15 and after introducing myself, I took them over to the box-office for their credentials and showed them the route to the backstage area. That’s when things started to get complicated. Snag Number One! I discovered that no one could go on stage until the Stagehands returned at 5:00 – exactly the time we were supposed to start the rehearsal! I piled everyone into the Green Room across the hall from the stage. Musical Director Steve Welch (who again greeted me like a long lost brother) arrived and I explained what was happening. He took over and got the band to organize their music before going on the stand. They seemed easy about it – after all the clock had already started for them – but we didn’t get settled until almost 6:00 and that, to me, had been a major waste of time. From there, it went a bit further downhill. The band played through the music with Steve keeping a good pace, trying to get through all the material before Barry arrived. I kept looking at my watch, concerned about the legislated breaks the band had to take. After two and a half hours from the actual start time of 5:00, which had only been an hour-and-a-half of actual rehearsal time, I told Steve they had to take a half-hour break. The musicians were pleased. The Producer was not! Snag Number Two. Sam had neglected to tell me that I should check with Stage Management before announcing the break. I hadn’t. As the musicians started filing off the stage, a little round man with a scraggly beard came bounding down the aisle of the theatre and ran up on stage yelling “What the hell is going on?!” This three-inches-shorter-than-I-am little man was Ken Ehrlich, Producer Ultimo. I could feel his energy as I ran up on stage from the other side of the house. I reached him at the same time Steve did. I introduced myself to Ken as Steve told him we had to take the scheduled break. David had come out on stage and stood listening to this little exchange. David was the Stage Manager, another really nice guy with whom I’d connected earlier in the day. He blamed it all on a scheduling miscommunication with IATSE (the Stagehand’s Union) and things calmed down a bit. Ken pulled me aside. “I’m not mad”, he said, “but you gotta tell Stage Management first”. I apologized and inwardly thanked the heavens that he’d not gone ballistic on me in front of everyone. There were a couple of good things that came out of this episode; one, was that the musicians realized I was working for them and not Management, and the other was that Carmen Fanzone, the Business Rep. from the LA AFofM Local had been watching all this transpire from where I’d been sitting with him only a moment earlier down front in the house. He had caught my eye at one point and smiled and nodded at me. Okay. That was all nice. But I wanted Ken to like me. My shot came only moments later … during Snag Number Three!

The Concertmaster, Mike, was a big, older guy who, Sam had warned me, liked to run things. He’d been playing at being “in charge” for years and no one had ever questioned it. But I had beat him to that button. Weeks earlier I’d been in touch with every musician, introducing myself and relaying all the engagement details. Mike had been my last call. I discovered later that after I’d spoken to him, he had started calling the other musicians to give them the gig info only to find out that I’d done it already. He made mention of this when I met him earlier in the day, but acquiesced somewhat as to who was in charge. Gamesmanship one might call it. I played nice and piled on the praise, expressing my gratitude for his support. I think that’s all he wanted.

David had come over to me and Ken after our little conversation and, conspiratorially, draped his arms over my shoulders leaning on me. Ken moved in closer. David whispered to us, “We have a political problem”. Oh Lord, what fresh hell was this? I was being generous with my above description of Concertmaster Mike. He was, simply put, fat and unattractive. Being Concertmaster, he had seated himself in the front of the two rows of string players with the attractive female players behind him. The section was perched on a very high platform above the brass and wind players. The problem was that the boom camera wanted to pan that part of the orchestra but with Mike front and center, couldn’t frame the attractive ladies without him. “What should we do?”, David asked. With Ken and David now staring at me I realized that “we” meant me! My mind was racing as I started to think out loud. We (I) couldn’t tell Mike we were moving him to the back row because he was ugly. After all, he was the CM and was supposed to be in that physical position in the section. Add to that the fact that the players behind him couldn’t see Steve conducting 15 feet below at stage level and Mike was giving them their cues with his head and bowing. I said that he was probably pulling a lot of visual focus at the moment because he was wearing a bright pastel blue shirt which made him a lot more obvious. He would be wearing black for the show and would probably not stand out so much. They both sort of agreed and understood how delicate this was on a number of levels. Then the jokes started about whether he could take off 120 pounds by the next evening, whether anyone thought Kaopectate would help. We all laughed, and it wasn’t brought up again. I breathed a small sigh of relief. This was followed by Snag Number Four!

By now, a couple more hours had gone by without a break. Breaks were becoming the bane of my existence. I spoke with David and Ron and Ron decided that Ehrlich Productions would pay for the breaks not taken and an extra half-hour of rehearsal time. These minute-to- minute changes were destroying my budgets. All this was giving me an incredible case of heartburn that I had no way of quelling. It came to a point when I absolutely had to call another break later in the evening. “No!!” Ken yelled at me – from out in the house this time! “I’ve done 15 of these shows! Ya gotta work with me, Richard! Ya gotta work with me!”. The heartburn intensified.

Barry, who had arrived in great spirits, had been maintaining his humour and composure during the earlier part of the rehearsal, but now, three hours in, was wearing down. Combined with all the stopping and starting, little things were getting to him; like when his ear speakers weren’t working properly or when he decided he didn’t like a move he’d been given to do or when a prop was brought on at the wrong time. Finally, at 11:45, he yanked out his ear pieces, said “That’s it” and walked off the stage. And that was the end of the first day.

I found a convenience store after walking up and down Hollywood Boulevard and bought five rolls of Rolaids. I would pop these constantly over the next two days. I’d had nothing to eat all day and the only thing I could get from Room Service at that hour was a tuna salad sandwich. I devoured it and I began the now-massively-complicated re-calculations on my budgets. I was basically dealing with four AFM tariff schedules – one set of numbers for the rehearsal charges, one for the taping/performance charges, one for the DVD royalties and one for the CD royalties. The DVD and CD money would stay the same as they were one time buy-out numbers, but I knew there would be more additional rehearsal charges (those damn break infringements) the next day and wanted to give Ron an idea of what the costs were adding up to so far. It was a LOT of money! A HUGE amount! But there was nothing I could do about it. I popped some more Rolaids and flopped into bed praying that the next day would be easier. It wasn’t!

Armed with my laptop and portable printer, I was back at the Theatre by two the next afternoon and was given a desk in the Production Room downstairs. Warning him that the numbers would probably change by the end of the day, I gave Ron the new budgets incorporating the additional charges from the day before. He looked at the bottom line and said the number was what he thought it would be. A small triumph! Ken was working at the next desk, so I took my heart in my hands and went over to him. I had been thinking about how I was going to approach him after our little set-to the night before. The heartburn continued to rage despite the Rolaids. I crouched down beside him.

“Look”, I said. “I have to apologize for adding to the pressure on you last night. I’m afraid I wasn’t being very helpful.” He held his hand up.

“No. I should be apologizing to you”, he said.

“I guess the chaos hadn’t helped things. It was all just in the moment”, I said.

“Exactly. We’re good”, he said, and that’s where it landed … and stayed. Things were fine.

The rest of the afternoon was still chaotic. Barry, now back to his affable self, sailed through the rehearsal, although he sounded a bit scratchy. At 5:40 Stage Manager Dave told me that the strings could go because they were doing a camera pass for the horns. Then Ron popped up and told me that everyone could go, so I dismissed the entire band, and they all started to leave. Which was when Ken bounded up the stairs yet again yelling “Where’s everybody going??” Now I didn’t know what was happening … neither did Dave.

“It’s going to take too much time for everyone to get into costume and back on the stage”, Ron said. “We have to shoot the promos with Barry first. I pay the bills, and everyone goes.”

Ken turned to me and started on about my dismissing the orchestra. I was at a loss for words. I hadn’t made this decision. There was an odd moment in which I felt very comfortable, as if I was a part of a family having a squabble. There was no animosity, no real anger, just folks talking loud enough to be heard. Since I had no response to Ken’s comments, I just turned to Ron, tilted my head and widened my eyes in silent questioning.

Ron turned to Ken. “Bruce (the engineer in the recording truck outside) said he didn’t need anyone”. I was safe. Ken stormed off yelling at no one in particular, “We’ll have to do the camera pass live tonight” and disappeared into the backstage dark. Ron stood there sort of smiling and looking a little bit lost. I shrugged and walked away saying that I’d see him in an hour. I felt no guilt at all … but the heartburn was still raging. There had been no additional charges!

Back at the hotel I sat watching some baseball on TV and downed another tuna salad sandwich trying to calm myself while waiting out the hour before the call.

There were four thousand invited guests (the “Fanilows”) in the house when I got back. They had been lining up outside when I left at 6:00 and now they were ready for Barry. Backstage, things had calmed down. I found Dave and asked if I could let the band know the stage was available. I did and, at that point, essentially, my job was done. I wandered about saying “Good show” to folks and eventually I found myself a little niche behind David and stayed there. While the show was only an hour long, it took all of the allotted two hours to film, mostly because Barry kept forgetting his patter. After the opening medley, he got lost. Ken came out with the script, they chatted for a moment, Barry got his face powdered and we were off again. I could see how the show was looking on the monitors and it was incredible. The lighting was spectacular, very theatrical and Barry, while doing it piecemeal, was in fine form. He made mistakes all over the place, but the audience loved the flubs and forgetfulness if only because he made a thing of them. They would roar with laughter and applaud at his apologies and excuses. Finally it was over. I looked at my watch and held my breath. It was two minutes past ten! I was waiting for the musicians to come off the stand yowling that they’d gone into overtime. No one said a thing. But then why should they? It ended up that with all the rehearsals, the additional charges for overtime and infringements, the royalties and the performance fees, the base salary (what a string player would get) was about three thousand dollars for the two days! The wind players, many playing three or four instruments which required doubling fees, would end up getting close to twice that base fee. For events like this, money was no object!

I spent a lot of time afterward thanking the band folk and telling them how incredible they sounded. They were effusive in their responses to me. They told me I was “one classy guy”, that not many Contractors would have been so calm and reasonable in the many spur-of-the moment tense situations they had witnessed. That made me feel good. Ken also seemed pleased and shook my hand, thanking me for all my help in making things happen. I took the compliment. Ron hugged me saying we should do this again soon. I told him Sam could deal with it. Twice was enough for me. And we laughed. I spent a bit of time with Steve. “We did it, buddy” he said as I came up to him at his keyboard. Over the past few of months we’d become good friends and I felt very connected to this wonderfully positive and joyous guy. I knew we’d be working together again.

There wasn’t much sleep that night. I had to get up at 3:45 to catch a 6:25 plane home. I could feel the heartburn ebbing the further I got from LA. By the time I got to Calgary mid- afternoon it was pretty well gone. Once home, I immediately called Sam to report the details of the past two days. I told him that the stress was horrifying, and that the heartburn had not helped things. “Welcome to my world”, he said. I thought that if it was this way every time (it hadn’t been like this in New York because I wasn’t the honcho there that I’d been in LA) it wasn’t high on my list of things to do again. There was one thing I had to mention to him of a more serious nature. In the weeks leading up to the engagement, Carmen, the LA Business Rep, and I had talked many times about budgets and conditions. But on that first afternoon in the theatre, the first thing out of his mouth was, as he put it, “for the record”. He told me that the “real” Contractor had to be on-site for an event like this. He wasn’t put out that I was there working FOR Sam but said that he was just making the statement because he had to. Sam suggested that it might be time for me to join the main US Locals so this issue wouldn’t come up again.

The experience was eye-opening. I can’t say that I hated it, but there had been moments when I wished I was anywhere else but there. It was a learning experience on a very high level, and I think it would get a bit easier if I were to do this again. That’s a very big “if”. Maintaining a balance between pleasing the musicians and keeping them happy and protecting the Producer’s money and time is not easy. Caught in the middle with no control is not a comfortable position to be in. At least now I can say “been there, done that” and it didn’t kill me.

Now it was back to the grind.

It had been almost two years since my last trek to New York. Much had changed. Rather than sitting in a Town Hall audience watching Barry Manilow receive a Manhattan Cabaret Association Award, this time I was about to spend five nights working for him at Radio City Music Hall.

And the world had been altered a few months earlier on September 11th.

            The first indication that all was not normal had been the airline directive to arrive at Winnipeg check-in two hours prior to take-off. It took me an hour and twenty minutes to get from the ticketing counter to the jam-packed departure lounge. Inspection tables had been set up along the way at which I had to present all my electronics – my laptop, the digital camera, my cell phone and the Palm Pilot – and to turn them on to prove they were real. The officers were very stern, humourless, openly skeptical about my answers to their questions, and I found myself struggling to control an uncontrollable shaking as I pressed buttons on my devices, praying that they would operate as they were supposed to. The paranoia and apprehension in the air was palpable. Even after boarding the plane I could still feel the tension hanging over us like a thick cloud in the cabin. It was even worse in Minneapolis. I’d not had a cig for almost four hours and the prospect of another smokeless four drove me out of the smoke-free airport for a fix … despite the knowledge that I would have to go through the same inspections all over again to get back to the departure gate. Now there were soldiers everywhere, wearing sunglasses so you couldn’t see where they were looking, booted, helmeted, machine guns on their shoulders, frightening, and in a heightened state of alert. I wanted to take a picture of them but was sure I’d be wrestled to the ground and thrown in jail. I’d almost made it to the waiting area when I was stopped and pulled out of line for a “random check”. My blood pressure went through the ceiling. I could feel a strange tightening at the back of my head. This time I was frisked, had to undo my belt, take off my shoes and turn on all my electronics again. There were a number of us being inspected and we all obliged, the unspoken rationale being that it “was for our own good”. I thought to ask what it was about me that made the uniformed lady pull me out of line but tacitly convinced myself that taking it in stride would be the better choice. The good thing about the experience was that I was subsequently ushered past all the folks waiting to board and escorted directly onto the plane. I was glad I’d been warning our musicians on all our tours that getting through airports was going to take a lot of time and patience and that travel documents should be in-hand at all times, ready to show at a moment’s notice AND, knowing that some of our folks had a way of speaking their minds, without question. I settled into my seat and slept for the remainder of the trip.

            My roommates – the Jims – were waiting for me when I arrived at the apartment and the rest of the evening was spent at Coppola’s, our favourite Italian restaurant a block away, catching up, mostly with them regaling me about their 9/11 experiences – horrific – and the on-going aftermath in the form of the continuing clean-up and people’s constant apprehension. My airport experience paled in comparison to what New Yorkers had been through.

            The following morning I had no trouble getting my Radio City Music Hall “All Access” Laminate at the Stage Door and wandered about getting my bearings. I found the stage entrance, walked into the bustling backstage area, rounded the proscenium and out into the immense space. I usually get a mysterious uplifting around my heart whenever I get to walk out onto a stage and see the house for the first time. But this took my breath away. Seeing the sea of 6,000 seats was overwhelming. The huge stage crew was everywhere, still setting up, testing sound, dealing with lights and working feverishly on the bandstand’s superstructure. I wandered around trying not to get in anyone’s way and eventually found Joe Clayton, the production manager and Libby Fabro, the Tour Director, both of whom I’d talked with many times during the past few months. It’s always a bit of a jolt seeing the face of someone who has only existed as a voice on the phone. We were all pleased to meet in person. “You can settle in over here, if you want” they said as they walked me to a small table just behind the off-stage sound board. “We’ll find you someplace more comfortable in the Green Room in a bit” and they headed off. When I heard the keyboard being played I went out on stage again and introduced myself to Steve Welch, Barry’s Musical Director. He jumped up from his bench, threw is arms in the air then around me, greeting me with such warmth and friendliness, like a long-lost brother. That happened over and over again with the musicians, once only voices and now, like Steve, immediate friends … well, for the most part.

            Then Barry arrived with a very small entourage. I had retreated to my little corner in the wings and allowed myself to be a fan during the sound check. There was no need for me to provide any input or to interfere. Steve had it all under control. The orchestra rehearsal was good. Barry ran through a few numbers to hear the sound – remember the bands were always new to him in each city on the Tour – and he seemed satisfied after making some suggestions, partially through Steve and partially himself. Then it was time for the dinner break. Dinner was provided by the Company in a rehearsal room, and I sat with some of the players. The chatter was affable enough and I stayed quiet for the most part, just listening and observing. Eventually, it was just me and our local rep, Lisa Pike, who had worked for us previously in New York. While I initially had the impression she was miffed that I was there, it turned out that things were really not as they seemed. There had been tensions at the New York AFM Local caused by Sam being hired by Barry’s Company to put together the band for this major engagement. That, in turn, had created some political upheaval within the hierarchy of “established” New York Contractors. I was just an underling and there was nothing I could do but mentally track Lisa’s stories and report back. It was a volatile dynamic and one that Sam and I had encountered and would continue to over and over again.

