“Oh. Don’t do that to me. I just had, like, fourteen heart attacks. Otherwise, I’ll be the frigging Miles Davis of cool; just you wait. What are we seeing tonight anyway?”
“It’s called Old Glory. I honestly don’t know anything about it, except that it will be done well because we’re going to Writers’ Theatre,” she tells me. She pulls up to an intersection and yields to oncoming traffic.
“How do you know?” I ask.
Stacey takes her eyes off the road to glance at me. “Because we’re going to Writers’ Theatre.”
I reply, “So, post hoc ergo propter hoc?”
Stacey’s forehead scrunches. “What?”
“I don’t know; it just flew out.” I’ve been reading some smart stuff lately and I thought I used that right. I guess not.
She ignores my ham-fisted attempt at Latin. “All the plays performed at Writers’ Theatre are thought-provoking. These productions put a huge amount of value on words. There’s no theater in Chicago that’s as much about the writing. You’ll notice that the set’s simple and the cast’s small. They do it that way because it creates intimacy. Whatever the story is, it’s going to feel huge, and yet you’re going to feel like you’re a part of it.”
“How will it be different from Desire Under the Elms?” In my head, I’ve already painted all iterations of “theater” with the same brush. It never occurred to me that there may be nuances.
“Desire’s set probably cost three hundred thousand dollars. Tonight’s set may be a couple of old couches. Or, better example, picture your friend Carla Gugino’s wig. You were blown away by it, right?”
“I was mesmerized. Her wig was more real than her real hair.”
“And it probably set them back fifteen hundred dollars. Different theaters have different budgets and standards of production. I’ve been to shows in small theaters where the wigs came from someone’s grandma’s attic. Sometimes they’re so bad it’s hard not to laugh.”
“Which are better? Big shows or little ones?”
“Depends. Tell you what. We’ll take in a variety of productions at different venues so you can decide for yourself. There are almost two hundred theaters in and around Chicago.”
“Whoa. That sounds like a lot of work. Why don’t you just give me your educated opinion?” I suggest.
She smirks. “Or you could just put in the effort and decide for yourself.”
“You’re not going to let me be lazy, are you?”
She simply raises her brows in response.
We pull into a spot right in front of the theater, which is in an old North Shore mansion. “We’re here!” she says. “Do you want to walk up to the door, princess, or shall I carry you up on my back?”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I mutter as I trudge through the snow and into the building. As we enter, I notice a number of posters hanging in the lobby describing our country’s failings in the war on terror. “Aw, shit, Stacey, did you bring me to a show that’s going to tell me how everything I believe is wrong?”
Stacey and I are on vastly different teams politically. We both respect each other enough that when we see a point differently, we discuss it rationally. We’ve never changed each other’s minds, but we can appreciate the perspective the other one brings. Also, we make a point not to rub anything in—I never insist she eat any of the cake I bake every year for Ronald Reagan’s birthday, and she only made me watch Maddow that one time because there was a segment she thought I’d like.95 With us, we have so much other stuff in common that there’s little reason to discuss our differences.
What’s ironic is politics is the one topic outside of reality television on which I’m well informed. Every week I listen to hours of talk radio and I read a ton of conservative magazines and blogs. Yet besides Fletch, almost none of my friends share my ideology, and I try not to include any political opinion on my own blog, so it’s rare that I ever get into the kind of discussion that proves I actually have a basis for my opinions.
“No! I swear! Even though it would be funny, I’d never do that!” She grabs a program and begins to scan the description. “See? It says right here: ‘No politics, just people.’ I promise if the show does somehow sneak in politics—”
“Or nudity,” I interject.
“If they sneak in politics or nudity, grilled cheeses are on me.”
“Deal.” We shake on it.
