Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb (25 page)

“No,” said Jane. “But I don’t think you’ll be the only one raked over the coals. After all, there’s so much to choose from.”

Hardly what I’d call comforting words, despite their dead-on accuracy.

After this candid little powwow, I pretty much sleep-walked my way through the rest of the previews straight on to opening night. To sleep, perchance to dream, you understand. I imagine I gave the impression of being right there at the moment with everybody else, but, trust me, it was all an illusion. I had only a vague awareness of special events like shopping for opening night gifts and being fitted for my first tuxedo. I suspect my mind just gave up and let my body take over this day-to-day living and functioning obligation.

There was tension within the cast. Holland had already demonstrated a tantrum-laced aggressiveness during the first week of working her into the show. Despite my haziness (or perhaps
because
of it), she and I came to task over that damned last scene. She vehemently opposed the language, granting that it would get laughs, but not, she insisted, “appropriate” laughs. As noted, I was sick of this scene, and the last thing I wanted to do was to rewrite it yet again for another damn actor. I hated them all, at this point, the young and the old and the tall.

Our altercation reached screaming levels, I hate to admit. But as Holland and I carried on like Godzilla vs. Rodan, John sank further back into his seat, refusing to take part. Eventually, in disgust, Holland walked to the foot of the stage, cupped her palm over her brow and whined into the darkness: “But, of course, I’ll do whatever I’m told to.” Which is when I would have given anything to hear John say “Then do it as
written
.” But nothing. He was invisible.

I left the theater feeling beaten and betrayed. It wasn’t so much that John did not support me—he probably did—it’s just that his nature didn’t allow him to communicate this support out loud. Or, for that matter, to take up the reins and steer this runaway coach to the side of the road. I was deathly sick of the ineptitude, told Dennis as much, who in turn related my feelings to Ricka. Ricka was no moron. She had come to understand the problems as clearly as we did, but, again, what could she do? A vanity production constrains all its participants.

Holland and I made up later in the week. A lot of her anxieties were unavoidable. She had less than two weeks to pull the show together. Truth be told, I really felt that she was one of the few who clearly understood what I was attempting with the script, and her contributions to its structure were immeasurable. No one could do it alone, though, and despite her dead-on approach and searing talent, Holland (in those days, anyway) had one very basic shortcoming. Her technique was bubbly, subtle, and throwaway—something that works like a charm on TV, but kills on stage. You just couldn’t hear a word she said.

Now I sincerely believe she
knew
this, despite all her remonstrations to the contrary. She refused to admit that it had anything to do with her vocal equipment or how she was using it. Instead, the culprit became the rain and the thunder loop—an incessant drone that Holland felt was subliminally sabotaging the production. And she had a damned good point, trust me. The rain was so intrusively steady and loud, the cast must have felt at times as if they were doing the nonmusical version of
Two by Two
.

Mind you, John never once said “Holland—speak up! We can’t hear you in the fourth row!” Once, and only once, he told her in passing, “You tend to trail off the ends of your sentences,” but he gave no emphasis to this note and the problem persisted. Just as he assumed he had given June a clear through line for Snooks, he also assumed he’d harped to Holland about her inaudibility. I think he decided early on that it was his unlucky lot to be working with petulant actors who stubbornly refused to follow his direction. I don’t think he ever really knew how very little direction he offered anyone at any time. Perhaps he just overestimated his telepathic powers.

The evening before the Saturday matinee preview, Dennis and I stayed home and listened to the original cast recording of Stephen Sondheim’s
Merrily We Roll Along
. Here was a show about ambition, creativity, loyalty, and the rise, fall, and corruption of success in the theater—all enacted by a bunch of people our own age. We didn’t have a chance. We both sobbed uncontrollably throughout—first because we identified with the character’s mercurial rise to fame and fortune, and later because we became terrified that “Our Time” had come and gone before we’d even been able to enjoy it, let alone abuse it. The score still takes me back to this tumultuous time in my life, and always makes me think of Dennis, Jane, Sally, and Marc—my own “Old Friends” who went through all this turmoil by my side, for better or worse—far, far worse.

The matinee the next afternoon went well (and by now you understand how relative a term I believe “well” to be), but the audience was our worst yet. The few attending were mostly “paper—” folks pulled in off the streets with freebies—and many of them resembled the asylum inmates from a production of
Marat Sade
.