            Opening night of Barry Manilow at Radio City Music Hall was a major EVENT! This was his home town and tickets could not be found anywhere! All five performances had long been sold out. The “curtain” was held for ten minutes, something that happened every night and, I discovered, was built-in at every show just to heighten the tension. When the Intro Music finally began, the audience went utterly berserk as their idol walked on stage. There was no particular demographic I could make out – young, old, male, female, black, white … they were ALL there for Barry. Over the next five nights I watched Master Classes in how to work and play an audience. It came down to structure. He simply gave them what they wanted, meted out over two hours, a little up-tempo here, a little quiet there, something old (which usually sent them all to heaven) and something new (his latest album, “Here At The Mayfair”, and a couple of songs from a Musical he was writing called “Harmony”). But at the foundation of everything was the obvious love being exchanged in that cavernous room. It was personal, intimate despite the vast space, and the fullness of his years of experience was on display for me to admire and envy all at once! It was remarkable to watch.

            Earlier, when we’d returned from dinner, I noticed a lot more people in suits standing about in the hallways. Of course we had to show our credentials to enter the building, but now we had to do the same before being allowed through the doors to the stage. It happened again after intermission. Some of those hallway guys in suits were now stationed around the backstage area. I had thought little of it in the moment – opening night security and all that – but half-way through the second Act, there was a whirlwind of activity. From my little perch I could see these people moving purposefully toward the right side of the stage. Barry was doing some of his patter introducing another song and ended by saying, “So to give me a little help on this next number, would you please welcome my favorite sax player,” and who should wander out on stage with dark glasses and a sax, but the President of the United States as Barry yelled “Bill Clinton” It took everybody by surprise, including the band. It was only Barry’s Rhythm Section (piano, bass, drums, guitar) who were in on it in order to play the accompaniment for “Heartbreak Hotel”. If I thought the noise the audience made was loud when Barry walked out at the top of the show, the reception for the President was off the charts! Its volume reminded me of the time I saw The Beatles at the Montreal Forum in 1964 … a noise so loud it was like silence! They quieted down a bit but not much. It was hard to hear him playing, but that didn’t matter … it was Bill Clinton! He was there to accept a $100,000 cheque from Barry to a Clinton Scholarship Fund for the education of children who had lost parents in Trade Center Disaster. Phenomenal!

            The show finished and I headed out on stage to thank all the guys in the band. I gathered my stuff and headed out. As I came out into the off-stage vestibule I was confronted with a crowd of people. Not six feet from me was what you see above … the two stars of the evening having this picture taken with the prop cheque. I should have taken my camera out and taken some photos myself, but I didn’t. I would have four more chances for photos.

            But it was still Barryworld for me the following morning. I was up and out to NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center at the crack of dawn to do the Contractor thing for Barry on the Rose O’Donnell Show. Could this get any headier?? This one was up close and personal as I sat in the front row while he rehearsed ten feet away. One’s sense of an idol is invariably tied to the image they want you to see – the public face, so to speak. Being so close to him before the broadcast gave me another perspective. Without his make-up on, his hair done and in show mode, he looked waif-like, very thin and a bit gaunt. Marc Hulett, Barry’s very affable Personal Assistant, brought him over and introduced us. I told him how wonderful I thought last night’s event had been, and he told me what a great band we’d put together and then got pulled away for hair and make-up.  It didn’t matter that he’d done a huge show the night before. Even thought it was early in the day, once the lights and camera were on, so was he!

            Over the next four performances I learned what a fine actor he is. Though I’d been in love with his voice for a lot of years, I’d never had a chance to watch him so closely when he performed. There was a song called “Not What You See” from the “Mayflower” album that captivated me. It’s sung by ‘Joe’, an 83-year-old man, about his wife, ‘Esther’. They’re the oldest residents at the Mayflower Apartment complex where Barry grew up in Brooklyn. The lights went way down as Barry put a scarf around his neck and an old hat on his head and became ‘Joe’. I had a monitor feed from the big on-stage screens right beside me and could see his face in great detail. Steve was playing keyboard for the number, so Barry was singing directly to the audience. Manilow disappeared, and ‘Joe’ took his place, not superficially but to the core. ‘Joe’ told us that what one sees on the outside is not the full story. I was mesmerized! It was an intimate aria, quiet words from way down inside delivered with joy but wrapped in a little sadness now that ‘Esther’ was failing. There was no showman, no pizzaz, just truth and heart. It was deeply affecting and remarkable to watch.

            On closing night, I got to the theatre early, found Steve and asked if he would arrange for a picture of the three of us after the show. I hung around following the “Meet and Greet” until the mucky mucks had left, and Marc took the picture here. In the course of the setting up the shot, I took a great leap in mentioning to Barry that we (Music Services) would be up for contracting his “Harmony” orchestra when it arrived on Broadway. He said he didn’t know how far off that would be but that he was probably coming back to New York in the Summer and would want the same great band he’d had this time round. At least I was laying some groundwork and Sam would be happy about that. (Just a sidebar here – this concert was February of 2002. As I write, it’s early Summer of 2022. This past March, a fully-staged Workshop Production of “Harmony” played for a limited run at the National Yiddish Theatre in New York … exactly 20 years since that concert. Persistence pays off!)

            I didn’t check the voice mail when I got home late Sunday night. It wasn’t until Monday morning that I discovered a message from Heather telling me that Robbie was in hospital in Toronto with bacterial meningitis and she would be heading there in the morning! The world went into a tailspin. Late in the afternoon, Sam called from Philadelphia to say that he’d run into Heather at the Winnipeg airport that morning and had got the news about Robbie. In typical Sam fashion he told me that I should take the time if I needed to go to Toronto and we would manage the office somehow. Information was sporadic and incomplete but eventually Heather and I spoke.

            It turned out that Robbie had eaten some unpasteurized cheese in Vancouver and after travelling to Toronto had complained of headaches and feeling ill. In the course of a conversation at a family gathering he began to talk gibberish, not making any sense, and was taken to the hospital right away. He was put on some antibiotics to bring down the fever and arrest what was diagnosed as an infection. But nothing was working. By the weekend, he had lapsed into a coma. By Monday, it was getting grave. That evening Heather called and told me I should prepare myself for the worst. What? No! This wasn’t happening! I could tell she was being strong for everyone else, but I could only imagine what was happening on the inside. When I got off the phone, I sat in stunned silence. I literally didn’t know what to do. This was too huge a thing for my mind to accept, too horrible a thing to contemplate. I didn’t sleep that night as thoughts of a world without Robbie kept bearing down on me. I kept waiting for the phone to ring.

That morning I got a call from an associate in Heather’s office with the news that Robbie had come out of the coma and was responding to voices. It was as if someone had taken a rock from the pit of my stomach. He wasn’t out of the woods but closer to the clearing than he’d been for the past three horrific days. He had wiggled his toes for a nurse. More relief. I learned that he was still very confused. In cases like this apparently the short term memory is deeply affected. I found out later that the neurologist looking after him on the Monday night shift had been terrified Robbie wasn’t going to make it. He’d contracted pneumonia as well which only complicated matters. But somehow, miraculously and against all odds, and with that spirit inside of him, he fought, quietly and unassumingly as is his wont, and worked it out. My Mom had been following all this with my constant phone updates. She said she’d go to the hospital after Heather and the Family had left to see him for some company and support. She’d provide me updates directly.

            The “West Side Story” auditions were in their final stages … and a much needed distraction. There were a number of people left to see dance on Saturday morning and Bill (Robertson) was putting them through their paces. I stepped out into the Rehearsal Hall Lobby for a few minutes to check my messages. There was one from Heather. She was talking so fast and loud I could hardly understand what she was saying but managed to make out “relapse” and “infection”. My head started whirling and I felt like I was going to pass out. I didn’t know what to do. I had no way of getting back to Heather, didn’t have the number for the hospital and just stood there, trembling, unable to think straight. I was in limbo. It was my shaking that surprised me more than anything, and once again that horrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I finally thought to call Mom and tell her what had happened. She could tell right off that I was very upset even though I was trying desperately to control it. I asked her if she could call the hospital and find out what has going on. And I waited, rooted to the spot staring at my phone. Mom was back to me twenty minutes later. The message from Heather had been sent much earlier in the day. Since then, the situation had improved greatly although Robbie had indeed caught an infection from someone in the ward and had lapsed into a catatonic state to which Heather had been responding. Mom had spoken to Robbie’s sister-in-law at the hospital, been reassured that things had gotten better and, the following day went over to the hospital and saw Robbie. She told me he looked good, but that it was obvious that he’d been through a trauma. While the roller coaster had taken a toll on all of us things had calmed a bit. There would be some bumps in the road ahead and it would be a few weeks before some normalcy, and Robbie, would return.

I kept myself together by diving back into the ever-present Tour payrolls and budgets. They had never stopped. I also spent time organizing the production script for “West Side Story”. The in-town folks had risen to the occasion at dance auditions, but I still hadn’t found a ‘Tony’ and a ‘Riff’ and a few more ‘Jets’ equal to the demands of Bill’s high-quality choreography, so it looked like a trip to Toronto was in the offing. But in the meantime, it was settled that Robbie would be back in early March. It had been a month since this saga began and I’d not spoken with him. One afternoon, I was getting an update on the phone with Heather, and she said, “Just a minute”. The next thing I heard was a small “Hello?” I gasped. It was like talking to Jesus. I got my breath and stammered out “You’ve no idea how I’ve longed to hear your voice”, and we both got a little emotional. I could tell it was difficult for him to keep the conversation going as he searched for words, trying to remember things that were very foggy in his head. It would have been enough for me to just sit there and listen to him breathe. I told him that so many people were pulling for him, and we both started to choke up. He whispered some things I didn’t quite get and then Heather was back on the phone. “I don’t know what you said to him”, she said, “but this is the first time he’s cried.” He was back in Winnipeg a few days later.

            The entire Theatre Community rallied and took him under its wings with a planned-out daily schedule of strengthening walks and short social visits. We learned that 19 other people had also been affected by the same cheese Robbie had eaten in Vancouver. It was now a case of nursing him back to health and getting him back on track.

            As planned Bill, Ken and I zapped back to Toronto for a couple of days to wind up “West Side” casting. It was a very intense two days, particularly for the dancers and we ultimately decided that who we had back home would stand us in good stead with a couple of out-of-towners (Vancouver and Calgary) anchoring them all. For the ‘Tony’ and ‘Riff’ roles they came out of the woodwork. The singing auditions were difficult. While ‘Riff’ doesn’t have a lot to sing, his dancing and acting has to be spot on. I had hoped, to no avail, that Jon Tsouras would come back from Europe, and we finally cast a great performer named Randy Ganne before we lost him to another engager. I had a very specific idea for ‘Tony’ – a combination of good-looking, boy-next-door with no guile, innocent and accessible but slightly shy. Fortunately, I knew it was Nicholas Matthew (now Nicholas Seguin) as soon as I saw him. And when he sang … well, the search was over. By the time we got back to Winnipeg, the casting was set.

            Without wasting a beat, I was on another plane, this time to Los Angeles and the Kodak Theatre, this time to tape a TV Special with Barry. And what a week that was!

“And that’s a season wrap for Richard!!” exclaimed Richard O’Brien, the Director of Episodes 12 and 13 of “2030CE” at 9:10 in the evening. The crew and cast applauded. It had been a long few days, particularly this last day. My call had been for hair, make-up and costumes at 8:15am, blocking rehearsals starting at 9:00 and then shooting non-stop until those wonderful words were spoken twelve hours later. He made the same announcements for series leads Cory, Skye and Jessica, all to generous applause … and the season was over. While I’d not been around as long as the kids (they’d started in early July and here it was October) there was a sense of relief and accomplishment – lots of hugs and handshakes – and food and drink was laid on by craft services for a celebration.

            I felt I’d left a mark that day. We’d been working in a colossal abandoned cement factory, the set for the Resistance’s “underground” headquarters. It was cold and dank, filled with derelict machinery and the smell of old cement, and there were points when I’d get lost in the maze of hallways, stairways and ramps trying to find the area where we were shooting. Having been in all the scenes filmed over those days I was exhausted, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. I’d been buoyed by Richard’s comments over the shooting period, so I knew I’d been doing something right … but what, exactly, was still a mystery to me. In the course of the party our cinematographer, Michael Marshall, made a point of coming over to me and being exceedingly complimentary. “I really like what you’re doing”, he said, not casually. I said thanks and we talked for a bit. It was all I could do to stop myself from asking him “Can you tell me what I was “doing”? Truthfully, I had no idea! I’d said all my words, seemingly to everyone’s satisfaction, but the process was so far out of my wheel-house that I was only working instinctively. To be sure, I’d had some day-player-slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am experiences in the past, but they’d been nothing like this. I was usually limited to single scene characters who disappeared immediately afterward. There was never any huge involvement in the story line. This time I’d had the opportunity (and the unspoken requirement) of learning what the technical protocol was on set. I became more confident in what I had to do but, to a lesser degree, how I had to do it; my work was based in a kind of self-preservation more than anything else. In the Theatre, “process” was worked out over weeks of rehearsal in advance of performance. What the audience experienced each night had been taken apart, put back together, then honed and defined even more. It was the same show each time we did it. Now, very quickly, I had to get my head around very little rehearsing and doing scenes differently each time so that the Director and Editor would have an array of character choices to fit into their vision, sort of like a palette of colours they could use in the painting. It was very scary! I remembered Keanu working this way during “Hamlet”. I recognized what he was doing but it baffled me how he was doing it. I regretted never having had a conversation about that with him. His “takes” while running a scene in rehearsal (and often during performance!) were very different from each other, sometimes with subtle changes, sometimes with massive off-the-wall alterations, and those changes drove some of us crazy. But that was what he knew as a film actor.  I never got comfortable with that approach during “2030CE”, that I was leaving something incomplete, unresolved. But the fact that others were buying what I was doing … well, I just had to let go of my trepidation.

            Speculation about the Series continuing would come up from time to time. It struck me that getting renewed faced most TV performers as a season winds down. It had become obvious that ‘Victor’ was going to be a driving force down the road. We’d established my relationship with the kids, and we got along very well; but there were niggling little plot lines that left me (‘Victor’) dangling. While certainly being exciting, they were confusing cliff-hangers that left me (Richard) apprehensive about the down-the-road picture. Practically, I wanted to know what was going to happen, but that was a question no one could answer right then. I’d just have to wait … like everyone else … until January!! Even Sam managed to inject himself in the project by suggesting that he negotiate my contract for the next season. I didn’t know how that stuff worked and would probably need to talk to someone about the formalities in the movie biz! But that was a ways off yet.

            Almost immediately after the filming was done I was shunted back into spreadsheets and contracts. We’d solidified the Manilow Winter/Spring Tour and I found myself up to my neck in the dozens of orchestra budgets required for this trek through to April. Fortunately, Barry only worked on weekends – three shows, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, each in a different city. The complications with that kind of schedule were huge, mostly to do with travel, but I was pretty well in control of all the elements and had managed to get most of it done before heading into the theatrical arms of the next project – “Prok” for Manitoba Theatre Projects.

            As I mentioned, our playwright (Brian Drader) and director (Margot Charlton) were insistent that I do this role and approaching it was daunting. In real life, Alfred Kinsey was physically larger than I was and that bothered me greatly. And I also found his “Saviour Complex” difficult to deal with. He was described as contained, insular, avoiding of any confrontation of an emotional nature, calm, even-keeled on the exterior and always right … all of which, for me, pointed to some major chaos bubbling just under the surface. As his wife says at the outset “Prok walked alone. He played God.” Now how does that get assimilated and played out as the character foundation for an actor? I was scared … but at least there was time to find out.

The “Prok” name was a condensation of “Professor Kinsey” – “Pro K” – that his students affectionately used. He had founded the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University. And it was immediately clear that Brian had gone much deeper than just addressing a why-he-did-what-he-did question. My approach would have to be to get as many of my lines down as possible before rehearsals and in particular, those for one gigantic monologue (“The Lecture”) in the second Act. I did massive notations in the script, setting down my “sense” of the character’s journey and trusted that this work would help the words “come off the page”. The good thing was that the play was so well written that there were no cracks into which to fall – ‘Prok’s’ arc was seamless. The bad thing was that there was no place to hide. I was thankful for the eight-hour days we would be devoting to the material. There are two other people in the play, his wife (and Narrator), Clara, being played by dear friend Pat Hunter, and five other roles all being played by my frequent stage partner, Arne MacPherson. The structure of the play was very filmic, moving between fantasy and the real world in a fluidly prismatic chronology which sometimes turned on a dime. It was making those transitions emotionally that concerned me most. I’d move out of a very intimate scene with Arne (playing a character named ‘Victor’ with whom ‘Prok’ seemed to be having a relationship) and into a dry analysis of the sex life of gall wasps, or from shaking hands and signing autographs at a book launch to being examined by a Doctor for a genital infection. There was no space to maneuver, no down-time to make a mental adjustment – just navigate the change and get on with it. And that’s what I meant about no cracks … no time for a loss of focus, just play on TOP of the arc. It certainly kept me on my toes!