I’m immediately struck by how different this theater is from the Goodman. The space is tiny, with maybe a hundred seats. When I walked into the Goodman, I felt small and insignificant. I was one tiny cog in the giant wheel of audience. You could conduct an entire circus on that stage. The Goodman is cavernous and impossibly tall, whereas this place feels like an afterthought, or the end result of some kind of Our Gang hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show. I’m a tad surprised there’s no curtain made of stitched-together bandannas and old overalls.
Our seats are hopelessly close together. We wedge into our slots and I tell Stacey, “This makes me long for a middle seat on an airplane. In coach.”
“Yeah, it’s tight,” she agrees. “But the shows here are always worth the squeeze.”
“Just so you know, I’m putting my arm around you unless you want to fight me for the armrest for the next ninety minutes.”
The seating area is divided into three sections of risers, forming a U around the stage. We’re in the section on the far right, but that doesn’t matter—there’s not a bad seat in the joint. And even the back row is within twenty feet of the stage. Although there isn’t a stage, per se. There’s just a clearing filled with various pieces of a set. One portion looks like an Army barracks, another is a bar, and the third contains a couple of fancy armchairs. The whole performance area is barely bigger than my old living room.
Between the cramped seats and simplicity of the stage, I’ve already decided that I prefer elaborate productions and I mentally cross Writers’ Theatre off my list of places to return. This is too small. I can hear the dude next to me breathing and I can smell vanilla. I suspect someone here had cupcakes right before they arrived.96
This is too intimate. I don’t want to be this close to the audience or the actors. What if I sneeze over someone’s line? What if my stomach growls in anticipation of my pending grilled cheese? The old guy to my right has a whistling nostril—what if this eventually causes one of the actors to snap?97 I don’t want to hear the cadence of someone else’s breath or feel their pulse through a shared armrest. It’s creepy.
And this set? Ugh. It’s so plain. Look at all the unused space above the stage. You could totally suspend big rocks or maybe part of a farmhouse over this thing. And why do all three settings have to be onstage at the same time? They can’t carry the wing chairs in and out between breaks? I can’t fathom what Stacey meant when she said this show will be “huge.” This whole setting is too small to be “big.”
I shift uncomfortably in my tiny chair and wait for the damned thing to begin.
“What’d you think?” Stacey asks me as we walk up the mansion’s stairs to the cast party.
I need a minute to formulate my response. I’m not even sure how to begin. But I get what Stacey meant by “big” now. The story involved an accidental shooting on an Army base in Fallujah. Friendly fire. I’ve heard a million stories about what it’s like to be deployed—the pride of service tempered with boredom and laced with loneliness and punctuated with brief flashes of terror. Without once foisting an agenda on me, the playwright nailed all this. When I watched things go terribly wrong, I kept thinking, “That could have been my husband. That could have been my friend. That could have happened.”
I finally reply, “This play is going to stick with me for a long, long time.”
The unexpected end result of being in such close quarters is that the drama is amplified ten thousand times. When the woman in front of me sucked in her breath at a plot twist, I heard it. When my neighbor’s pulse quickened in response to a tense moment, I felt it. And being ten fee
t away from the actors made me feel less like I was an audience member and more like an accidental participant. It was awkward and off-putting and . . . exhilarating. “Who knew a story could be so powerful with such a modest set and so little space?”
Stacey nods a tad smugly. “That’s Writers’ Theatre.”
“When I compare this in my mind to what we saw at the Goodman, well, there is no comparison. This play blew the other away on what, maybe five percent of the budget?”
Once we hit the party, I get a glass of wine and Stacey has a ginger ale. We grab a table close to the bar but I’m having trouble saying anything. The drama’s left me tense and raw.
The soldier named Rat reminded me so much of what Fletch might have been like in the Army—introspective and motivated. Quietly intelligent and sick to death of dealing with the bullshit stemming from hillbillies and assholes. Rat tried to make sense of his world by reading philosophy while his bunkmate delved into comic books. Rat’s frustration with the state of affairs during wartime was nothing I hadn’t heard from my own husband a dozen times when he recounts Army stories.