In his own humble way, one of these street folks was about to make arcane Broadway history. I think it’s best to let John Simon tell you about him, as he chose to first do in the final paragraph of his
New York Magazine
review published on March 7:

Two of those folks Simon watched flee to the back of the theater turned out to be Frank Rich and his companion for the afternoon, Wendy Wasserstein. Rich has talked about this inauspicious introduction to the play often enough that I now feel I was there suffering along with him—even though my journal tells me I was not. John opted not to tell any of us (including the cast) that this particular matinee was to be seen not just by Rich and Simon, but by Doug Watt of the
News
and Clive Barnes of the
Post
as well. Had I known all the gods from Critics Valhalla would be descending to earth to convene at the O’Neill on that particular afternoon, I certainly would have been right there front and center with our vomit-covered, pear-shaped, papered patron.

Blissfully unaware that we were already stinking up the place and emptying the theater of all but the most stalwart or feeble-minded, we completed the two previews on Saturday and felt pretty good about ourselves. I got a call from June on Sunday morning, who’d just spoken to a number of her friends who’d seen the show.

“They tell me there’s a much better play here than I’m doing,” she revealed, and began to talk about that “conservative and vulnerable” center to Snooks that had been essentially absent since day one. Since by now I knew the critics had already made their decisions about the play, I found June’s epiphany a tad
moot
, but this didn’t stop me from immediately phoning John with the news.

“June now knows who she is.” I said. “She’s figured out her character with the help of all her theater friends.”

There was a long pause.

“I hate that woman,” John said.

“I thought I’d come here and do nothing but gush,” said our friend Alan Heppel at dinner Monday night. He’d flown in from LA the day before to join us for the opening and had just gotten his feet wet by sitting through the last preview with us. “But you’re both so objective and in control, I guess I can speak frankly.”

Who the hell had given him
that
idea? Still, it was good to have my old buddy from high school there with me, and it would be equally good for Dennis to have Brother Aelred on hand, too. The Mad Monk was due to fly in from Seattle the next day. Maybe we’d find our strength in larger numbers—or at least some kind of shield from the slings and arrows we were about to suffer.

“We have the support of the church and the civil authorities,” Dennis said. “Now all we need is a doctor.”

But instead we got Dennis’s mother, Mary Ann, who also arrived Sunday. She was in the way, and fairly aware of it, but banking on receiving the customary civility from her son and me—his special friend. She wasn’t at all prepared for the negativism we were both spewing. The intended success of
Moose Murders
was going to change her life, she had decided, and this vested interest was being abused and shattered in front of her eyes. She couldn’t understand why we weren’t happier, or why we were so seldom willing even to
talk
to her about the upcoming event. She busied herself inventing errands to run and trying to be helpful, but we were quite beyond help at this point.

Brother Aelred arrived early Tuesday morning. After picking him up at JFK and then dropping him off at his hotel, Dennis and I made arrangements with a florist to deliver single roses to everybody in the cast, and then sped off to Macy’s to finish our opening night shopping.

Dennis picked up our tuxedos as I hurriedly wrapped fourteen gifts—all the while listening to afternoon soap operas blare out from the TV—Mary Ann’s constant stimulant.

She liked them loud. I was trying to make peace with my God. We were not good company for each other.

The rented limousine arrived at five. Mary Ann snapped a couple of pictures of her son and his very close friend in our tuxes, and argued with Dennis on the way downstairs about taking more pictures of the limo. “Later,” mumbled Dennis.

We picked up Brother Aelred at the hotel and began the somber pilgrimage to the theater. As Dennis and I pensively peered through the smoked glass windows, Aelred finally broke the silence. “The similarity between this ride and a funeral procession is unmistakable,” he said. Mary Ann punched him reproachfully on the arm and looked to the two of us to refute the comment. We didn’t, and we all rode on without much additional conversation.

When we reached the O’Neill, Aelred mercifully escorted Mary Ann to a bar while the two of us snuck in through the stage door and distributed our gifts. On our way to each dressing room, we stumbled over dozens of floral arrangements, packages, bottles of champagne, and glittering banners. Lillie’s dressing room alone was stuffed with so many floral wreaths and long-stemmed roses it must have been hard for her to find enough room to greasepaint her face. There were countless telegrams waiting for us from Ithaca College, and our friends from all walks of our lives. There was an especially ornate card from the Shubert Organization.

Joe Allen had sent bouquets to everyone, too—no doubt to welcome our inevitable inclusion into his rogues’ gallery.

We opened up as many gifts along the way as we deposited: a pair of crystal Tiffany liqueur glasses from Holland, hand-decorated egg shells commemorating the event, from Jack, and an exquisite set of Hoffritz cutlery from John and Lillie, with ivory-carved moose on each handle.