            Rehearsals went extremely well. However, even though I’d gone through a debilitating slog to get comfortable with the words, there were points when I thought that I was a sham and shouldn’t be doing this. I experienced a growing desperation that I couldn’t memorize lines anymore, that this would be my last show. I never mentioned this to anyone, and it took me some tough days to work through the doubt. I struggled through some aspects of the play that were deeply difficult because of what I had to “get in touch with” in order to make them happen. I knew that the lighting and sound would help bridge those gaps, but making the emotional leaps continued to cause me great trouble. Margot was helpful, but we usually spoke in non-active terms, addressing the psychological track for any particular moment rather than the acting mechanics. Arne and Pat were having problems along the same lines as well, but we convinced ourselves that nothing was insurmountable and gradually moved along, albeit slowly and, at times, painfully.

            And then there were moments at the opposite end of the spectrum. In an early scene called “The Science of Sex” ‘Kinsey’ says to ‘Clara’, who is knitting in a chair, “Let me see your foot”. She raises her leg, still knitting, and ‘Kinsey’ kneels and removes her shoe. “What are you looking for?” she asks. “I’m researching a marriage course they want me to teach. Came across a bit about foot fetishism in Havelock Ellis’s Studies. How does this feel?” And he proceeds to suck her toes. The first time I read those stage directions I froze. Good God, Brian! Really?? How was that going to work? During rehearsals the actions were mimed, but I knew there would come a day when it had to be done “full out” and that day came once we were into tech. I understood the mechanics of ‘Kinsey’s’ action … academically … after all that was how he was approaching this small experiment. I knew what he had to do; but there were a whole lot of things churning under the surface as I thought about what I had to do. Pat and I had talked about it – a lot. She promised that she would have a pedicure and that her feet would be scrubbed. The morning of the scene she reassured me that all had been taken care of and it would be just fine.

            The Colin Jackson Theatre is a large room with a floor-level playing area at one end and the audience area on risers at the other. Along an adjacent wall there were two more rows, one on the floor level and the other a step up behind the first. There was no theatre lighting for that morning’s rehearsal, just the room’s ceiling lights, so it was all a bit drab and ordinary. There were a few tech folks seated in the audience area and, of course, Margot. This would be the first time we did the scene with all the “details”. Just as we started, Arne slipped in and took a seat in the front row of the wall seating. He was about fifteen feet away and right in my eye-line.

            I said the “how does this feel” line as I knelt, took off her shoe and rested her foot on my knee. There it was. Pink. Trimmed nails. A wee bit sweaty from being in her shoe. There was nothing left to do but close my eyes and go for it. There was no way to describe all the sensations that crowded into my brain – it was her big toe, now in my mouth, and I was sucking on it. Just after I get her toe in my mouth, ‘Clara’ giggles and says, “It tickles”. I could feel a perceptible shift in the room, a slight rise in the energy. “Do you find it stimulating?” Kinsey asks her as he begins sucking on her toe again. Then came a gurgling, sort of choking sound. I glanced up in Arne’s direction. And in that second, he lost it … he just … LOST it! The moments that followed were seared into my cerebral cortex as stop-action frames, complete with the “ka-chik” of a lens shutter sounding, as if photos were being taken of Arne exploding into laughter. “Ka-chik”: he was leaning forward with his eyes wide open in disbelief and his mouth forming a little “O”. “Ka-chik”: he was leaning back in the seat, one leg in the air, his head thrown back, his mouth now wide open in full howl and his arm was clawing the air. “Ka-chik”; he was on one knee on the floor, doubled over in complete surrender to his visceral response to the moment. ‘Clara’ says, “Actually, it’s quite nice … you made me drop a stitch.” And that set Arne off again. This time there was a soundtrack, unedited, fed by what I can only assume was the lingering initial image still rolling around in his brain. His laugh was deep and thick, interspersed with small falsetto sounds as he struggled to breath.

            At that point I didn’t know what to do. Should we continue with the scene – there was a lot left to go. Should we stop and let Arne finish his outburst. I looked over at him, now in real time, as he tried to control himself. In the scene, I was supposed to pull away from the toe and examine her feet, trying to appreciate their aesthetic. I think I heard Arne gasp out “Sorry … sorry”. I looked at Pat, but she was transfixed by Arne and laughing as well. ‘Kinsey’ had a bunch of things to say but it seemed useless to go on. Margot, who also seemed to have been caught up in the moment, said “Alright” and we all relaxed, trying to collect ourselves. It struck me that, while not quite as extreme as Arne’s, our audiences might have similar reactions to the toe-sucking scene. I hoped that since I’d now experienced a) the physical sensation and b) a response (of sorts), I could move along and allow this to be just another part of the process in bringing ‘Kinsey’ to life. It would never get easy.

            As I’d discovered over a number of years, Arne was so very easy to play with. He was always present, focused, generous and very real. I loved that quality about his work. In “Prok” he had the unenviable task of playing five distinct characters without the benefit of any major costume changes. It was only by my addressing him with the new character’s name at the start of a scene that the audience knew who he was. Arne’s changes were subtle and solid and gave our exchanges life and truth. The rush of adrenalin began as the tech rehearsals added the final element to the show. The addition of light and sound created that cinematic quality and certainly helped me feel cocooned in the story. By the time we opened, we three, we happy three, were so at home with each other that we felt safe and connected. That doesn’t mean it was easy, not by a long shot. In fact, for me, it got harder as we went along. I kept discovering routes I’d not investigated thoroughly in rehearsals and decided to challenge myself by mentally stepping into some new territory, always making sure that I maintained a firm grasp on the conditioning. With only ten performances, and with varying audience numbers, none of us ever settled in to the point where it became rote. I credit this show with assuaging those misgivings I’d had early on about my abilities to still perform. One hits on those confirmation moments every now and then and, thankfully, this was one for me. I was enormously pleased with the experience.

            While I’d tried to shunt him to the sidelines, Manilow still consumed me. In prep for the Tour, he was doing a lot of media appearances. Dealing with the machinations of network television when it came to hiring and payrolling the musicians left me weak. “The Today Show” seemed to make things complicated on purpose as their in-house protocols dictated all the terms of my approach and questions – I couldn’t talk to so-and-so without having asked another so-and-so for permission – and, as that kind of bullshit hierarchical structure always did to me, I balked … at least a little bit – I couldn’t bring myself to create any awkwardness for Barry. I managed to dealt with those little one-offs and the groundwork for the Tour got deal with. And then, much to my surprise, I found out that I would be “officiating” at Radio City Music Hall for Barry’s week-long sit there in February. Sam had to be in Europe and handed it all off to me. Yikes! Scary! But exciting.

            One other great piece of New York news was that the Broadway sit of the London production of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was ours! The connections we’d made with the Cameron MacIntosh folks during the London “Oliver” fiasco (U.S. Equity not allowing the Brit cast to come over with the show) were now standing us in good stead and next Summer would see “Chitty” on our roster.

            Ken (Peter) and I had been discussing “West Side Story” casting on and off for the past few months. We needed to get on the stick to start locking down the major roles, something that, in my experience with Ken, always took more time than it needed to. While I was rarely in a locked position, sometimes his “suggestions” for performers left me baffled and, of late, I’d held off committing to anyone just to piss him off. But I realized this was doing me more harm than him, so we came to a few decisions. Unfortunately, we’d already lost some of my list-toppers, like Jon Tsouras for ‘Riff’ who had accepted a production of “Starlight Express” in Germany (our Winnipeg “kids” from the old days were making marks for themselves in the big world) and a few others who would have been, for me, perfect. The in-town auditions went pretty well and that was a little move in the right direction. Folks were geared up for working with Choreographer Bill Robertson again and had turned out in full force and great form and we got the ensemble pretty well set. But there were still some roles that I knew we’d not be able to cast at home and getting that settled was a priority, so it looked like we’d be heading to Toronto sometime soon. But all this tended to fade into the background as Barry became what I ate, slept and breathed in the time leading up to New York.

And then there was one last thing. I’d never had to do ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) before, but I’d been called in to record five lines in the “2030CE” season’s final episode. Now let’s be clear. There is nothing “automated” about “Automated Dialogue Replacement”! There had been some rustling noise from the body mics we were wearing, and now I had to do my lines over – same words, same inflections, same timing, same physical actions, same vocal quality! It was a very small, cramped studio with an overhead screen. The sections that needed attention were played for me a few of times so I could get the sound of my voice in my head and see what I’d been doing as it was delivered. Then, each was played again, this time with a large white vertical line moving across the screen as my visual countdown to record. When it got to the far side of the screen, I was to start speaking. I had to watch my lips and speak into the mic in front of me matching my words exactly. The maddening part of this was that it was being recorded … in Regina! I was alone in the studio with a local technician, headphones on, and listening to folks 350 miles away giving instructions and directing me! It took a bit for me to get into the swing of this process. There were a lot of takes. Five lines doesn’t sound like much but, let me tell you, it is! However, the good thing in of all this was that I got to see what the show looked like. It was pretty spectacular! I was a bit uncomfortable watching myself at the outset but concentrating on my lips left that feeling behind pretty fast. In the course of the session the folks at Salty Dog Studios in Regina told me that they thought the show would be back in production before we knew it. That was a heartening note on which to end the session.

And then I was off to New York … and Barry!

Any settling down after returning from Portland was not in the cards. Not even remotely. With the move into my new house only days away and the frenzied packing up of the old place still in progress, I found myself in a darkish limbo. While my dear friend Teresa had been on top of overseeing things and keeping me informed of the building progress while I was away, it now fell to me to deal with the tsunami of details that kept surging in unstoppable waves. To stop the To-Do Lists from swirling around in my head I’d get up and walk the streets of my neighbourhood as the sun came up. Sometimes the walking worked … mostly, it didn’t. There were boxes to be packed, old computers to be thrown away, lawyers needing signatures and Property Tax cheques, and the maddening job of being middleman between painters and contractors; and on it went. At one point I was theoretically homeless, having signed the final vacate papers and not having signed the final occupancy papers. With my innate sense of organization and order, this bothered me greatly and it was all I could do to maintain at least some focus on getting out payrolls for the myriad of MSI shows still running. So there would be minimal interruption, I had allotted only two days between the actual move and the setting up of my new home office. Sticking to that schedule was going to be a challenge.

            The move was hell! A few days prior, I’d been out to the new place to discover that the small bobcat that had been leveling the driveway for the concrete pour had become stuck in a sea of mud! After a quick peek inside the house, I fled, fretting about how this was all going to get done? Move-in day was rainy and incredibly humid. The moving guys arrived at 7:45AM and were immediately pissed off (at me) that there were three floors to my house, and they were going to need a second truck to accommodate all my earthly belongings. None of this was my fault and, in no uncertain terms, I let them know that the week before I’d taken the rep from their Company through my house to see the lay of the land. After some more grumbling and the arrival of the second truck, they began the move. It took them six hours to empty the house and finally, by mid-afternoon, I was standing in my living room directing where boxes and furniture were to go. By 8:30 that evening I had set up the essentials – my office, my bed and the coffee maker – and was finally sitting in an air conditioned Great Room. It was DONE! Robbie and wife Heather had been by earlier to offer some moral support, but I was now alone. It was surreal sitting there surrounded by boxes, smelling the newness and quickly becoming aware that the adrenalin on which I been running was wearing off. I had no dreams that night and awoke to the sun shining down on me through the uncurtained bedroom window at 5:20AM. I went down to the kitchen and prepared my first cup of coffee in the house, something I’d looked forward to since signing the initial offer papers almost four months earlier. The feeling was as wonderful as I thought it would be … and then some!

My settling-in would have to be incremental however as there were only a few days before starting rehearsals for “Big – The Musical” at Rainbow. I was happy that my role in the show was not huge. There would be time off to take care of the house … and the unstoppable payrolls! Manilow was still touring. We’d contracted an Anne Murray TV special. There was wasted time doing spec budgets and countless revisions for a Broadway show which never did pan out. “Mamma Mia” was on the road. “The Full Monty” was still up in Toronto and The Irish Tenors were doing Carnegie Hall. Fortunately “Big” rehearsals had an afternoon/evening schedule, so I had some morning hours to deal with my other life … and, always it seemed, unpacking boxes.

I also found myself questioning my involvement with an up-coming new play for Manitoba Theatre Projects called “Prok” by local playwright Brian Drader It was a deeply complex play, and we’d had the second Workshop reading of the draft script. I’d had doubts from the start about my being right for the role of biologist and sexologist Alfred Kinsey (“The Kinsey Report”). However Brian and Margot Charlton, the Director, were adamant that I was the one they wanted and wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was a huge role with a massive number of lines to learn and I rationalized my acceptance by telling myself that I was just tired from everything that had been going on and would probably kick myself if I turned it down. But that project was a few months away and I’d feel better about it as time went on.

Since the early Spring, I’d been under the impression that Rainbow’s “West Side Story”, which I was to direct, was being mounted in their Winter slot in February of ’02. Now Ken (Peter, the Producer) informed me that it was being rescheduled to the Summer. He gave me the choice of sticking with “West Side” or doing another yet-to-be-named Winter show. It took me about three seconds to decide to stay with “WSS”, but this new time frame would affect a lot of my thinking about casting choices and the creative team for a show that was now a year off. Once again I had to lay down some parameters and conditions with Ken. This would be my first directing job on the big Summer stage, and nothing was going to go wrong. There would be a lot more conversations to come. But first it was into “Big”.

“Big–The Musical” is based on the iconic Tom Hanks film of the same name. Encountering a mechanical Fortune Teller named ‘Zoltan’ at a carnival, a 14-year-old boy named ‘Josh’ makes a wish to be a grown-up; overnight the wish is granted. Now a man, ‘Josh’ takes off for adventure in New York where, of course, no one knows he’s actually a teenager in an adult body. Our cast was great, led by Kevin McIntyre as ‘Josh’. Kevin had left Winnipeg a number of years earlier and had made a name for himself back East, initially as ‘Chris’ in the Toronto premiere of “Miss Saigon” and then as ‘Marius’ in a National Tour of “Les Misérables”. We’d worked together back in the old days, and it was a great coup to have him in our midst once again and to be playing opposite him in a number of scenes. He was (and still is) a really sweet guy and massively talented. More favorite performers were also in the cast, in particular, the ladies – Debbie Maslowsky, Jennifer Lyon (right), Jan Skene, Mairi Babb and Martine Friesen. With stalwarts Robbie (Paterson) directing and Scott (Drewitz) doing the choreography, rehearsals were very relaxed and great fun from the get-go. While the adaptation of the film’s script to the stage seemed a little bumpy at points, the Maltby and Shire songs were delicious. Listening to Jan as Josh’s Mom singing “Stop Time” and Jen’s ‘Susan’ singing “Dancin’ All The Time” always touched my heart.

But it was one huge production number that kept me on my toes, literally and figuratively. ‘McMillan’ (me) is the owner of a huge Toy Company with a store in mid-town Manhattan (think F.A.O. Schwartz like in the movie). In the dialogue at the start of the number, he explains that over time he has lost the joy he used to have when he started the Company. In a song called “Fun”, ‘Josh’ and a group of children convince him that all he has to do is think like a kid, and the ‘fun’ begins. After a lot of examples of “fun” (which could be translated as “legally out-of-control-on-stage” for our younger cast members), ‘Josh’ and ‘McMillan’ take it to another level by making music on the keys of a 28-foot-long piano keyboard spanning the width of the stage. I’d seen it done in the film but was somewhat apprehensive about how this was actually going to work in real life. In the rehearsal hall, we’d only had an outline of the keyboard taped out on floor. Kevin and I had to learn where our feet had to land to correspond to the sound and (eventually) the lit-up keys controlled by a keyboard in the orchestra pit. Great … in theory. There were two songs we had to play – “Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks”. Jumping back and forth along the keyboard and landing on the right notes was, along with being physically exhausting, mind boggling! Celoris (Miller, our pianist) was playing the music on her piano and supposedly we were hitting the right notes on the taped-out keyboard. It wasn’t until we got to the Stage that things got very complicated.

The actual keyboard was huge, each key being about a foot high and a foot wide! Keep in mind that when one sits at a piano, the higher notes are on the right and the lower notes are on the left. For some unfathomable reason, our keyboard had been set up as if the audience was playing it. But Kevin and I would have to be facing out toward the audience so, for us, the high notes were on our LEFT and the low notes on our RIGHT! We had to do everything in reverse, translating in our heads as we went along, always having to be totally “in the moment” about where our feet were going next. Keeping our eyes on the lights was essential.