The climax came when one soldier accidentally shot another. All I could think was, given the events that led up to the situation, my poor husband could have been on either end of that gun. And despite there being no pricey pyrotechnics, the moment was so real.
Silly though it may sound, I immediately e-mail Fletch when it’s over to see if he’s okay. He writes back saying: I’m watching a Rammstein DVD. When I prompt him to find out if he’s really okay, he replies: I’m having a splendid time skidding on the hardwood floors in boxer shorts and Ray-Bans, drinking Chivas Regal, and licking a frozen dinner. I e-mail back: Really? He responds: Don’t worry, I’ll keep your crystal egg safe. Have a good night.
(Sidebar: This? Right here? Is why I could never truly be a cougar, despite my deep and abiding ardor for Robert Pattinson and Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl.98 I don’t care how sculpted your abs are or how firm your jawline is; if you can’t quote a twenty-five-year-old Tom Cruise movie, well, then it looks like University of Illinois for you, Joel.)
I’m off-kilter for a while and only begin to calm down when I see the actor who played the protagonist enter the party. I eavesdrop and hear him say he can’t stay because he’s moving in the morning and he has to go home and pack. For some reason, this fills me with an enormous sense of relief. Yet I notice I’m not the only person in the room who’s visibly relieved that he’s actually alive and well. I’m even happier when I see the woman who played the heartbroken mother arrive at the party not in her frumpy scuffs and dowdy elastic waist pants, but in sparkly lip gloss and a darling floral dress. My mood further lifts when I hear some people in the party do the Jon Lovitz Master Thespian bit from old Saturday Night Live. “Acting!” “Genius!” This cast truly suspended my disbelief, almost a little too much.
Some of the folks I met at the Desire cast party gather around our table. They bring their heads in close to ours and I discover something very interesting about theater people: They never criticize whoever’s providing the free wine afterward. That is, not at that party. If they don’t like the show, they find something nice to say about it. Like if the acting is a hot mess, they’ll praise the blocking, or if the set’s ridiculous, they’ll rave about the lighting design.
“Can you believe that steaming pile of crap we saw last week?” Stacey’s friend Richard asks. “I mean, sweet Lord, O’Neill is turning over in his grave. You can’t cut that much text and not destroy the integrity of the story!” Richard clamps his eyes shut, turns his head, and splays his fingers over his heart, as though the memory is just too painful to bear.
“Wait, someone edited the dialogue? You can’t do that, right? I mean, you can’t possibly think that your interpretation would be better than the original.” I’m dumbfounded. So what if I just heard of this play a week ago? The arrogance of second-guessing Eugene O’Neill astounds me.
Stacey’s other friend Billy jumps in. “Can . . . did . . . snap! The lies that flew outta my mouth when I raved about it? Child, I am going straight to Hell-o! And that house on ropes? When Eben and Abbie get together in his momma’s parlor and they start to have sex, I turned to Richard and said, ‘If this house is—rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.’ I could barely keep from screaming with laughter. And the overacting? Girl, do not START me on the overacting, okay? Because screaming is not equal to ‘dramatic.’”
A third friend joins us. Her name escapes me, but I remember that she has something to do with design. She whispers conspiratorially, “Are you talking about Desire?” We nod, glancing over our shoulders. “Jesus Christ, the boulders? Can we be a little more symbolic about the burdens everyone has to bear and the weight of it all dragging them down, please?”
“Wait,” I say. “I liked the rocks. What was wrong with the set? How would you have done it?”
“Um, so, everything you saw? I’d have done the opposite,” she replies.
“Would you have put an elm onstage?” I ask.
“I’d probably have represented it in some form, yeah,” she replies.99
We chat a while longer and I take advantage of the open bar. I’m still a little raw and welcome the idea of anesthetizing myself. Eventually Stacey’s friends drift off to mock Desire with other people.
“Does that always happen?” I ask Stacey.
She nods. “Tough crowd.”
