Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle (11 page)

The closing party for the Delacorte’s summer season, after the final performance of
Timon,
was a small affair, held backstage in the picnic area. Someone brought a tiny kitten to the theater for some reason, and I spent most of the night playing with it.

After the party, as I walked through the auditorium to leave the Delacorte for the last time, I noticed that the stagehands were all onstage, gathered around the hated trailer. They’d spray painted rude slogans across it and they were smashing it with sledgehammers and axes. Their glee was palpable as they swung their weapons into the walls, denting the metal sheets and driving holes through them. I couldn’t blame them; if I’d been forced to push around that monstrosity for several weeks, I’d have wanted to waste it too. They’d also scattered the entire cache of prop “gold nuggets” across the front of the stage.

Despite the fact that both of our Shakespeare plays had been tragedies, the summer was a comedy for me. I left laughing.

I’ve been blessed to experience many things that the average Broadway fan never gets close to. I’ve been to opening, closing and anniversary parties; I’ve been backstage, under the stage and above it, too. I’ve hung out in Broadway dressing rooms and watched actor friends apply and remove their makeup. I’ve walked across stages; I’ve seen rehearsals. I’ve been to potluck lunches in theater alleys and have received numerous production gifts. I’ve even performed on a Broadway stage myself. I really cannot complain at all.

The one item on my theatrical bucket list that was never fulfilled was visiting David Belasco’s private apartment at the Belasco Theatre.

I subbed at the Belasco for two productions, revivals of
A Doll’s House
and
Follies;
and worked there as a regular for two more,
Enchanted April
and
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.
During that time I had the chance to see pretty much everything in the theater except the apartment, so again, I really can’t complain. However, even today, if someone offered me a chance to see that apartment, I’d probably do whatever I could to hop on a plane and get there for my tour.

When I worked at the Belasco in the early 2000s, they had two phone booths. One was in the men’s room; the other in the ladies’; they were full-on Clark Kent cubicles with doors and all. Even if you had no reason to use the pay phones, sitting in the booths was fun. You could close the door and shut out the noise of the world as you chatted on your cell.

The Belasco, which dated to 1907, was the most exquisitely decorated theater I’d ever seen. The murals that flanked the proscenium depicted some sort of pastoral orgy scene, with fit, nude men and women frolicking in a forest clearing. The ceiling was covered with stained glass medallions; more stained glass blossomed in delicate chandeliers and large lighting features on either side of the stage. It was all authentic Tiffany work. Cherubim were carved into the rich, dark wood in the lobby. Even the door to the men’s room was elaborate.

If you’ve ever read one of David Belasco’s plays, this all makes perfect sense. If you haven’t — and you really should at least pick up
The Return of Peter Grimm
 — I can explain it briefly by telling you that Belasco was incredibly detailed and thorough in his set designs. There was no such thing as an insignificant set piece, prop or costume in a Belasco show. In Mary Pickford’s autobiography,
Sunshine and Shadow,
she described an incident where Mr. Belasco railed on a crew member for filling a prop sugar bowl with syrup instead of molasses, even though nobody in the audience was ever going to see it. I’m sure the same exacting attention to detail was put into his theater, and that every single wall sconce and staircase newel had some specific meaning.

I’m trying to remember now…where were the bees? In another theater affiliated with Belasco in New York, the New Victory, the seat ends had bees on them. Bee, B for Belasco, you get it, right? There must have been bees in the Belasco Theatre too, but for some reason I don’t remember where they were anymore. The next time you see a show there, check the ends of the seats for me and let me know.

Unfortunately the Belasco hadn’t always been treated kindly. By the 2000s, some of the boxes had been hacked off the walls and the white seats were old and dingy. The gorgeous Tiffany medallions on the ceiling and the murals along the walls were so grimy that they were almost completely obscured. Fortunately, they were among the first elements of the theater to be restored; in 2003, a major cleaning program returned them to their former glory. The difference was drastic; once they were cleaned, the medallions were so vivid that they brightened up the entire theater.

