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| F. Molnar |
The names have been changed to protect, I dunno, somebody.
Many, many years ago, I was in a show. I wouldn't even have remembered this incident if Marlene's imminent visit had not caused me to drift back to the bad old days where we did not tread in case someone asked us, "Are you sisters? Well, then, how did you meet?"
Anyway, I was in a show. The director was a lawyer, but thoroughly trained as a director at a regional professional theatre. He just sort of drifted into the law by accident. Sort of. The show was a fluffy summer comedy of two seasoned playwrights manipulating the lives of those around them, unless you were one of the other actors, in which case it was a romantic comedy about a young man whose heart is broken and whose antics are observed by two cynical, middle-aged non-entities. I was one of the cynics.
The director is fascinated by stage business. He claims that one of the hardest things to do on stage is eat. One of the playwrights orders a huge breakfast, eats very little of it, and leaves the rest for the hungover playwright to finish. And my instructions were to finish the whole deal: beef, chicken, fish, eggs, etc. It is a point of pride for me that eating on stage is a mere nothing. The only thing I seem to be unable to do is whistle in front of an audience, but eating! Ah! Eating is my forte. While eating, I was to listen to the romantic lead moan on and on about his the loss of his love and how his life was over blah-blah, select lines that were particularly catchy, and write them down. I was, of course, a playwright, and all human drama is but grist to my mill.
As the scene rolls on, I go from hungover to delighted with my discovery of a vein of pure gold issuing from the mouth of Mr. Romantic Lead. I am no more than a yard from the nearest audience member in a small, semi-round theatre. I'm not mugging at them - just eating and jotting notes through this whole scene.
Mr. Romantic Lead apparently (according to the denizen of the Box Office) was lying on the carpet in the lobby, pulling at the skin around his eyes and thinking sad thoughts before his entrance into the scene. [Mr. Hoffman, next time try acting.] He was put out during performance by the laughter in the audience. He simply could not reconcile this laughter to the tragedy that was, at that point of the play, his life. He could not figure it out. My back was to him. So he invited his then partner to watch and see what was going wrong. His partner told him. I was making notes and eating.
Now, to this day, this whole incident upsets me - not as much as it did at the time. At the time, I was enraged, furious, impotent, and nigh-on murderous. Today I merely make my eyes ache with rolling them. In order to keep me from doing anything that caused laughter, Mr. Romantic Lead came up behind me and clamped his hands on my shoulders. He was then able to do his scene (part of which had involved going up to the back wall and resting his forehead against it, which he dropped because that got a laugh as well) of misery without me distracting the audience from his scene chewing.
We came out of that scene with me ready to shred him and he as pleased as punch - grinning. No amount of explaining swayed him. He had won. He had, in fact, killed the scene and removed business given to both of us by the director.
At this point in time, the director was spending as little time with the production as possible, probably suffering from depression. I didn't want to bother him and we had another performance coming up. I did the only thing I could think of: I moved the chair so that I was at an angle partially facing him. If he tried anything else, he would have to upstage himself. I continued to eat and make notes, but this time having to turn to get my food or make my notes.
When the director did finally learn of this, he was more than slightly perturbed. "Why didn't you tell me?" he said. Well, we didn't want to bother you. And it was fixed.
Amazingly enough, Mr. Romantic and I did another show together, along with his partner. And his partner cast me in another show. And thereby hangs yet another tale, but one for another day.
