It sometimes feels like my performing career has been (a) discovering great works of music or theater in my formative years and then (b) revisiting them, often in a directorial position, as an adult. When I was a band director, I frequently took advantage and programmed pieces I remembered from high school or band camp or whatever, the pieces that lit me on fire on the inside – getting to conduct them later on in life and get to really know them with a more mature sensibility was always worth it.
Which is why I am still, at my advanced age, working my way through the Gilbert & Sullivan canon. I first heard Pinafore probably when I was 17 or so – I’ll finally get to perform it at 60. I discovered Sweeney Todd at the same age, and have since performed it twice, but I’ve never conducted it – that’s still on the bucket list. And there are certain shows that I’d do as many times as you gave me a chance to. Did I mention that my friend David, who I saw recently and who I’ve known since we were both doing opera at a teeny little company in Philadelphia, mentioned that he’d seen my Bartolo in Figaro? Biggest opera role I’ve ever done, paying a character who’s my age (now) when I was 24. I’m kinda sad that I gave up trying to be an opera singer, because Figaro is a show I could have worked my way through as Antonio (I did part of it at Peabody), and Figaro and the Count too – and would have just been in heaven every time. (and conducted it too – that might still happen, who knows?)
I haven’t been on stage in a straight play in forever, but I’ve always had my eye on eventually trying out for A Christmas Carol and for Our Town. I love Christmas Carol so much, and have seen (many times) most of the movie and TV adaptations. Theater companies have a zillion adaptations to choose from – I’d happily do any of them. I’d probably end up as one of the charity solicitors in the first scene, and background chorus for everything else – but I think I’d be an awesome Marley too. No one delivers the line, “I made it – link by link” the way I feel it should be delivered.
I guess I encountered Our Town like every American does – by studying it in high school. But we also did the play my junior year – I may have even auditioned for it – I wasn’t in it, but I certainly saw it. And I saw it at Arena Stage a few years later, an aggressively color-blind cast production (brothers and sisters were different races, which I thought wasn’t necessary) which was nevertheless excellent. It’s an amazing play. I hadn’t seen it since, but I did read Howard Sherman’s Another Day’s Begun, which just came out a couple of years ago, and it really made me want to see the play again.
Oh, we’re in luck! They’re doing Our Town on Broadway now, directed by Kenny Leon with a somewhat-starry cast. And, although I was leery of going on my usual Wed-after-work because it’s a three-act play, a little research showed me they’re doing it with no intermission, in one smooth chunk, under two hours. Well, hell, I could do that, and got a ticket last week.
It’s a lovely production. Oddly enough, the first I’ve seen in a proscenium theater, not in-the-round. Standard Our Town, following the script to basically have no props or scenery (well, they have chairs and tables). Music choices are somewhat unconventional (and I found them jarring), but everything else was spot on. Also color-blind casting, but at least the siblings looked like siblings.
The famous people in the cast are Jim Parsons, Richard Thomas, and Katie Holmes. Jim Parsons is the Stage Manager, the ‘lead’, since he (or she, depending on the production) runs the show. It’s the sort of role that often goes to someone with gravitas like Paul Newman, wasn’t sure how Parsons (who I love on screen, but had never seen on stage before) would do. No fear, he’s excellent. I loved his characterization. Thomas, who’s been doing great stage work for a long time and just finished touring as Atticus Finch, is Mr. Webb, the editor – and he’s fine in the role, although it’s not a big one. (I’m trying to remember if I’ve seen him on stage before, and I think the answer is ‘yes’, although I can’t remember the name of the play.) Katie Holmes is Mrs. Webb, and she’s quite lovely. She gets the line that always zaps me, about hoping that Emily (her daughter) got some info about what was going to happen on the wedding night, because she couldn’t get up the nerve to tell her. “I went into it blind as a bat myself.” That’s just horrific, and I know, quite common in the old days. Just the thought of being a naive young woman on her wedding night, saying, ‘you’re going to do what!?’. *shudder*
(I was also amused that I was seeing Holmes do a play as I’m also watching Bosch: Legacy, featuring another Tom Cruise ex-wife, Mimi Rogers.)
Star power aside, the play is still the star. It’s amazing, and I still really would love to perform in it someday. I think it would be hard to screw it up if you have at-all-competent people involved, and Leon’s direction and the cast’s performances are way beyond competent. Go see it, if you can.
A couple of minor notes: they actually pump scent into the theater to create atmosphere – heliotrope for Act I, vanilla for Act 2, and bacon (!) for Act 3. I wouldn’t know heliotrope if it bit me, and if I smelled it, or the vanilla, I guess I assumed it was someone’s perfume. But, boy, was the bacon obvious. I was in the front row, so though, “Oh, I can smell the prop bacon…” and then went, wait, there are no props, WTF. So that was interesting.
The other thing is I dropped a casual note on FB to see if my British and other non-American friends who do theater are familiar with the play. Turns out it gets done sometimes in the UK, but not nearly with the omnipresence it has here. And unlike, say, Fiddler on the Roof , which in its specificity is so universal that Japanese audiences are surprised and delighted that it’s ‘so Japanese’, Our Town may not translate well across the oceans. But we are lucky to have it, ourselves.
Not much else, I’m keep my schedule deliberately clear. Part of my ‘why aren’t you spending more time on this’ beating myself up (cue my shrink going, ‘just time box it and do it, you dumbass’. No, he hasn’t said that, but he probably wants to) is setting up this trip for me and my dad. He’s turning 90 in December and we’re going out west for a road trip. Well, it looks like the basic structure is in place, as of a phone call this afternoon, and now I need to start looking into flight and stuff. It’ll go somewhat like this: we’ll fly to Vegas, spend a couple of nights there, then drive to Los Angeles. Several nights in LA, then a couple of nights driving north, doing things like the Hearst Castle. Several days in San Francisco, then a drive to Reno, just to see it. And home from there. It should be fun! Dad’s seen some of this before, but I’ve only seen San Francisco (and never enough).
Christmas will happen while we’re on the trip, but I doubt if we’ll do much, just make sure there are places we can get fed. We’ll figure it out. But I’m glad we’re moving forward, because time marches on. I’m looking forward to next year, when there isn’t a tenth wedding anniversary and a half-a-lifetime in NYC big birthday for me and all that stuff that really needed to be celebrated. Well, next January is a big anniversary for C and I, but I’ll just do something on my own for that. I have some ideas.
Oh, yeah, two weeks til election day. VOTE. And get your friends to vote too!
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