Backstage, the Belasco Theatre was built like a maze, with winding hallways. Even finding the ushers’ lounge was an adventure; to get there you had to locate the right secret door to get backstage and find the correct room along a labyrinthine corridor. The room itself, with its cheerful carpeting, lockers, microwave and OSHA regulations posted on a bulletin board, seemed somewhat alien in its modernity and brightness.

The balcony was physically cut off from the rest of the theater, and was accessed through a separate entrance. I’ve learned that during the Belasco’s extensive renovations in 2010 a staircase was rerouted to connect the balcony to the rest of the house, but before then, it was the equivalent of Siberia. The only way for the ushers to get there from the front of house was through a secret passageway. And the stairs! I lost count of how many flights it was up to the balcony. You felt as though you’d climbed a mountain by the time you made it to the top.

Being sent to the balcony was a lonely fate. It was so quiet, and so remote. I was relieved when I had a partner working with me, because being up there alone was a little spooky. I was grateful that the lighting booth was located there, too, because it meant that a few stagehands were always present. One perk of the section, though, was its close proximity to the Tiffany medallions embedded in the ceiling. Whenever I was assigned to the balcony I spent a considerable period of time gazing up at the stained glass and trying to decipher the symbols on the crests. I think I may have even voluntarily trekked upstairs once or twice to study the medallions.

I always looked for the cat. He never had an official name, but everyone knew him. A few folks called him David, after our theater’s namesake. He was a huge, scrappy black and white feral who lived in the alley by the stage door, and several people took up the task of feeding him. He had a lovely cat house that shielded him from the elements, provided by Rosie Perez, who performed at the Belasco in
Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.
The Belasco Kitty generally made himself scarce when people were about, but every now and then you caught a glimpse of his big yellow eyes glittering in the back of the alley.

For a few weeks there was a dog at the Belasco to go with the cat, but she was a major nuisance. She belonged to Jane Adams, who briefly came into
Enchanted April
at the end of the run, after Molly Ringwald and Isabel Keating had both left the show. I have no idea how Adams got on with the cast and crew, but the ushers couldn’t stand her, either on or offstage. We didn’t care for her dog either, because it ran around backstage unleashed, unattended and uncontrolled. It wasn’t entirely unheard of for performers to bring their dogs to work, but they were generally very responsible about it. The dogs stayed in the dressing room or with their owners at all times, and you didn’t even know they were there. An actress who let her dog run amok and roam the theater wasn’t the norm, and it wasn’t appreciated at all.

I was severely allergic to dogs and had landed in the ER in the past when I’d come into contact with them, so while the Adams hound was on the loose I had to watch my back backstage. After the dog came into the ushers’ room, stole someone’s lunch and scattered the debris across the carpet, our chief had to speak to the house manager about it. Some ushers were on very limited incomes; when they bought so much as a bagel, it had to be budgeted out. If someone stole their food, they couldn’t necessarily afford to replace it. Jane Adams certainly didn’t care about that. As far as I know, she never even apologized, much less offered to replace the meal that her dog had destroyed, so an usher might have gone hungry that day.

Aside from Adams, we were very fond of the
Enchanted April
cast. Jayne Atkinson was an absolutely lovely person, and the rest of the actors were similarly friendly when they ran into us. In the aftermath of a citywide blackout, Michael Hayden even offered the shower in his private dressing room to an usher who had spent days without power or water in the sweltering summer heat. The usher gratefully accepted.

During
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks,
relations between the cast and ushers were similarly warm. Mark Hamill came to the front of the house one night to give us a basket of Halloween candy and do voice impressions for us. When I went to London for my birthday, I bought a slab of Cadbury chocolate for him to return the favor. On opening night, he sent us each a photo with a personalized inscription.

Life at the Belasco was good. If only the theater had been open more often, I would have stayed there indefinitely.