One night during previews, I looked up for an instant to connect with Kevin and lost the sequence. My feet weren’t where the lights were! There was no way Celoris at the pit piano was going to stop playing – Kevin was continuing to hop around “making music”- so I had to jump off the keyboard, watch the lights and then jump back on at just the right moment to get back in sync. It was musical whack-a-mole! Thank heaven it only happened once. Every night after that number the crowd went wild. After the opening, everyone settled in and even the 20 kids calmed down … kinda. I got the distinct impression at every curtain call that, despite my initial misgivings about the script, our audiences had bought into it and loved the show. The run went by in the blink of an eye, and all too soon became another one for the scrapbook.

Then two planes slammed into the Twin Towers in New York City and the world changed. Every mind on earth was psychically branded with the images. The news had come over the Internet while I was working in the office, and I rushed up to the TV in the living room just in time to see the second skyscraper disappearing in a great plume of smoke and debris. It was unbelievable and surreal. It took a long time for life to inch toward any sense of the normal, but it did.  Some of MSI’s U.S. projects had been waylaid as scheduling adjustments and other accommodations, mostly emotional, were made, but our momentarily-shattered resilience returned … as it always does. The mundane came back. My house was finally stucco-ed, the cement driveway had cured to the point that I could drive into the garage and payrolls were once more being sent out from my now neat and settled office.

In the midst of all this, I had gone out for an audition. It was for a TV Series called “2030CE”, “CE” being a date reference to the “Common Era”. Jim Heber, a casting agent for the show, had called to tell me that he thought I would be “perfect” for a character named ‘Victor’. The story takes place, needless to say, in a dystopian class-structured future. ‘Victor’, a man in his late 50’s, has started an underground revolution against an autocratic government which has been contaminating the drinking water with a biological agent that leads to death before 30. He has recruited young insurgents to the cause and is a wanted man. The rest of the details were rather sketchy at that point, but I thought it was worth a shot. After all, a series is a series!

Jim had faxed me a lot of ‘Victor’s’ scenes and I arrived at the Production Office with a couple of them memorized and a good bead on the rest. The folks auditioning me were very effusive about my “look” … “your rather youthful face with the white hair and moustache is just great” they said. The readings went very well, and they would “let me know shortly”. I waited for days with no word. I figured I’d blown it somehow and chalked it up as yet another waste of time. I’d not fared particularly well over the past couple of years when I came to film auditions. I’d always felt us small-part-players were at a great disadvantage at these auditions. Unless you were a major character you had little to go on, rarely knowing the storyline and how you fit into it. You were “just a local”, a bit player, so what did it matter. I didn’t know why that attitude prevailed, but what could I do? They also always seemed to be casting on that “look” thing and though they’d been positive about mine, I could only guess that someone else’s had been better.

One evening about a week later, the phone rang. “Hi Richard, Jim Heber here.” The world seemed to shrink down to nothing but our voices in a great void. “How’s it going, Jim?’ To tell the truth, I’d let go of the thought of getting the part and he was probably calling to confirm the fact. “Good, thanks. Look, there’s no easy way to say this.” Ah, here it comes, I thought. “You’re Victor!!” I took in a gasp. Everything seemed to switch to slow motion. “Congratulations”, he said. I still couldn’t speak. There was nothing about savouring the moment or being happy. I just heard “You’re Victor” over and over again in my head. I managed to croaked out a “Really??” “They loved your reading and look (there it was again) and didn’t want to consider anyone else for the part” he said. I’d only spoken one word since saying hello to him. It gradually started to sink in … that I had a major role AND in a major series. “Fantastic” I yelled a bit too loudly. Then he talked for quite a while. It was being produced by YTV. There were a number of episodes already “in the can” but I was to be introduced in the last two episodes of the first season being filmed over the next month and then, during the following Spring and Summer, we’d get down to business in the second season. I was still having trouble getting my head around it but wrote down everything he said. “Again, congrats! We’ll be in touch” he said and rang off. I started to shake a bit and giddily pranced around the living room needing to release some of this adrenalin. Could anything possibly be better?!!

  A couple of days later, Production folks started calling me about the contract signing, scheduling for Wardrobe fittings and timetables for shooting. Somewhere in the back of my head was the nagging thought that all this was still an audition and that these two episodes would provide the Producers with “out options” – if they didn’t like me they’d find someone else for the next season and just replace me with an explanation that ‘Victor’ had plastic surgery in order to go further undercover or something. A fatalistic scenario was still playing in my head. But Jim had been clear in his words and they quickly became my Truth. The part was mine! Oddly, there had been no mention of money, but I supposed I’d find out what I was going to make at the contract signing. I also began thinking about conflicts with some projects I’d already agreed to do, but put that aside for a bit. I was in a TV SERIES!!!

Since the Series had been in production for a few months, everything was running like a greased wheel. It was incredibly well-organized and extremely efficient on every count. I arrived at my first day of shooting a bit early and was escorted by an affable Production Assistant to my trailer and she showed me where everything was. After settling down and getting into my costume, I was taken to hair and make-up. Then I sat about for six hours! My lines at the end of this introduction-of-‘Victor’ episode were minimal and I had those down pat. But I had read a draft of the final script for the season (called “Plan B”) and was perplexed by my storyline. I would have to get some answers before filming the following week. There being no point in sitting alone in the trailer, I took some time to walk about the compound getting the lay of the land. As was the case with the films I’d done, there were seemingly hundreds of people in constant motion – in and out of the sound stage, on the outdoor setting (where my first appearance was to happen) and attending to all manner of making-a-film work. There were a number of tech folks I knew from other sets I’d been on and a very large contingent of young local actors playing the “kids” in the series, some of whom I knew. There were only a few adults in the show. There was, like there always was, a lot of “hurry up and wait”. I sat at one of the craft services tables with a coffee and donut and Rob King (Director for my two episodes in this block [season]) came over and sat down with me and we started to chat. It started out with some small talk, but I figured that since he was directing he probably knew a lot more about my arc than I did, and I posed some of the questions that were swirling about in my head. He couldn’t answer them.

He called one of the PA’s over and told him to get Yan (Moore, one of the creators) and Stephanie (Kostiuk, one of the writers) “down here to answer some very good questions”. A few minutes later, the four of us were involved in a very deep chat about who this character was, where he came from and where he was going. Most of the answers were helpful, but the one major question I had – “How did ‘Victor’ get to be 52 years old?” – only received a “That’s a secret” response. It struck me that maybe they were making this up as they were going along. It had been a long slog for them already and, with the season winding down, they’d not thought too far ahead in the story line. I got the impression that they weren’t getting this kind of grilling from anyone else. They appeared happy to have an opportunity to talk about the development and evolution of a major character, particularly with the person playing that character. At the end of the conversation they alluded to the possibility that ‘Victor’ might be the father of ‘Hart’, the lead character in the show. That excited me. I wasted a few more hours before shooting walking about in the beautiful Fall afternoon thinking about the great potential for this character. ‘Hart’ has chosen to join the rebellion and has found his way to our headquarters. The episode ends with my saying “Welcome Hart. The journey has begun”. ‘Victor’ was now established and there didn’t seem to be any holding back.

Driving home at the end of each shooting day I kept thinking that I should have done some of my lines in another way, that I hadn’t given Rob exactly what he wanted, hadn’t played all the colours that perhaps I could have played. But he always seemed pleased. I had to work to ignore the cameras and the dozens of crew and production folk constantly in motion, checking various technical elements of a shot, all without a thought to the interpretation I was giving. There was a clinical feeling to it all. It was hard … and going to get harder!

The trip to Oregon was easy. It was simply a matter of heading south from Winnipeg to Fargo, North Dakota, hanging a right, and driving straight ahead for 1,300 miles. The grandeur and vastness of the wide open country hit me over and over again through very wide Montana, then through very skinny Northern Idaho for a few hours and finally into Washington before hitting Pasco and turning left. I had pushed my daily driving time up to twelve hours and as a result, had arrived in Portland a day in advance of my estimate. All the more time to settle into Greg and Adair’s glorious mountainside mansion before starting rehearsals.

            I was assigned most of the lower level as “home” for the next seven weeks, complete with a real office, a large bedroom suite with a huge balcony looking out into a forest of pines through which owls skillfully and silently winged between branches at various times of day. It was heaven. There were two additional humans in the house – Ariel and Aurora, Greg and Adair’s daughters, aged 2 and 6 – with whom I fell deeply in love over the weeks that followed. We all quickly became bonded and, with “Richard in the Basement”, established a happy daily routine. It would be a very profound experience for me.

            I set up my office before unpacking clothes. I had lost three days communication being on the road and there were some payrolls to prepare and technical snags which needed immediate attention. It’s always amazing how quickly things can fall apart when one isn’t on the spot to taking care of them. The Instant Messaging program proved to be a boon, and I was thankful we were doing evening rehearsals so I could take care of the MSI grind during the day.

            I arrived at my first rehearsal to find that Greg had blocked the entire show. He’d done that because Rick (Lewis, playing ‘Georges’ my co-star) had to leave town on business for a whole week and there were only a couple of evenings before his departure. It was a matter of fitting me in to the staging with Rick and then dealing with all my details while awaiting his return. We had just over three weeks before opening, one without Rick, but at least it was on its feet. I could now face all the production numbers and solos – and there were a LOT of each. Before he left, Rick and I sat for a couple of hours just to get to know each. I could see that this was going to be smooth sailing. He was smart, very funny, easy-going and wonderfully talented. At one blocking session we got to “The Best Of Times Is Now” number, which I sing with ‘Georges’ “accompanying” me on the “grand piano” on the set. I had just assumed that the piano was a set prop, and that Rick would mime the playing and the pit player would do the rest. Imagine my astonishment when Rick played the opening arpeggio on the real piano with a great flourish and looked up, waiting for me to start singing! I stood there for a moment with my mouth agape, astonished that it was going to be happening this way. “This is a little song, nostalgic and unique” I began, and Rick was right there with me all the way through. I just kept smiling, utterly happy that my performing partner was also an incredible pianist. I went over and hugged him when it was over and was once again assured that we were going to be great duo!

            The following evenings were taken up with a lot of production numbers! The ‘Cagelles’, the Ensemble that works in the Club of the show’s title, were all in-town drag performers with varying degrees of experience. There was a bit of wariness at the start, but I think I won them over with some banter and quips and by being a great big onion having as much trouble with the choreography as some of them were having. Fortunately I just had to strut about and pose most of the time. In no time at all we were bonded. During breaks I was being grabbed away for costume fittings with Jim Crino, our costume coordinator/designer. I had known Jim back in the old days, and he’d decided that I was going to be “properly taken care of” as far as he was concerned. He had designed a number of elaborate gowns and accessories and was excited to share all his ideas with me. After being measured for “boobs” and “hip enhancements” and being told that I should start shaving my chest and shoulders now to acclimatize myself to those rigors, I realized how very serious everyone was about making this a first-class production. It was a HUGE show, and nothing was being left to chance or the last minute. Greg was securely at the helm and on top of everything. I was feeling extremely safe.

Before coming to town, I had agreed to do a Concert at The Old Church for the Portland Civic Theater Guild, an organization for which I had done many Reader’s Theatre performances over my years at Civic. It was a venerable institution with a large and very devoted audience of ladies who had been attending the morning presentations for decades. Putting Richard Hurst back in their midst had been a no-brainer for Guild President Adair to book. On performance morning I arrived to find the auditorium packed with more than 300 folks waiting for me to appear. As I looked out over the audience from the stage I could see familiar faces scattered all through the house and those wonderful days came rushing back to me. I found myself a bit emotional at times singing some of the material that Adair had requested I do, some of it with her, all of it for old times’ sake. The fact that the applause sometimes lasted longer than the song I’d just sung let me know that they were totally into the experience. Afterward I was besieged in the Reception Hall, everyone wanting to reminisce and hug and plant kisses on my face. It had been more than twenty years since I’d been in that environment, and felt tremendously warm and comforting … as if I’d never left.

One important detail we had to deal with was the taking of the publicity photos. I had been told that someone would be available to do my make-up for the shoot and that I should be available a couple of hours in advance of the photo session. A couple of hours? A guy named Darryl was waiting for me when I arrived. He was armed with an arsenal of powders, paints and potions, a huge selection of brushes of all shapes and sizes, pancake make-up in every imaginable colour, all laid out on a huge table. This was ultra-serious business! His first attack was on my eyebrows … with nose putty! He melted the hard putty with a lighter and began working the thick goo into my eyebrows until they had completely disappeared. I looked like an alien! Then with a brush and liner he painted in “new” eyebrows high above the originals. He constantly chattered away about my face and my great cheekbones and his choices for the colours and contouring and two and a half hours later he was done. All the while, people with costumes, wigs and accessories for the shoot kept coming and going, always stopping by the chair to “ooh” and “aah” about the changes. After letting me see the eyebrows, they had kept the mirror away from me until the end. When I finally got to see my face I was astonished! Richard had disappeared and there was this attractive woman who looked mighty like my Mother highly made up. The wig was secured on my head, and I was stuffed into a dazzling pink dress with huge sleeves and lots of ruffles. The end result was pretty spectacular. This was wa-a-ay beyond what I’d expected, and I realized there was no way I was going to look this good for the show. The make-over had taken more than two hours to achieve, and the actual transformation takes place on stage as part of a six-minute song/production number called “Mascara”. How was I going to get anywhere close to achieving this incredible look in that amount of time? The photo shoot went extremely well. I went for bust with the poses. Our Producer, Jutta Allen, was beside herself when she popped in to see how it was going. She howled and gushed and told the photographer to get every angle and pose. I was glad she was happy, but it took days to get the rock-hard putty out of my eyebrows!

            I was tugging at the bit for Rick to return. It was like I was in a vacuum. Trying to learn lines without my partner was getting depressing and doing choreography, now in heels, was doing a number on my legs and my back. The costume fittings and re-fittings were constant and some of the gowns were so tight I could hardly breathe. I needed someone to be there beside me and help me through this – my partner-in-crime. Finally he was back, and we headed into a ten-day stretch for all of this to come together.

            The “Mascara” staging was, on the surface, uncomplicated. It was the many details in which the devil lurked. It is, initially, a tightly-lit solo number that starts with ‘Albin’ in a funk looking at his reflection in a “mirror” while seated at his dressing table on a five-foot-high platform wheeled on during the set change. “Once again I’m depressed by this tired old face that I see” he informs the audience; but getting ready for his nightly performance at the club cheers him up – “I apply one great stroke of mascara to my limp upper lash, and I can cope again!” The action required me to apply the mascara and eye shadow, attach preset glued eyelashes, add some powder and blush, put on long white gloves, the wig and high heels, all while singing. Hidden beneath the platform was a staircase which, at a specific point in the song, is pushed out for me to step onto and walk down as it moves downstage. At the same time, the platform in which it was housed is moved upstage and off. These set moves were done by stagehands hidden inside the stairs and the platform. They took their movement cues from the lyrics because they couldn’t see anything except the tape marks they were to follow on the stage floor. It all seemed a bit dicey. In one of the final rehearsals I got everything right but forgot, stupidly, to put on the wig. Greg was sitting in the audience and started yelling “The Wig! The Wig!”. I dashed to the back of the platform grabbed the wig and made it just in time to step onto the now-moving-downstage stair unit. It struck me that there would be no recourse once those stairs separated from the platform. It would just keep going until it hit its mark way downstage and stop for me to step onto the deck and join in the production number. It was all in the timing … for both me and the stagehands!

            There was no time for a breather during the show. I was on stage constantly and when I wasn’t I was making very fast costume changes with Jim, now my prime dresser, pulling and tugging at me while I sucked some water from a plastic bottle. There had once been a small break for me, but it was lost late in rehearsals. It turned out that a costume change for the Ensemble was going to take longer than anticipated; so to give them time Greg decided that ‘Albin’ would now deliver a five or six minute stand-up routine in front of the stage curtain, something that wasn’t in the script and would have to be written … by me! Gawd! Greg offered a few corny old burlesque jokes to tell but I needed more. At a night out with the Cast to a drag club downtown (“Darcelle’s” … for further research) I got a lot more suggested by Darcelle herself. These were a bit racier but rather funny … at least I had laughed when she told them. The preview audience a few nights later would test it all out.