“That was seriously bitchy,” I note. “I like it. But you know what’s funny? I didn’t even know I didn’t enjoy Desire Under the Elms. Here I thought it was great until everyone told me why it wasn’t.”
“Theater’s subjective. That’s why I didn’t agree or disagree with what you thought of it—I wanted you to draw your own conclusions based on your own experience.”
“My conclusion’s entirely different after talking to all these experts.”
“Are you happy with how your conversation went?”
“I kept up, I said things that contributed to the overall dialogue, and I felt comfortable. You know why?” I ask. “Because I had confidence.”
Stacey gives me a high five. “Nicely done.”
We’re only alone for a minute before another of Stacey’s buddies joins us. I’m introduced to Todd and learn that he’s a Tony Award-winning scenic designer. Neat! I try to get some dirt out of him on his opinion of Desire, but he’s all closemouthed. I guess you don’t win big awards by denigrating potential employers.
Instead, I grill him about what it’s like to win a Tony.
“Did you watch the show?” he asks.
“Pfft. I hate award shows. I’m not winning anything, why should I watch?” I reply.
“Interesting point,” he concedes. “With the Tonys, for me it was a rush and it knocked the breath out of me to hear my name.”
“Maybe you were just better than all of them and that’s why you won,” I say helpfully.
Todd tells us, “I don’t look at it that way at all. It’s surreal just to be standing there and recognized in front of the people I admire.”
“And,” Stacey adds, “that’s not the whole story. Todd’s being modest. He’s also up for an Olivier Award in London next month.”
“Are you going to win?” I ask.
Todd shrugs. “That doesn’t matter. I’m honored just to be nominated in a group of—”
“No!” I blurt and bang my hand on the table. “Cut it out! That’s loser talk! Enough with this humility crap; I want to hear some confidence. You already won one award, so you totally know what to do next. You need to tell those other scenic guys they’re goin’ down! Taunt them! Talk smack! Tout yourself! Send them snapshots of your mantel with the Tony on it and point out where the Olivier’s gonna go. Be in their faces! That’s what’s going to win you an award.” I nod wisely.
“Hey, it’s about time I get that grilled cheese in you,” Stacey suggests. We extricate ourselves from the table and begin to say our good-byes. She hustles me out the exit while I
call back to Todd, “Remember! Confidence! Talk like a winner! Be the ball, Danny! Be the ball!”
Okay, I see where I went off track here.
I ended the night with my own “Move your bloomin’ arse” moment. And I’d been doing so well.
And yet, later in the spring, when Todd wins the Olivier Award, I can’t help but feel a tiny bit responsible. Maybe for once my big mouth actually helped.
Also, I skip the next opening-night party Stacey invites me to.
I loved Old Glory, so I want to avoid hearing any experts at the next event telling me why I shouldn’t.
To: stacey_at_home
From: jen_at_home
Subject: Welcome home!
Hey! Hope you had fun in New York! Since you’ve been gone, I’ve joined Twitter—here are all my very important updates you’ve missed:
going all CSI to determine the stink in the family room. Cats are at the top of my suspect list.
has located source of carpet stink. Culprit not identified, but dogs pretty much cleared; not capable of this kind of evil. Cats on notice.
initiating vacuuming and deodorizing sequence.
has informed cats of their rights and advised them not to leave town.
is queasy from Arm & Hammer fumes and currently being mocked by both cats and carpeting. On to the soap-and-water-scrub portion of our show.
is AAARRRGGHH! CARPET STINK IS JUST LIKE GREMLINS! NEVER ADD WATER! RUN! SAVE YOURSELVES!
has gone to DEFCON ONE—carting my lazy ass down all those stairs to get the Spotbot.
overheard cats by water dish whispering, “Steam cleaner, pfft. She’s going to need NASA to get that stink out.”
gives up. Cats-1. Jen-0.
can’t believe that even with the aroma of pies baking and briskets . . . brisketing that The Stink Abides. Maybe something did die in the wall?
I still haven’t determined the source of the stink. But aren’t you really anxious to come over now?