Between shows on matinee days, I’d usually secret myself away somewhere in the theater with a good book and a bowl of soup. My favorite spot was a carpeted nook backstage between the ushers’ area and the letters room, an eerie space where they stored all of the gigantic illuminated letters that were used on the marquee. The letters were nearly as large as I was; picking them up must have required heavy equipment. If I continued down the corridor and turned a few corners, I found myself in the large space that housed David Belasco’s swimming pool. The pool itself was still there, albeit stripped of all decoration; there was enough space around it to host quite a gathering.

There was one staircase I knew about that went up to David Belasco’s private apartment. Belasco had resided there from 1910 onward, surrounded by books, antiques and art. Oh, how I wanted to see it. I would stand at the bottom of that stairway and gaze up with fierce longing. Although I’d been into numerous “secret” theater apartments, including the ones at the Lyceum and the Longacre, Belasco’s was the Holy Grail for me.

I dreamt of it. I’d look up the steps toward a door I couldn’t see and imagine myself opening it and walking through. On numerous occasions I thought of sneaking up on my own, but I didn’t want to get fired. There wasn’t any legitimate reason for me to be on the top floor of the theater, so I couldn’t just pretend I’d accidentally ended up there en route to somewhere else. I’d been told that the apartment was rigged with alarms and motion detectors, and the entrance was probably locked, so in any case, there wasn’t any way I was going to be able to mosey upstairs and sneak in without being noticed.

I knew people who had visited the Belasco apartment. They swore up and down that there wasn’t much left to see…well, save for the loft, or the beautifully tiled fireplace, or…never mind. I’d seen photos, and I knew that the apartment had been stripped to the bare walls. I didn’t care. I still wanted to visit. Crew members and doormen told me that they sometimes heard parties going on in the apartment; that the motion detectors picked up people who couldn’t be seen on camera. I had no reason to doubt it. The Belasco Theatre was filled with energy.

Even though I never made it to the apartment, I did get to see David Belasco’s private office once or twice. It was still used by the house manager, and it was located right above the box office, behind a wall of thick bottle-glass. The manager kept an autographed photograph of David in her office. Another photo hung in the lobby, presiding over the scene below. His beloved theater had been abused so many times; the least one could do was to pay him a measure of respect.

The ushers certainly respected David Belasco. He was on a first-name basis with us, and we sometimes said hello and goodbye to him. I will not repeat ghost stories about David, but I will say that everyone knew he was there with us. Was he there literally or figuratively? That was for each of us to decide for ourselves. For David’s birthday one year, I printed out a birthday card with his photo. We all signed it and wired it to the gate outside the stage door. It wasn’t the only thing affixed to the gate — David had a devoted fan that left him floral tributes on his birthday and the anniversary of his death.

David wasn’t a fearsome character by any means, but a few of the ushers did approach the idea of his ghost with trepidation. To be fair, according to old-timers around the theater, the only time he’d ever seemed truly angry was during the 1970s run of
The Rocky Horror Show,
when many of the design elements of the house had been severely damaged or destroyed. You really couldn’t blame the man for being furious about that. He was there to watch over his theater, and seeing it get trashed must have been extremely upsetting to him.

What would David do?
I always wondered. Did he like what he saw? When I watched a performer stumble through her blocking onstage and miss her lines for what seemed like the hundredth time, I could just imagine David’s reaction. Perhaps it wasn’t my imagination at all. He was standing right there, wasn’t he? His arms were crossed; his face was a mask of sheer disgust.
In my day, she would have been fired on the spot.
Of course. How could anyone ever doubt, even for a second, that David was in the house? It was his pride and joy. When the curtain rose for Act II of
Enchanted April
and revealed a stage completely covered in flowers, climbing vines and lush greenery, I could see David’s smile:
Now,
that’s
a set. And it’s a considerable improvement over Act I.

David kept all of us in line, I think. We were in his theater, we knew it, and we weren’t about to screw up. David wouldn’t have liked it.