            There were 500 people at the Dress Preview, most of them freebies, but it was still a baptism by fire, at best, a rough performance. The tech still needed work – a curtain didn’t close properly, a couch was in the wrong place and some lighting cues didn’t happen – and the cast was tentative, and some lines were dropped. The nervousness I felt was something I’d not experienced in a long time. I needed more rehearsal but that wasn’t going to happen. This was do or die. Of course, that perspective was only ours. At the curtain call, the audience’s response was overwhelming. During the show, I’d been caught completely unawares by the reaction to the stand-up thing I had to do. I came sauntering out with a glass of champagne in my hand and, like a weary old show biz whore in a comfortable environment (after all, this was my Club) I began to luxuriate in this power and their laughter. The material was cornpone at best: “Oh Lord, I’m feeling old and tired tonight! I’ve been working all day. Anyone else feeling tired? (a lot of “yeahs” from the house as they bought in to the premise). I was doing some ironing this afternoon and Harold, my husband, walked in. Hey, Harold, I says. That shirt you’re wearing looks awfully wrinkled. Take it off and I’ll give it a press. He looks at me and says, I’m not wearing a shirt” (Drums: ba-dum-bump). They roared! And: “I was at the beauty shop for two hours today. That was only for the estimate. I got a mud pack and looked great … then the mud fell off” (Drums again.) I was overjoyed at the response, and I played it for all it was worth! I reveled in it every night!

            The Opening was spectacular. The house was made up of the Portland Theatre Community and they ate it up big time. There were parts of the show that took the audience (to my continuing incredulity) by surprise … like the reveal to the antagonists in the final scene that I am really a man. They screamed every night when I pulled off the wig and I was bewildered over and over at the reaction to what was, to me, so obvious. At the restaurant reception afterward dear Greg was in seventh heaven. He was beset by folks offering their congratulations and praise. It had been a hard slog toward the end of rehearsals, but their reactions were deserved, and we all took them in gratefully. There was only one person who had some trouble with the show and that was my old boss, Isabella. It wasn’t the show so much as it was me. She had a really hard time watching me play a very effeminate man and then seeing me dressed and acting as a woman. She had a certain context for me, mostly as the Robert Goulet/John Barrowman romantic baritone lead, and seeing me now with hands all aflutter prancing about in drag was a bridge too far. Rather than her usual effusive self, she was tense and remote. Fortunately as more and more folks arrived at the party and stopped by our table to offer their congratulations, she relaxed a bit. She said she had been on the verge of leaving during the first Act, but by the time I got to the monumental “I Am What I Am”, the aria which ends the first Act, she’d been won over, especially, she told me, when she went out to the Lobby during intermission and heard people’s reactions. She actually came back and saw the show again.

            The run went by very quickly. Everything smoothed out and there was an excitement backstage every night before we went on. Those crazy ‘Cagelles’ queens had me in stitches in the dressing room and before curtain-up and they maintained that mad energy from start to finish. There were moments though. One night, I managed to get behind in my make-up application in “Mascara”. Everything was timed to the split second but for some reason the glue on the false eye lashes had dried a bit more than usual and they wouldn’t initially stick to my eyelids. This was my final action before standing up from the dressing table, putting on the wig and walking to the stair unit which was always perfectly on time. I was only a couple of seconds late, but as I rounded the table still grappling with the wig and adjusting my eyelashes (singing all the while) I could see that the stair unit was already out from under the platform and heading downstage. I arrived at the edge of the platform and the gap was widening. One foot. Two feet. I looked down at the darkness ten feet below my eye level and made the decision to jump the gap. The gown was floor length, and I couldn’t see my feet. This was either going to be very good or very, very bad. With a huge leap, I launched myself from the platform praying that I would feel my feet on the top of the stair unit which was now almost three feet away! I was out of my body, watching as everything went into slow motion, assessing each nano-second of flight. It wasn’t pretty by any means. I tried to make it look like it was all meant to be this way. I felt the breeze on my face and could see the feathers on my gown waving in the wind and, after what seemed to be forever, was suddenly jolted back into the reality as I landed on the top step of the unit … just! I steadied myself, adjusted my wig, struck the pose (in the photo) and I walked down the stairs and onto the stage floor. I was shaking and slightly dazed but managed to pick up the right steps in the dance that I’d walked into and took my final position to end the number. I never knew if anyone had noticed. Perhaps it was bigger in my mind than it was in real life, but no one said a thing to me about it. However, it happened that this was the night the show was being video-taped for the Company. So now, out there somewhere (I’ve lost mine) there exists a permanent visual record of me doing “The Great Leap”! The show ended, and I said goodbye to the incredible group of people who had been so generous and loving and supportive over the life of the show. I had packed up my life once again and the morning after we closed it was time to move on.

There was a great sadness leaving Portland. The time had whizzed by. Seeing old friends and once again being in some achingly missed and familiar stomping grounds were added bonuses. Portland had been such a huge part of my life for so long and feeling a part of it again filled my soul in a profound way. Staying at the house with Greg, Adair and the girls had given me a real sense of home during the show. Since I’d become so connected to them and they to me, the morning of my departure was as upsetting a few moments as I’d ever experienced. The girls hugged me goodbye then ran into the house so I wouldn’t see them crying. Greg and Adair waved as I headed up and out the driveway, and it was over. As I got to the outskirts of Portland, I could see Mount Hood in my rearview mirror. It seemed to rise up as if to say “Come back! Don’t Go!” and stayed in my eye line for two hours down the highway. I found myself weeping, at times uncontrollably, as this perfect mountain finally, reluctantly, got farther and farther away. The loneliness was overpowering. I rolled down the window and kept taking great gulps of air trying to ease the feeling, but it stayed with me all through the long drive home.

            It took days for the depression to ebb. I called Adair to let her know that I’d made it home alright and found myself near tears again just hearing her voice again. The night after getting home, I sat down and watched the show video. Everything came flooding back on me. Hearing the audience roaring with laughter and applause settled me a bit. I became more objective as I watched and, probably through my own criticism of my performance, I began to let it go knowing that I’d done a good job. I still miss that show.

Just after the New Year “A Chorus Line” began rehearsals. My preparations had served me well in that I knew the show backward, forward and upside-down, and the vision had been discussed and re-discussed in great depth with the creative team. By the time I walked into the Rehearsal Hall I was tugging at the bit to get going. I decided I was going to take a page from Martha Henry’s first-day-of-rehearsal book. With the cast of 26 seated in a circle, I stood behind each one of them with my hands on their shoulders and introduced them and who they were playing. Aside from three of the out-of-towners, I’d worked with all of them before and could talk about them with some ease. There were a few laughs as I recounted a personal experience or two with some. It struck me at one point that folks were hanging on my every word to hear what I thought about them. It seemed to relax everyone including me and we headed into the “Director’s Comments” where I spoke of the show and what my intentions were.

            Toward the end of my speech, I flipped over a large computer-printed banner which I’d taped to the front of the Stage Manager’s table. It declared “No Acting Allowed!” Because the script was made up, in large part, of the actual words of the artists who had lived the experiences in the show, I wanted a reminder of that fact to always be in front of our cast. I needed them to find their connection to the words within themselves every step of the way. I wanted to believe that everything they said or sang was coming from somewhere deep down inside them and if I didn’t, I would call them on it. That physical “No Acting Allowed!” sign set the tone for the days ahead. I also told them that there was no audience. They weren’t “performing” for anyone. As ‘Zach’ says early on, “I want to know who you are”. They were in a safe and private bubble at the audition and on their own.

            No one had worked with Alex (Kirov), our Musical Director, before. He was new to Winnipeg, and this would be his first show in town. The Company fell in love with him as soon as we began the sing-through of the opening number – “God I Hope I Get It”. He was gentle, kind, patient and completely involving in his approach to learning the material. While I had met him socially a number of times, this was my first time watching him in action. Right away I knew that this would be a great experience! Then Bill (Robertson) began teaching the dance that goes with the song. The level of excitement was almost overwhelming. Everyone knew the iconic “da-da, da-dum-dum-dum” that starts the show and now, actually doing ‘Zach’s’ spoken instructions – “Again! Step-kick-kick-leap-kick-touch, again” … well, I could see the focus, the awareness and the electricity engulfing everyone in the room. We had begun!

            The fact that, like “42^nd Street”, this was another show about the biz and “them”, the Cast had another highly personal jump-off point. While not as experienced as the original “Chorus Line” performers, we quickly discovered the common elements in the various stories that they could relate to. Conversations in our rehearsals that arose around those elements were touching and hilarious and created their own pathways into the show. There was never any judgement. They found themselves committed to each other, supportive and, surprising to each of them as time went on, emotionally connected. I watched with a bit of envy knowing that they would get to do this material seven times a week.

Because of time constraints, scheduling and the episodic structure of the show, a lot of work was being done in isolation. While Bill and Alex would be doing dance numbers and songs in other spaces, I would be staging scenes and songs somewhere else. And because of that structure there was no need to get everyone together – everything could pretty well live by itself for a while. Predictably, at our first stumble-through everyone watched in amazement at what other folks had been working on for their solo numbers. The reactions were honest and true, and I told them that this was the way I wanted them to react during the show – as if they were hearing each other’s stories for the first time. There was one moment I was waiting for. It was the turning point in the show – ‘Paul’s’ Monologue. The role was being played by Robert Pili, a fine young local dancer who hadn’t a lot of acting experience but who exuded the vulnerable quality required for the character. He had worked by himself on this huge speech which lasts for about five minutes, an eternity on stage, wherein he tells the story of his parents finding out he’s gay. Then he and I spent a lot of time together before rehearsals began, breaking down the transitions and builds, easing him into the deeply emotional state that would take him through to the painful disclosure. It required a huge amount of focus. Now, at that first run, I could see Robert giving himself over to ‘Paul’s’ words and releasing his truth. The room was dead still. No one moved. I could feel the Cast falling into him, enfolding him, protecting him as he began to breakdown remembering the experience. It ends as ‘Paul’ dissolves, unable to talk anymore and not knowing what to do. ‘Zach’ moves to the stage and puts his arms around him. The Cast began to applaud and wipe tears away and I thought it was a good time to take a break. They surrounded him and reassured him and hugged him. Robert and I talked a bit later and told him to remember the feeling because the audience was going to go down that road with him at every performance. He was magnificent. I became consumed with how to give this deeply emotional scene another lift. It had to be with the lighting somehow. I kept thinking.

In the days that followed, there were a great many performance details which we dealt with, and I was over the moon as the Company latched on to refining elements of their characters and playing the reality. I was jolted into the mundane from time to time as the technical aspect of the show needed some attention. There was no set except for the all-important mirrors which were flown in for certain scenes. One day I was called to the stage to deal with a problem. Apparently the weight of the stage-wide glass mirrors was too great for the fly system to handle, and we would have to find another solution. As the problem was being explained to me I got the distinct impression that I was being blamed, that I’d wanted something that was causing the crew great frustration and it was all on me. To a certain degree it was. I stood there for a moment. Then I asked, “Why are you using glass mirrors?” “That’s what you wanted” the Crew Chief responded, again with a tinge of blame. Ken, our Producer, was also a part of the conversation and stepped in at that point saying, “Maybe we can mount them on dollies and push them on stage”. I waited another moment. “Or maybe we could just hang some Stretch Mylar frames and be done with it”. Stretch Mylar was a very sturdy mirror-like foil that weighed nothing at all. The only weight on the fly lines would come from the wooden frames. It was another case of my inner self shaking its head and wondering why these techies hadn’t thought of it themselves. They all looked at each other, nodded and smiled, and I went back to rehearsal.

Everything came together very quickly it seemed. The great Billy Williams was my lighting designer and up for just about anything. He loved experimenting with light. I had told him I wanted the lights to be another character in the show, responding to the emotional quality of the words and lyrics and dance steps. That got his juices flowing. Wanda Bretecher was my crackerjack Stage Manager and the three of us had gone through the entire show well in advance establishing where all the lighting changes would take place. We ended up with almost 250 cues which meant that Wanda would be talking continuously into her headset to the fly men and lighting operator. Because we’d done all this prep in advance, she could watch the final run-through in the rehearsal room knowing how she was going to call the show. Our transition to the stage was smooth as glass. The tech runs were spot on. It was during those runs that I came up with the solution for giving ‘Paul’s’ Monologue that extra lift I’d wanted and went to Billy. “How long can you do a cross-fade”, I asked him. “We can program the board for as long a fade as you want” he said. “Four-and-a-half minutes?” I asked. No problem. I told him to put the cue in and we’d try it at the next run on stage.

In the show, the kids auditioning are given a break and ‘Zack’ asks ‘Paul’ to stay on stage. There is a small exchange between them as ‘Zach’ asks why he had changed his name, a fact that has come out earlier in the interviews and which ‘Paul’ has resisted answering. But now, alone on stage, ‘Zach’ asks the question again. As ‘Paul’ starts to open up we began the cross-fade. Over the almost five minutes of the speech we went from a fully-lit stage to a single over-head spot illuminating him. The transition was imperceptible. Four-and-a-half minutes is a long time, and the speed of the fade allows the eyes to adjust involuntarily so the change isn’t noticeable until suddenly, with perhaps a blink, you realize that the stage is now black and there is only one light on ‘Paul’. The subliminal effect drew us in, focusing the audience’s emotional attention on the story being told. It also seemed to protect Robert, the actor, enveloping him in a safe space as he gives up his Truth. It was mesmerizing.

Billy’s lighting was a dream. The Orchestra was added and the Sitzprobe (a rehearsal where the cast is in chairs on stage, the Orchestra is in the pit and the show is sung through with no blocking or dancing) was stupendous, lifting the cast’s spirits (and mine) even higher than they already were. I had invited the musicians to the Piano Dress (just piano accompaniment) so they could sit in the house and see the show without having to play – something they rarely got to do. They were our first audience, and I got the confirmation that the lighting affect during ‘Paul’s’ Monologue worked. We could hear sniffles from the musicians … and every audience thereafter. The afternoon of the final dress, Alex and Bill and I were called up to the office. Because I’d told Ken that I would work with the team again in a heartbeat, the three of us were asked to put aside time to do “West Side Story” the following year. And that was that.

The Opening was SPECTACULAR!! I could feel myself shaking in my back-of-the-theatre aisle seat as all the lights faded to total black and the magical transition into this other world took place. It was like going to sleep and waking up in a dream. I sat there in utter amazement at the perfection I saw on the stage. The Cast was completely inside the moment. The stories they told, the songs they sang and the dances they danced took them, and us, deeper into the experience. There was no curtain call. That had been my plan from the start. After all, this hadn’t really happened … it was a collective dream that had drifted in and then out of existence. I had been nervous about telling them about the call, but they understood and, like me, didn’t want to break the spell with bows. Each night, as the final kick line of “One” is repeated over and over again and the light slowly fades away, the audiences began to applaud, understanding that the dream was fading and they weren’t going to see the performers again. It was more of the magic, and I would get goosebumps every time I saw it – which was a LOT!

As was always the case I was yanked back into the real world the day following the opening and back at my spreadsheets and payrolls – not that they’d stopped during rehearsals. I was also in the throes of building the new house and getting ready to move. That took organizing and a lot of time. I was also dealing with an odd response from Rainbow’s Board about doing these Winter Productions. Ken and I were amazed that they were thinking of doing away with them after only two productions, both of which had done great box office and had been so well received. This would be an on-going wrangle, but I was happy that he and I were of the same mind – that they had to stay.

Right after “ACL” closed, I headed down to Portland for the auditions for “La Cage Aux Folles”. Greg (Tamblyn), the Director, wanted me there so I could have some input into who would be playing opposite me. I headed into this adventure with a degree of trepidation. Being brought in to assess my potential co-star was not something I’d experienced before. It wouldn’t be a secret that my being there was not merely casual but crucial, Greg thought, to the casting. On one hand, I was flattered, but on the other I was uncomfortable with that kind of responsibility. Greg and I spent a few days hunkered down in his glorious new house overlooking downtown Portland going over his ideas for the characters. I’d studied the script in depth and realized that there was a great complexity in the relationship of the two main characters (’Georges’ and ‘Albin’), something that anchored the show in more than just songs and dance numbers. I was very nervous about choosing someone to share the upheavals these guys go through over the course of the story.

Greg and I headed to the Theatre for the auditions and to tell the truth, I was now having second thoughts about tackling this project. The night before I’d stayed awake thinking about how I was going to tell Greg that I’d changed my mind and didn’t want to do the show. Those thoughts were still in my head as I walked into the audition space. Greg had brought in three people for each of the major roles, but I quickly sized up the choices for ‘Georges’ in the course of the singing and the readings. Within seconds of hearing Rick Lewis I knew there was no contest. He sang like an angel, was a wonderful actor and a great looking guy. I decided that if Greg didn’t cast him I wasn’t going to do the show. Over the course of the audition Rick and I had only exchanged a few casual sentences as ourselves. After the audition session was over I walked outside for a smoke as Rick was leaving the Theatre. He turned around and said he thought I was going to be super in the role and hoped that I would have a great time doing it. I smiled at him. “Oh, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be around to see how good a time I have” and that was the extent of our conversation. The following day, Greg told him he had the role. I had sensed an instant connection between us as we did a couple of scenes, but was concerned that he might not be feeling the same way. As I found out later from Greg, Rick was thinking exactly the same thing about me! With that settled, my mind was totally put at ease about the whole venture, and I started to look forward to beginning rehearsals in just six weeks.

I had to quell my excitement however as I was now consumed with the completion of my new house. The move would happen only days before taking off for Portland and trying to organize everything in such a short time was exhausting. I’d been out to the job site almost daily and had watched it progress from a hole in the ground to a place with walls and doors and stucco. Meetings with the builders and contractors and lawyers and bankers went on and on. While the physical building sped forward, I was put through an experience called “Choosing My Colours”! This was an hours-long meeting with the builder’s “Finishings” Coordinator, an elderly lady who had obviously been doing this job for a very long time and who would brook no deviations from the décor parameters included in the Building Company’s costs. She took me through every detail having to do with “my” choices for the paint colours, the tile colours, the flooring, the appliances (which I’d built into the purchase price), the lighting fixtures, the plumbing fixtures etc., etc. I discovered very quickly that my tastes and hers were about as far apart as they could get from each other. The choices were so removed from my aesthetic sensibilities that I ended up getting pretty snarky with her as she kept insisting that the walls should be painted the off-white that “most people” chose or that the backsplash tiles should be white or beige or that the lighting fixtures should be plastic-chandelier-gaudy. I ended up rejecting all her choices and spending a whack of bucks up-grading everything in order to get what I wanted. I told her I’d arrange for all my wall colour choices and that the Company’s painters could do the priming. My own painter would to do the rest of the work. Dear friend Teresa would oversee the painting by her highly-recommended friend, Andre, while I was away. She knew my tastes down to the quarter-tint and I was relieved to finally get that out of my hair, although quality-control calls would be pretty regular while I was out-of-town.

I found time to fit in another set of auditions for Rainbow Stage’s 2001 Summer production of “Big”. I’d been cast as ‘MacMillan’ a while back and these “auditions” were, again, a formality. It was an easy role without too much responsibility and, if the movie was any indication, a lot of fun. I would get to do that great “playing-the-gigantic-piano-in-the-toy-store-with-your-feet” number and that made it a no-brainer to take the role.

One major detail I had to deal with was the communication factor of being away from the MSI Office … and in another country to boot. Thankfully, the Internet had evolved very quickly since my last job in the US, and I found I could be “on-line” with Access and an “Instant Messaging” program any time of the day. It would mean real-time connection with the Winnipeg Office without phone costs and allow me to carry on my downloads and uploads regarding payrolls, budgets and maintaining the musician database … all from my laptop. Sam was very happy that I had worked this out to all our benefits. Our work relationship had settled down quite a bit since the troubled LIVENT times a few months earlier. We both were again on full salary and the Company was back in frantic mode, which was how Sam liked it. A few nights before leaving town I’d gone to dinner at Alex and Mary’s (Kirov) home. In the course of conversation, Sam’s name came up. They mentioned that I probably was unaware of how much Sam thought of me. That caught me by surprise! Sam was not a terribly emotional person. I don’t remember us ever having hugged in the twelve years we’d been working together – not that that meant anything. I think he expressed his feelings and how grateful he was by giving me huge end-of-year bonuses. A few days later, he and I were in the car heading back from a meeting. In one of our usual long silences I said, “Perhaps I don’t say it often enough, but Thank You for all of this, your generosity, the opportunities you’ve given me.” He said “Well, thank YOU!”, which was as close as we were going to get to being “emotional” with each other. And that was it. I guess we actually did work extremely well and efficiently together. It was interesting how our relationship had settled in over the twelve years. The fact that acknowledging each other in that shorthanded way was about as deep as it was going to go. I was alright with that.

I was amazed at how fast the Immigration and Naturalization Services Visa came through. It had barely been two weeks since Greg’s lawyer had submitted the petition. There had been warnings of possible Spring flooding along the highway down to the States so, just to set my mind at ease, I drove down to Emerson a few days in advance of my entry date and physically picked up my documentation so there wouldn’t be any kind of hold up when I went through officially. Back home, I packed up my office in cases (there was more office equipment than clothes!), and on a bright Thursday morning at 6:00AM I hit the road.

The previews for “42^nd Street” were electric! While the houses were respectable they weren’t totally packed and the Cast was anxious to get in front of “real” people, folks who had paid full bore for their tickets and were waiting to get their money’s worth. ‘Julian’ doesn’t sing until Act II so for me, Act I was a lot of talking, a lot of exposition establishing the story line. He’s pretty up-tight, creating tensions with all his anxieties; but after intermission things settle down as the problems get solved and he becomes more humane. By the time we got to “Lullaby of Broadway” I would be shaking, tugging at the bit and ready to let loose. In the dialogue lead-up to the song he berates ‘Peggy’ for deciding to give up Show Business and go back home to Allentown because she’s too frightened of becoming a Star. As he goes through a list of things she should “think about”, the Orchestra punctuates each of his points with a musical “sting” until he finally yells “Think about Musical Comedy, the most glorious words in the English Language! Sawyer, think of Broadway, dammit!” and he launches into “Come on along and listen to …”. The number grows and grows as the cast joins in and when ‘Polly’ finally says, “I’ll do it” and, as if once through hadn’t been enough, we start the song all over again, this time with a new strut tempo and everyone singing at the top of their lungs. That moment always brought a lump to my throat. It is, simply put, pure theatrical jubilation. Somehow, despite the fact that it sat incredibly high vocally for me, the adrenalin always pushed those three notes of “Come! A! Long!” out of my body as the Ensemble formed on either side of me and ‘Peggy’ and we went into our “Rockettes” routine. Oh, dear God, it was incredible. Those preview houses went nuts every time. Opening night took the roof off the Theatre!

            Approaching the performing of this show was like going to church. Come to think of it, just about every show I’d performed in had the same feeling. There was something mystifyingly holy in the quiet backstage just before we started. We were about to administer something sacred to the congregants out front, and walking into the darkened space between the real and the pretend worlds, making our quiet, private Whatevers we did for ourselves and then passing into the light, was always science fiction for me – from the dim Here into the glowing There. Opening Night was pure magic. We felt it collectively as we sang and spoke and danced, raising each other up and pulling The Watchers along with us. Before I finished the final note of the “42^nd Street” Reprise at the end of the show the audience was applauding. The sound grew as the bows progressed and I was stunned at the roar that greeting me as I walked out for mine.

            The party afterward was for the Company of course, but as was always the case at Rainbow Openings, hundreds from the audience had jammed into the huge backstage Scene Shop for the free food and drinks. After our make-up was off and the party finery on, we headed out into the craziness of the crowd. We could hear the roar of excited voices and laughter as we approached the room, and it was overwhelming once in the midst all the people gathered to celebrate. The large worktables, now laden with trays of sandwiches, vegetable platters and desserts brought in by the caterers, had been moved to the perimeter of the room. The crush of bodies was incredible and trying to get to the food was a long and arduous journey with folks hugging you, yelling congratulations in your ear and pulling you this way and that. The comments were touching and heartfelt as they lined up to offer praise and appreciation. This is what it must feel like to be a celebrity I kept saying to myself and, truth be told, I was reveling in it.

            Once things had calmed down and most of the “guests” had departed, there were the traditional Thank-You speeches and gift-giving ceremonies to take care of. I’d been asked to make a presentation to Robbie and, from what I was told afterward, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. I meant every word I said about his kind consideration and generosity toward all of us, about his loving care and commitment in taking us into and through the story and about how he’d shown me particular guidance in approaching ‘Julian’. It had been a tremendous evening of love and closeness. Now it was into the run.

            The notices the following day were spectacular. My phone rang constantly. Ken (Peter, the Producer) told me the Board was over the moon and that the box office phones were ringing off the hooks. By the end of the week, houses were selling out. Twenty-six hundred people expressed their pleasure at our work by standing up and cheering each night. I quickly discovered that I would have to rest late in the afternoon because the show took a lot out of me, physically and emotionally. Forcing MSI work to the earlier part of the day allowed for a bit of a nap and I faced each evening with a clear head and enough energy to get me through. I loved doing the show! I would stand in the wings rapt by the visuals, particularly in Scott’s production numbers – which I considered to be where the show “lived”. The dancing was energized and incredibly precise mainly because these kids were so into what they’d been given to do. The sets and lighting were glorious, theatrical, celebrating the craft itself and nothing was out of place. Every performance felt like Opening Night. One could feel the anticipation of the thousands out in the house and the volume of their pre-show chatter was off the charts. As the house lights dimmed, that momentary surge of sound just before they settled in signaled that they were ready and willing to make the transition into this world with us. They always did!

            There was one dynamic I’d not expected during the late rehearsal period and then through the entire run. All the Ensemble kids knew that I was to direct “A Chorus Line”. They were aware that I was watching them … and I was aware that they were aware I was watching them. We’d cast a lot of the featured roles in the show, but there were still a lot of spaces open for the folks who wouldn’t make the final cut in the story, and I had my eye out. From time to time, they would approach me saying they wanted to be involved. All I could tell them was that we’d be holding auditions soon. But I continued to watch.

            While I was still positive about Phil Reno as our Musical Director and while he was still interested, Sam and Ken were getting concerned about what it was going to cost the Company to bring him in. Phil had recently intimated that there might be some important NY work for him that would conflict disastrously with our schedule. Even though he’d suggested Phil, Sam was being proactive about the possibility of us losing him and was on the lookout for an alternative to MD “ACL”. Months earlier, a man had walked into the Winnipeg Office with a resume so impressive that Sam had immediately sent him out to take over as the Musical Director on the “Music Of Andrew Lloyd Webber” Tour. His name was Alex Kirov. He’d been bopping about under just about everyone’s radar for a while. Sam told me he was incredibly affable, laid back, a monster pianist and would be an exact fit for my sensibilities with the show. I was excited to meet him.

            An unexpected setback was the loss of Jorden Morris, our ‘Zack’. He had, much to his own surprise, been appointed Associate AD of the Boston Ballet and though he tried, couldn’t get out of part of their season to do our show. It was a blow to the casting, and it took me a while to get my head around not having him lead the Cast. But there was nothing I could do about it and we started the now urgent job of finding someone else. We were still on the look-out for a ‘Cassie”. Toronto was indeed in the picture for options now.

            As all this upheaval was going on, a great friend from Portland, Greg Tamblyn, had called to find out if I was interested and available to play ‘Albin/Zaza’ in Jerry Herman’s “La Cage Aux Folles” in Portland the following Spring. It would be a high-end production for The Musical Company and no expense would be spared to bring me in. Since it was a Community Theatre company there would be a number of logistical, legal and financial hurdles to overcome but Greg, never one to let those kinds of details put him off, was adamant that I was “perfect” for the role. He would put the wheels in motion if I was up for it. Having been through the U.S. Immigration turbulence before, I was apprehensive but excited by the prospect and I penciled it in on my calendar.

            “42^nd Street” continued sell out as we approached the final shows. There had been standing ovations every night and we basked in that response. But as we approached the closing, I found myself getting more and more upset. There were moments when it was all I could do to keep myself from falling apart on stage. The emotional final scene with ‘Peggy” (Leslie Drewitz) was particularly difficult as it makes a heartfelt argument about enduring in the business and the importance of loving what you do. Then I had to sing the reprise of “42^nd Street”. The cast would gather in the wings getting ready for the bows and I could feel them watching and listening. They had been so focused and committed during the run, no goofing off or joking around. We were in this together, playing the show’s Truth and honouring its message. I dreaded the end.

            Of course, MSI was still the day-to-day anchor in my life. But complications would inject themselves from time to time and one of them became a major bump in the road. Mom had come into town to see the show and in the course of her visit, suggested that we go out and look at model houses as a way of spending a Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t something that was in my head, but seeing some model houses might be amusing. It was a turning point in my life. I was so taken with the houses we saw that day that I began thinking that maybe I should buy one. But then what about New York? What about taking the business to the next level as Sam and I had been planning for quite a while now. It ate at me – deeply. Mom and I could talk about nothing else for the rest of her stay. Even after she returned to Toronto, she would call with decorating suggestions for “the new house”. Sam got into the discussions as well after I told him what had happened. “You know you could always live in both places”, he said at one point … which sent me further into a tailspin. How was I going to deal with this?

            We were about to go into pre-production meetings for “A Chorus Line”. I had immersed myself in a lot of research and studying the script and had worked out the show from beginning to end. So I approached the first of these meetings with a very definite concept in mind. I listened to the designers and production folk layout their ideas and plans and realized that everything they were describing was the antithesis of what I had visualized. I had placed the show in a real-time cocoon. Walking into the empty Pantages Theatre, bare stage, no lights, no orchestra warming up, the audience would become flies-on-the-wall. At exactly 8:00, the entire theatre would go pitch black for a full minute – no aisle lights, no exit signs, no music stand lamps …just a void. In the dark, the rehearsal mirrors would silently fly in, the dancers would silently get into place and, with the “da-da, da-da-da-da” of the piano, the stage lights would very slowly come up revealing all 26 dancers in the middle of the audition. They’ve been there for a quite a while. And we were into it.

            In the course of that meeting a designer talked about raising the stage floor to accommodate an inserted downstage plexiglass-covered “line” that would be illuminated from below. Upstage would be hung a drop painted to look like a brick wall. I listened to their discussions for a few minutes and eventually stopped them. “I’m confused” I said. “Why would you paint a brick wall drop when the back wall of the Pantages stage is a brick wall?” They all looked at each other. No one had a response. So that was settled – no drop. “And we’ll just paint a line on the stage and save a shit-load of bucks by not raising the floor. How’s that?” Amazingly, everyone thought it was “brilliant”. I inwardly shook my head and we moved on. If nothing else, I let them know who was in charge and that anything complicating the experience for the performers and, more importantly, for the audience, would be nipped in the bud. I also broached the notion that toward the end of the rehearsal period, the Union follow-spot operators and the sound engineer would come in and watch the show as many times as possible to learn who was moving or speaking and where they were. They would know the show as well as the performers. Nothing would be rushed or argued about during tech – as was usually the case. There would be an intimate connection between the cast and running crew. It would also mean getting in touch with the IATSE hierarchy right away in order to hire the best and most accommodating crew guys – a normally belligerent bunch. And that was it. The only thing left to do was finish the casting.

            The “42^nd Street” closing was heartbreaking. We could all feel the emotion bubbling to the surface as we performed the final show. As each scene concluded and the Ensemble left the stage, no-longer-needed costumes were loaded on racks and rolled away into storage. The once- cozy dressing rooms became little echo chambers as they got barer. Folks began clearing their stations. Waste baskets got filled up with the usual garbage that gathers over the course of a run – long dead flowers, old cards and notes and schedules, empty Kleenex boxes. It was simply sad. As we got closer to the Reprise, I could feel tears welling up. It was glorious and terrifying at the same time. I cracked a bit on “dancing feet” but got it under control and allowed myself to luxuriate in those final moments. The kids backstage started applauding before I started singing the final note. I came off, found some dark and just hugged myself for the next few minutes before coming out for my bow. Everyone was crying including me, overcome by this bittersweet moment. The audience went wild, and it was over. The party felt anticlimactic, and I stayed for only a short while thanking everyone in sight for the great work. I found myself in a deep depression for the next three days. I developed a cold and trying to focus on the massive amount of MSI work was a chore. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I couldn’t do that … there was too much to take care of.

            Even though I’d kept MSI under control, Sam always managed to complicate matters. Our show roster kept getting bigger and bigger and while I was extremely happy to have Cathleen and Tracy down at the office to take care of things, there was still a lot of stress. Deals were being made with new Producers – Troika, SFX, “Broadway in Chicago” – and one show was taking up an incredible amount of time – “Jesus 2000” – a monumental pageant taking place at the Sky Dome in Toronto for five performances. We were hiring the 85-piece orchestra. Thank God we had a local rep dealing with most of that. I was still dealing with irate Musical Directors calling to yell at me that a Trumpet player or violinist on a far off tour wasn’t up to snuff and was to be replaced before the next performance! Middle of the night back-and-forths between me and Sam got these thing solved. It was just another kind of exhausting.

            I zapped off to Toronto to find some “ACL” leads and came up with a ‘Zack’ (Stephen Beckon) and took time to touch base with a lot of General Managers and Company Managers of Tours that were out or about to go out. I finally met Alex Kirov and everything Sam said about him was absolutely true. I was taken with his enthusiasm and knowledge, and it was great to be on a social footing with him before going into rehearsals. Back home we brought in some dancers for the roles of ‘Cassie’ and ‘Richie’ from Vancouver and eventually ended up with who we needed. That task had taken forever but now it was done. I headed into a myriad of meetings to finalizing details for the show and spent the rest of the year fitting in nine “A Christmas Carol” readings at Dalnavert, getting a schedule done for rehearsals, buying a house (or rather the land on which it will sit – so much for NYC it seemed), and saying “yes” to the role of ‘Zaza’ in “La Cage” in May. It was the dead of winter in Winnipeg, but the thought of Spring in Portland was enough to carry me through.

            Then I had a medical emergency. From my Journal: “I was sitting in the living room one evening watching TV and suddenly felt an incredible pain in my gut. I went upstairs to try to go to the bathroom, but nothing happened. The pain intensified to the point where I could hardly stand up. A few weeks earlier, a friend had described a medical issue he’d had (oddly enough during a performance of “42^nd Street” at Rainbow). The Theatre had to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. The description of his condition sounded very much like what I was experiencing. I made my way back downstairs and called my friend Teresa. She wasn’t at home, but her partner Eric was. I told him what had happened. By now I couldn’t stand up anymore. My legs were buckling under me. I lay down on the couch and he told me to call 911. I hung up with Eric and dialed Emergency. At that point, the pain started to subside just a bit so I hung up. A moment later, the phone rang, and it was the 911 operator asking me if I had called. I said that I was having some trouble and described what was happening to me. She said she’d have paramedics there right away. As I lay on the couch with the pain still fading, the only thing I could think about was if the paramedics would be taking off their shoes when they came in the house. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes after the 911 call and my front door was opening! Inside of five minutes, 8 huge helmeted firemen and paramedics were tromping about my living room, all with snow covered boots ON, unpacking equipment, asking me where it hurt, how long had it been going on, what was my age, one rolling up my shirt sleeve and another attaching the blood pressure arm wrap. It was like a circus! A moment later, Erik arrived. He must have been frantic when he saw all the fire trucks, ambulances and flashing lights in front of my house. They tried to hook me up to a portable EKG machine, but the terminals wouldn’t stick because of all my chest hair. One of them got out a disposable razor and dry-shaved an area to make the connections. It seemed that everything was fine. My blood pressure was normal, and all my vitals were where they were supposed to be. Eventually, it was just me, Eric and two paramedics who were packing things up. One of them had recognized me from shows he’d seen and was impressed at having treated me. Erik left as did the paramedics without giving me any kind of diagnosis. Some neighbours had called concerned about all the flashing lights, but I assured them that everything was fine. I lay on the couch watching the little mounds of snow slowly melting into my living room carpet and fell to sleep.

            I related the story in the following days, and everyone got a big kick out of my misplaced concern about the firemen’s shoes. It was conjectured by a number of folks that it might have been a kidney stone that had caused all the pain. I guess I’ll never know but it sure had been a commotion. One thing I DO know is that I got a bill for $180.00 for “treatment and release”. Don’t know why I thought this stuff was free … it ain’t!”

Onward!

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It seemed like only a matter of minutes after “Singin’ In The Rain” came down that I was pulled back into the fray with the following year’s “Winter Rainbow” production. Ron and Ken had intimated that they’d already thrown my hat in the ring to direct and, one evening following a coaching class at Ken’s Studio, they made it official. The show? “A Chorus Line”! I inwardly thrilled at the thought of putting up this fabled show, but my excitement was tempered with some trepidation because of what I’d just been through with “Singin’”. There would have to be some very specific conditions met, and with the “never say never” phrase still bouncing around in my head, a meeting was set up for the following week.

MSI continued to fill my days, so fully in fact that we ended up hiring a Temp from Kelly Services to address some of the work Sam was generating, mainly the recorded dictation he had taken to putting out daily. I had told him long ago that I would never take dictation. It was, for me, a holdover from the days working in Martin Strauss’s office at Stage West and the visceral loathing I had at being considered someone’s secretary. Tracy, the Temp, had no problem transferring the extended Dictaphone tapes Sam would courier from wherever he was, and she’d pass along the things that needed my attention. By now, the list of shows either on tour, about to open or in prep was enormous! Nothing was small anymore. And for Sam, it all had to be done NOW! Then, as if one additional employee wasn’t enough, we lured the very capable Cathleen Enns away from the Manitoba Theatre Center’s Administration team to become Sam’s Assistant. How had it come to this? Well, what seemed to have been the blink of an eye had actually taken almost four years, a long time for Sam and me to be slogging through it all alone. The pressure seemed to have diminished, but it was just that now there were more people taking care of more work. I was amazed.

The Rainbow meeting with Ken was very productive. I told him at the get-go that there were three deal-breakers. First, unlike “Singin’ In The Rain”, there would be no karaoke orchestra for “A Chorus Line”. He knew that had been a mistake and had no problem agreeing to a full live orchestra. Second was the amount of rehearsal time for the show. There would be no two-week-start-to-finish nonsense. Not a problem. Finally, I was adamant that the “Singin’” Chorus Director would have minimal hands on my show. Agreed. I called Ken back following day to confirm all of my conditions, just to double check that he’d actually heard everything I said. He had. I signed the contract, and we were off to the races.

In the meantime, I was called in for the “42^nd Street” auditions. Robbie (Paterson) was directing and while I had already been cast as ‘Julian Marsh’ he needed me to do some reading with folks and I was happy to be a part of that process. Robbie had been in a terrible car accident a couple of days previous. His car had been totaled, he’d broken a finger and had put his back out. Arriving for the first day of readings, I went over and hugged him and could feel him cringe at my touch. With a major intake of Tylenol 3, he managed to keep everything on an even keel for most of the day. But by mid-afternoon he was fading, and I found myself scrounging for additional medication for him from the dancers sitting in the waiting room. Dancers are always good for a painkiller or two. Somehow, he managed to turn these audition days into parties, making sure everyone was feeling at ease and attended to. Being “in the room” gave me an inside bead on who might be in the running for the various roles, and I was pretty happy with what seemed to be the preliminary casting thoughts … not that I had any say in the matter. Scott (Drewitz) was again choreographing and had brought in a number of excellent dancers from his Calgary Studio as possibilities to fill out the Ensemble ranks. We were in good shape!

One great thing about Robbie had always been his prep for the shows he was directing. His attention to detail was astonishing. He wanted to be able to answer any question posed by his casts, and if he didn’t have an answer right off the top of his head, he’d start a conversation on the spot that would invariably solve the problem. It was this kind of engagement that found us spending hours on the phone or sitting in my living room discussing the character and his circumstances, setting me on solid ground for my work on ‘Julian Marsh’. We agreed that there was a deeper core to the show, not just the huge production numbers and comedy banter. Like me in real life, ‘Julian’ was going through an inner turmoil which juxtaposed the light and airy musical comedy track against the angst of physically putting it all together for an audience. Yeah, perhaps that was digging too deep, but it was a hanger for the man I was about to play. To get from the beginning of the show to the final reprise of “42^nd Street” was a moment to moment journey that became very personal. In the end he is alone, reflecting on what, at the core of everything, doing Theatre really meant – the excitement, the apprehension and anxiety, the celebration, and the love of the experience. It was in those hours of discussion that Robbie and I found the base line for ‘Julian’, and I approached the rehearsals feeling up and with a personal security firmly in place.

I had to dash back to New York for some Music Services business and some business of my own. It was early April, and the East Coast was still prone to winter weather, so my journey was fraught with delays out of Toronto. We had arranged for me to attend the MAC (Manhattan Association of Cabarets) Awards ceremony where Barry (Manilow) was receiving a tribute from the organization. The show was starting at 7:30 at Town Hall in Midtown. My flight to LaGuardia from Toronto was scheduled to leave at 1:00 but, because of a snowstorm in New York it was delayed until 2:00, then 3:00, then indefinitely. I dashed around the airport with my retrieved luggage trying to find another flight on any airline. I got a ticket on a flight that was taking off at 4:40 but this one was landing in Newark, New Jersey, much further out from Manhattan than LaGuardia. We landed at 6:20. It took another ten minutes for my bag to come off and then I had to wait in the taxi cue for a half hour to get a cab to dash me into the city. I had kept Gary Keif (Barry’s manager) apprised of my progress because they had set aside a ticket for me, and I didn’t want them to release it. I was fortunate to get a superb, dare-devil driver who got me from Newark to the theatre in 24 minutes flat – unheard of … thank heavens it was Sunday night – and I got one of the usher folks to put my bag and stuff in a safe place. I met with Gary and Barry but only for a minute and was in my seat (behind Barry) just as the lights were going down.

To tell the truth, even though they’d made a fuss when I met with them, I felt so out of my depth and something of a sham sitting there with the stars of the New York Cabaret scene … and there were a lot of them. Everyone knew everyone else and the buzz and laughter in the house was tumultuous. Cabaret Legend Julie Wilson opened the show, Karen Mason sang as did Alix Korey and a number of young performers working their way up the ladder. Bobby Short entertained just like I’d heard him do on recordings for as long as I can remember with his plaintive smokey voice and elegant piano playing. Then it was Barry’s turn. He walked up to the stage to a huge roar from the house. After all, he was one of their own! He did a chronology of his musical life, so wonderfully at ease at the piano and with his banter and supremely polished, all of which made it clear why he was the star he was. It was magical and I was caught up in the heady atmosphere of these New York cabaret elites celebrating this distinctively New York form of entertainment. The crush afterward was crazy, but I managed to find Gary and express my thanks for the ticket. It wouldn’t be too long before I’d be back with Barry in a much larger capacity at a much larger venue … contracting his Orchestra at Radio City Music Hall!

Another of my jobs in NYC was to nail down a Musical Director for “A Chorus Line”. Since there weren’t any suitable (or available) MD’s in Winnipeg, Sam had made some suggestions along the way. There was no doubt that he saw my now-more-substantial involvement with Rainbow as another source of contracting work and because Sam always had the music quality uppermost in his head, this prospect excited me. I would get the benefit of his expertise. He told me to touch base with Phil Reno who was, at the time, the Musical Director and Pianist for Barry Humphrey’s (‘Dame Edna’) Broadway show – “An Audience With Dame Edna”. We’d spoken very briefly on the phone, and he graciously arranged a couple of tickets for me. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a show in my life! I was with good Portland-now-New-Yorker-friend Sue Benson, and within minutes of the show starting we were doubled over with tears running down our cheeks as the ‘Dame’ built the hysteria based on improvised exchanges and interactions with unsuspecting people in the audience. It was impossible not to get caught up in the fun. I kept looking at Phil, sitting on stage at the piano in front of the orchestra, trying to get a sense of what it would be like to work with him. He seemed totally committed to the work and was enjoying the experience in the process. Following the show we met at the Stage Door, and I was struck by how young he was and how affable and accommodating. He greeted me like a long lost brother after reminding that we had met in Calgary while I was putting up the “Music of the Night” Tour a few years back. We chatted about the show, and I thanked him for the tickets. Then, I took a stab at the request. Would he be up for doing “ACL” for seven weeks in far-off Winnipeg in the dead of Winter? Yes, he would be! I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t the time to talk details, but he told me to call him, and we would discuss it further. Another task completed!

I crammed in a bunch of shows and MSI meetings and took an afternoon to watch the Archival Recording of the original Public Theatre production of ‘A Chorus Line” which was salted away in the extensive “Billy Rose Collection” at the Performing Arts Library in Lincoln Center. I had to practically sign my life away to watch the 25-year-old black and white VHS tape which had obviously been played hundreds of times. Its quality was incredibly poor, and the picture would distort and blur from time to time. I watched it twice. Seeing the show in its infancy and looking at the characters from a purely academic point of view, I realized the great difference between them and who we had to draw on from the Winnipeg performer population, particularly with regard to age. The originals were seasoned artists who had spent a goodly part of their lives in show business and knew the highs and lows of being on “the line”. Our kids back home didn’t have that kind of experience, neither in Life nor the Theatre. We were going to have to find good actors – performers who were not only excellent singers and dancers but who could convincingly portray folks who had had been doing this a lot longer than they had. That task would be much more difficult than I thought and would cause me a LOT of angst. But I had to let all that go for a bit … there were other things to take care of.

Once back home I managed to squeeze in some days of Musical Theatre Adjudications at a few out-of-town Music Festivals. Watching those young performers rejuvenated me somewhere deep down inside, and now, with ‘Julian Marsh’ about to consume me, I was tugging at the bit to get going. But MSI was demanding some attention too as the list of projects continued to grow. Barry was still doing his touring schedule, “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” was about to go out, Patsy Cline was still running, “Berlin To Broadway” was up, “Romancin’” was in pre-production, “Last of The Mohicans” was in planning stages, “Hotel Porter” was in workshops and The Calgary Stampede Grandstand Show was burgeoning. I needed to feel a stage under MY feet and, soon enough, we were in the Rehearsal Hall with “42^nd Street” in full swing.

The cast was full of local faces and the first week whizzed by. For me, there was no “musical theatre” schtick to play. I was treating ‘Julian’ as a serious role. There were, of course, the characters who balanced the show with those make-‘em-laugh antics and they did it really well. Debbie Maslowsky and Jeff Skinner as ‘Maggie’ and ‘Bert’ were fresh and funny, Stan Lesk as ‘Abner Dillon’ was playing it to the hilt, Michael Smolash (from Toronto) as ‘Billy Lawlor’ was young and avid and Chris Sigurdson as ‘Pat Denning’ was touchingly affecting. Brenda Gorlick was ‘Dorothy Brock’ and ‘Peggy Sawyer’ was being played by the great Leslie Drewitz (Scott’s wife). The room was always room buzzing, hive-like and the energy was contagious. In one form or another everyone had personal traits of people they were playing and there was, for the most part, a natural quality to the work. For me, and because of ‘Julian’s’ arc, there was a lot more restraint. There is a quiet desperation under his surface. He knows that this is pretty much his swan song and he’s holding on for dear life as things begin to crumble around him. His love for ‘the biz’ is baked-in but the eventuality of leaving it eats at his insides.

I didn’t know if I was playing the part or if it was playing me. I was feeling respected in the room, but then playing “the great man” carried a degree of built-in deference from those around him. I thought that it might have something to do with the seriousness I was bringing to the process. I began to sense that folks were looking to me for tone and approach. There were times when I felt “pushy” by making suggestions to Robbie about a scene or a moment, but he encouraged the input. It was another case of being in my actor-director quandary … when I was acting I wanted to be directing and when I was directing I wanted to be acting. There were times when I had to hold my tongue, but no one took umbrage when I did express my thoughts. It was all going incredibly well.

Scott’s choreography was astonishing. The fact that “the kids” were so into it and that it was all so “show-bizzy” made every dance rehearsal a celebration of the craft. They were all living the experience to the fullest. And so was I. There was a moment late in rehearsals when it was time for me to do the reprise of “42^nd Street”. The song happens at the very end of the show when ‘Julian’ expresses what being in this business has meant to him, letting out all his pent-up feelings. We’d rehearsed it musically a number of times over the previous days, but had never put it on its feet. The entire cast was standing against the walls in the room. Robbie came up to my ear and said, “I have a few ideas if you want them”. “Let’s see what happens”, I whispered back. I was slightly nervous to do it full out in context for the first time, but I knew in my gut where it had to go. There is a small after-the-show scene with ‘Peggy’ as she heads off to the party, leaving ‘Julian’ alone on stage. He looks out into the darkened house. The music starts, slowly, freely – “Come and meet those dancing feet …” – all his thoughts about the Theatre slowly tumbling out – “on the Avenue I’m taking you to …” – how wonderful, bewildering, fulfilling it was. He describes the theatre people – “little nifties from the fifties innocent and sweet, sexy ladies from the eighties who are indiscreet” and the song gathers steam as he declares “they’re side by side, they’re glorified” and finally yelling into the darkness – “naughty, bawdy, gawdy, sporty …” – the triumph surging in his moment of success and winding up on a high (for me at 55) Gb – “For-ty-SE-COND Street!”. There was a moment of silence and the cast erupted in applause and hoots. I felt like crying at the release of the emotion that had led up to the moment, both in the story and in rehearsal. It bode well as we moved out to the Stage.

We were also working on “Chorus Line” casting at the same time. I wasn’t going to wait till the last minute like we’d done with “Singin’” and getting Bill Robertson confirmed as choreographer gave me a trusted partner-in-crime to lean on. All the roles are major in this show, and each has their moment to shine. There is no hiding in the shadows. Everyone is exposed in one way or another and their qualities and characteristics are very specific. While we would probably have to go to Toronto for a couple of folks, there were some good in-town choices for most of the roles and I’d been getting a lot of calls from dancers asking to be considered. But I needed to get the role of ‘Zack’, the director in the show, pinned down first. Jorden Morris was a Principal Dancer with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the first person who came to mind for the part. Over many conversations I had convinced him that he would be perfect in the role, and he’d agreed to do it. I knew finding a ‘Cassie’ in Winnipeg would be a challenge and that was another reason to hit Toronto. A fall jaunt was definitely in the cards.

Moving to the Stage for a Rainbow production always heightened the excitement and energy for a show’s cast. Entering this new stage of the process gave everyone a lift and, despite the mechanical and technical difficulties we knew we’d encounter, the initial on-stage rehearsals went pretty well. But there was an element to moving to the Stage that had always and would continue to bother me. It was the “Camp Rainbow” syndrome. For some reason I could never fathom, the Ensemble would collectively revert to a Kids-At-Summer-Camp Mentality and the discipline that had been at the foundation of the rehearsals went flying out the window.

Being in a beautiful natural setting (Rainbow Stage is located in the middle of the huge Kildonan Park in Winnipeg’s North End) was not really conducive to rehearsing – too many distractions, too many opportunities to let the energy dissipate – and, as far as I was concerned, too much partying after hours which invariably resulted in dragging butts at the following day’s rehearsal. It drove me nuts! But, as is always the case, we muddled through. There were some bumps along the way, but Robbie managed to keep a positive spin on everything for the Company. There was a moment late in the process at the stage when, seeing that he was not having the best of days dealing with the sets, a sod of a crew chief (who was let go) and production problems, I came up to him and he put his arms around me and whispered, “Hold me and never let me go”, a line from the show. We held on to each other for a moment, stepped back, laughed and got back to work.

Opening was just days away.

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The convergence of things continued, forcing me to focus in a way I’d rarely done before. While I’m pretty organized, having so much to take care of – and it wasn’t small stuff – was confounding me. Each project was demanding complete attention and I would lie in bed at night resisting encroaching sleep just to keep everything in order … at least in my head. Each morning I would hit the ground running, always with a to-do list, and would judge the success of each day by how many items I actually got to.

At the top of the list wasn’t anything I had to physically take care of. I just had to think. We were still a ways off from the start of Rainbow’s “Singin’ In The Rain” rehearsals, but already details were occupying a large part of my brain. And one detail in particular. For some unknown reason, Ken (Peter – our Producer) had decided we were going to use a combination of live and recorded music for the show. The Musical Director would conduct to a “click track”, a metronome “tick-tock” sound embedded in the recorded music which he heard through headphones he wore during the performance and from which there could be no deviation. I had my suspicions at to where the idea had come from, and it was soon confirmed that Ken had been convinced by a Board Member and the show’s Choral Director (a local music teacher) that his newly purchased computer program could produce music good enough to replace, or at least augment, the pit orchestra! There were indeed music sequencing programs being used by some of the MSI arrangers, but these were guys who had major careers using very high-end (and expensive) technology. At the same time, my MSI job had also taught me that “Live Music Is Best” (the AFofM’s slogan) so I had grave doubts about Rainbow’s plan. In fact, it turned out to be a colossal miscalculation on a number of levels. But for the moment, ‘thinking’ was all I could do about that part of the project.

“Lear” had continued extremely well with great houses. The matinees with high school kids astonished me with their complete attention to the piece. It was a fine production and another of which I had trouble letting go. The “Christmas Carol” CD launch at McNally Robinson’s Bookstore was a treat. Their coffee house area was filled with a lot of familiar faces, and I read the First Stave (chapter) live. We sold a load of “product” afterward and a few days later, the Dalnavert readings began. We were now up to 9 nights of performances, all of which had sold out in October. The CDs flew off the Museum Shop shelves every night and I mentally ka-chinged my way home after each show.

Then, the “Y2K Bug” seemed to take over every aspect of Life! The notion that, with the change-over to the year 2000, computers around the world would stop working and planes would fall from the sky, consumed the media … and us at MSI. Sam was anxious because we were now relying on computers for just about every aspect of our business. In a slightly panicked effort to combat the “crisis”, we decided to create a private network which would tie our various local contractors in Chicago, Toronto, Las Vegas and New York into a mainframe located in Winnipeg. All the guys would be able to link up and access anything on the home site at any time of day or night. It was actually advanced thinking at the time. We made plans to have our former go-to Trombone player Marc Donatelle, who was now working in computer programming and formatting, create the system, and then to bring in the reps to learn how to use it. In the meantime, “Swing” was, sadly, limping toward its end in Toronto, but Sam was committed to extending the production’s life. And life it had! In the year that followed, “Swing” was mounted in Washington, DC at the Kennedy Center, in Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Minneapolis and on and on. From the ashes, Sam, with his usual perseverance and tenacity, made it rise again!

But I couldn’t focus on all that. “Singin’” rehearsals were about to start.

The Orchestra situation continued to bother me. Scott (Drewitz), our choreographer, also had concerns about this unconventional approach, especially for his dance rehearsals. While we had a rehearsal pianist in the room with us, tempo changes and cuts were being made on the fly, and without the “arranger” there watching and taking notes there was no way to insert these alterations to the recorded tracks. He was ensconced in his basement far away from the rehearsal hall creating the augmentation in a vacuum. Our trepidation grew.

The other element of pre-production that had worried me mightily was the creation of the “The Dueling Cavalier” and the other film sequences that are played on-screen during the show. With so little rehearsal time, the intricacies of making the movies had to be well in hand in advance so that no unnecessary time was wasted with camera set-ups and shots. Even though the sequences were very short, doing the actual filming was going to take a couple of days.

Certainly, the cast was ready. Our first days of rehearsal had been incredibly productive. The leads were more than I could have hoped for in their commitment and preparation. I’d not worked with Danny Austin before and was somewhat apprehensive because he had done the ‘Lockwood’ role that summer in Ontario. But it turned out that he was dying for direction he’d not received the last time ‘round, and our collaboration was wonderfully rewarding. Shannon (Phoenix) as ‘Kathy Selden’ was a delight, funny and hard-working. Mike Donald had an infectious energy, and our Winnipeg Stars were superb in some crucial character roles – stalwart Cliff Gardner as ‘R.F. Simpson’ and the effervescent Debbie Maslowsky as ‘Dora Bailey’. Jennifer Lyon was hilarious as ‘Lina Lamont’. It isn’t until well into the story that we discover her voice is a fingernails-on-chalkboard, high pitched noise, quite unsuitable for the new “talkies” now being made – the main plot point in the show. The first time I heard her speak in the ‘Lina’ voice, I was on the floor … as was the rest of the cast. When it came to listening to her sing with that voice … well, we all lost it! Singing slightly under pitch on purpose is very hard to do and she was nailing it. I was starting to feel a bit more confident.

I should have worn a beret, an argyle sweater vest and plus-fours for the directing of the film sequences. It was all so other worldly. The actors looked wonderful in powdered wigs and elegant costumes and had all their “lines” down. I had story-boarded all of the scenes, some of which were pretty complicated, but fortunately there were only a few people in each. Trying to frame shots was very foreign to me but we had a good crew from Global Television, and, despite interminable waits for set or lighting changes, we managed to get almost everything “in the can” in the allotted time. The other aspect that was bothering me was how the “film” was going to look. While the video was shot in colour, all the sequences had to be converted to that grainy black and white of the period look and I was anxious that they look like I wanted them to. That would take some time.

Even though I was very organized, I was painfully aware of how little time we had. Thankfully, while the filming was going on, Scott had been getting the big dance sequences set, and I would escape for a few minutes here and there so do some scene staging. Amazingly, we managed to do a stagger/work-through after six days and I was very happy at the amount we’d accomplished. Because of time constraints during rehearsals, I had only loosely sketched in some of the blocking for the Ensemble in a couple of the crowd scenes; so during the run I was on my feet side-coaching them as to where to focus and how they should be responding, trusting they would remember. The Ensemble always gets short shrift when it comes to providing details while staging a big scene. “We’ll fix it later” is usually the in-the-moment response on the part of a director under pressure, but I was determined to make them feel as comfortable as possible in the “sooner” rather than the “later”. Fortunately, they were attentive and responsive as I skulked about, whispering a small playable action into an ear or subtly adjusting a group of people to better inform a physical or visual relationship – things that wouldn’t really be noticeable to an audience but would help to define our “world” for them a bit more. Actually, that “not noticeable to an audience” thing isn’t quite true. It’s almost certain that at least one pair of eyes somewhere out in the house is on you! Maintaining focus when you’re playing background is very, very hard, but, having been there myself, I felt it was important to try to give the actors something to hold on to while standing there, to give a bit more depth to the Truth the watchers had hopefully bought into. We would quickly repeat a section for them, and it was confirmed that they understood.

Our Stage Manager, Katie East, was a brick during all of this. She must have been feeling the tremendous stress, but always managed to keep me calm by handling every situation that arose. There is nothing like a great Stage Manager … and I had one. The only problem that neither of us could handle was our Producer, Ken. While he was great at dealing with the multitude of details outside the stage environment, he had decided that, in order to save some money, he was going to take on the job of Production Manager himself! This is a very specialized role in the mounting of any show. It is this person who is responsible for every aspect of the physical mounting of the production. He’s in charge of all the technical elements (sets, costumes, lighting, stage crew, schedules, etc.) and makes sure that budgets are being adhered to and personnel are where they should be at any particular moment.

Katie was particularly affected by Ken taking over this job. She would send him the “Production Notes”, lists of urgent problems and concerns that had been generated from the previous day’s rehearsals and meetings with the various departments … but he would never read them! It drove her up the wall. I had my moments with him too. He would sit in my staging rehearsals and whisper in my ear about what he thought of a particular scene always starting his comment with “You know what you should do?” These remarks made no sense to me and were quickly becoming distractions I didn’t need. At one point during a break, I hauled him into a corner and let him know that he was just going to have to calm down and let me do my job. I was cajoling and semi-polite, and I think he got the point … at least, he stopped the whispering. I think he was getting somewhat overwhelmed by the additional duties he had taken on.

The set for the show was, well, for want of a better word, a PIG! It had been rented from Huron Country Playhouse in Ontario whose stage was much larger than ours. It had been unloaded into the backstage area of the Pantages Theatre and once in, it was discovered there was no room for people to move back there. None! It had been rearranged twice in order to create narrow pathways for actors and crew to maneuver, but there were so many people that it was next to impossible to get from up stage to down stage behind the scenes! It was Ken’s job to figure this out. And he couldn’t. I felt somewhat sorry for him actually. I could see he was flailing about and trying to be helpful, but he was out of his depth. Katie managed to sort it out a little, but it remained a problem, one that would be compounded shortly by the production’s move to Brandon for a week of performances.

And still there was the music. The Choral Director remained in his basement across town putting off the demands that he get his ass and music over to the Playhouse. He’d not been teaching the Ensemble their music either, but thankfully one of our rehearsal pianists had been taking care of that. Finally, one afternoon he brought some of his “product” to the theatre. We sat down in the house to listen to what he had been working on for all this time. I don’t “lose it” easily, but with the pressure mounting I finally broke and went ballistic when I heard what he had done. I had anticipated hearing something akin to the incredible orchestral sound my friend Olaf had produced electronically in his studio for “The Wave” workshops, or the classy sequenced augmentations that Dave Pierce, one of MSI’s MDs, had been using for the Calgary Stampede Grandstand shows. I wasn’t remotely ready for what was coming out of the speakers! It sounded like a calliope, like a little Hammond organ or cheap Wurlitzer keyboard. I wanted to punch him! I wanted to go for his throat! I was embarrassed for him as he stood there making excuses for his work. Ken admitted to the fact that doing the music this way had been a mistake. Because of this stupid “augmentation” plan, the live orchestra that had been hired was much smaller than what the show’s score called for. Now the move to Brandon was only a few days away. It was too late to turn back.

At least the “rain” worked!!! It was a small triumph in light of the defeats that had plagued us almost daily. The machinery had been hooked up by Huron Country’s Scene Shop Technician and our crew had assisted. We all held our breaths as the switch was turned on. It was magical as the water came pouring down creating the illusion that the stage was in the middle of a rainstorm. Ultimately, it worked at every performance, perfectly, utterly captivating the audiences, and at that moment, eased some of the “what-else-can-go-wrong” feelings that were surging through all of us.

The situation with the huge shabby set, which looked like it had been through a war, was rectified by the designer from Ontario, Bob Ivey. It was like playing with an immense jigsaw puzzle and if I heard “it’ll all work out by opening” one more time, I was going to kill somebody! Ken was the brunt of my frustration any number of times as I yelled that “this has got to get together”. I began cutting set elements from the show to ease the backstage mess and it helped a little, but there was no time to worry about it. The final tech rehearsals in Winnipeg were a shambles. While the cast was on top of it, the production details were still a huge source of concern and Brandon was upon us.

Everyone handled the Brandon move-in mayhem with understanding. Katie maintained her cool and inspired everyone, especially me, to plough through some dangerous set moving moments in the new space, keeping everything going forward. The stage crew was amateur and even though they had been brought in to watch the four Winnipeg tech rehearsals from the wings, they still managed to screw things up in one way or another. The local crew chief seemed to be of no use at all even though he’d actually run the show a couple of times in Winnipeg. In spite of it all, the Brandon “opening” went adequately if only because we had nothing to which to compare it. We had never had an audience before and no one knew what the “real thing” was. Scott and I sat beside each other in the back row, cringing and clutching each other’s arms, but we gradually relaxed when a cue went right, or a number looked good or the Orchestra (with a very frazzled Conductor coping with the click track) kept it together. Even the movies looked good after having been put through a conversion program to add the vintage film feel. A few Board members had come in from Winnipeg to see the opening and were, amazingly, suitably impressed. The cast was grand and, justifiably, pleased with themselves. But we were still in rehearsal. Some things had to be fixed, mostly technical in nature, and some timing and blocking things for the actors were addressed. By the time we returned to Winnipeg (thankfully minus that local running crew), the actors were old hands, both at doing the show and dodging moving sets.

The afternoon of the real Opening was fraught with technical crap. I finally left after an hour of watching the perpetual set struggles and yet another new crew trying to force things into places they weren’t supposed to go. My level of anxiety was the highest I could remember at an opening night. My stomach was in knots. The house was packed – with friends and “real” people – and I was shaking as I took my seat up in the balcony beside the Stage Management table where Katie was calling the show.

The show was like glass!! I was astonished! There is no other word for my reaction. The crew got every set change, the cast found every moment, the audience roared their approval after every number … and the rain was beautiful. By scene six I could see that everything was going to be alright, and I felt the tension drain out of my body. Katie said she could see me physically relaxing as the Act progressed. The first Act ends with the title song and, of course, the rain. The house went nuts. At intermission the noise in the Lobby was tumultuous. Everyone was laughing and talking in loud voices, and I felt people grabbing my arm and patting my shoulder as I walked through the crowd to the street for a smoke … and a breath of fresh air. The second Act was spectacular and at the end of it all, the audience rose as a single body and gave these incredible performers the acknowledgement they deserved.

Yes, the set did look shabby from time to time and yes, the orchestra sounded somewhat amateur because of the tinny computer sounds that could still be heard despite my insistence that the playback be turned down to the lowest level possible; and yes, the pace lagged a bit every now and then. But it was a good evening’s entertainment. I found myself smiling occasionally and even laughing out loud. Perhaps it was from relief or perhaps it was that good.

There are two images that stay in my mind from that production. One is of Danny (Austin) striking the iconic pose at the end of the title song, and the other was something very small a moment, for me, of theatre magic. It was the remarkable Jeff Kohut, one of the Ensemble members, playing the tiny role of ‘The Milkman’, dressed in a white uniform and hat and coming on stage with a milk bottle carrier, tap dancing his way from stage right to stage left during the “Good Morning” number. The look on his face was a mixture of utter joy to be where he was, to be doing what he was doing, and of his absolute commitment to doing it … so incredibly well. That moment filled my heart … and still does.

The day after we opened, I wrote in my Journal. “I’ve been paid my fee, and the script and score have been filed away with the other shows I’ve done. At points during the rehearsal, I kept reminding myself that I would be back in the spotlight this summer in a great role in what I was sure would be a great production (“42^nd Street”). That kept things in perspective for me at times when I was getting anxious. I don’t have to go through this again – at least not with Rainbow. And, if they ever do ask me to direct again (or if anyone ever asks me to direct again) I’ll have to think very carefully about my answer. I’ll ask a lot of questions about support staff and time frames. From the start of rehearsals to our first audience was exactly two weeks. That is too short a time to put on any show let alone a two-and-a-half-hour musical! Its insane and I will never do it again. But, never say never!”

And that turned out to be the case!