Little Did I Know: A Novel (33 page)

The cops wandered over. They had an air of contrition and stood a few feet away as if to make sure it was okay to approach me. I sat up and grabbed Sid’s chair, placing it out of harm’s way from the chilly rain. As the senior agent, Officer Warren did the talking. “Sam, we are here to help. What went on here this morning is not what we represent in our department. Trust me. You already have had a day and a half. Now you have to go to work. We’ll plug the damn for the day and let you catch up. We’ll be back at six and we’ll figure out how to win this one, as well as those problems facing Miss Foster.”

“Yeah, Sam,” added Officer Richardson. “I have done some reading about your guy Capra—actually Ellie read it to me mostly. He said something like, ‘In the fight of all great causes, it is at times when we feel lost, that we are closest to finding our way.’ I’m here. Feel better and we’ll check in later.”

Warren added one more thing. “I told your people if Colon calls you again they tell him you’re off limits and that he has to go through me first. Hey, you have a good day, kid. Make some music.”

Gary Golden walked up the three steps to the deck and handed me a large glass of grapefruit juice. “I understand you don’t drink coffee because you wake up wired. True?”

“Yup. The problem for me is not waking up, it’s falling asleep. So thanks. This has pulp in it.”

“Squeezed it myself,” Golden said.

“Wow. I guess the war is over.”

Gary dropped to his haunches so I could stay seated and away from the rain. The precipitation seemed to hit him and bounce off the way bullets do off the chest Superman. He captured my gaze, and I have to admit I was confused. Yet I was ready to listen. That much I had learned these past weeks.

“Sam,” he said, “I want to be your friend. I didn’t want to be a few weeks ago, but now I do. I am badass enemy, but I can be a good guy if I am on your side. I’d like to be on your side and I want you to trust me. I even talked with Veronica about it and we’ll straighten things out so this can happen. She told me to talk with you, said she’d sign up for whatever is good for you but that it was your choice. I’m going nowhere. I am a local dick who fights too much and takes some graft and punches around a few schlubs. I like you. I’ve watched you these past weeks. But no one can make a difference alone. I want to help you.”

“Wow,” I said, “I thought you were here to beat the shit out of me. Life is full of surprises.”

“Yeah, it’s true.” He offered his hand.

“Lots of questions,” I said.

“They’ll wait till after rehearsal. By the way, I think Secunda is hysterical. Saw the show three times and paid every time.”

“Let’s meet at the Full Sail at eleven tonight and see if the new beginning is real.”

“Guarantee it is. I’ll be early. Thanks.”

“You know the Bible teaches grace. Let’s hope you’re right.”

Gary considered this for a second. “I dated a girl named Grace once. Good for the Bible.”

After he left I stood up, rearranged my damaged testicles, and rethought the events of the morning. I took a deep breath and walked into the theater for my rehearsal. I was ten minutes early. What to do with the extra time?

My dad always told me that it is the unexpected in a deal that rattles the cage, so here I was with everything I needed to deliver the show except a lack of distraction. What was my choice? Blow up like
Apollo 1
or stand true to my goals?

One day at time. As of this morning, it was the best I had to offer.

S
ylvia, a distant, much older, cousin of mine worked for the RAF during the London Blitz. She looked at radar screens all day on the lookout for the German Luftwaffe. Every day, ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day. Then she would go home. Every night the city was bombed. Yet people went out to buy food, take an evening walk, or and even see a movie or a show at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

One day a high-ranking RAF officer offered Sylvia two tickets to see John Gielgud play Hamlet at an evening show of the RCS. Thrilled, she got to the theater early to soak up the experience. John Gielgud! She and her friend took their seats, fourth row center. Just then the stage manager stepped in front of the curtain and made an important announcement.

“Mr. Gielgud will not be performing the role of Hamlet this evening.” The audience murmured their dismay. “The role of Hamlet will be performed by Mr. Gielgud’s understudy, Mr. Laurence Olivier.”

Okay
, they all thought,
we’re here, we’ve dodged the bombs and the bullets. Let’s see if this Larry bloke is any good
. I guess he was, since he would later work often.

Just before the end of the first act, sirens went off; the city was under attack. The stage manager announced that the performance would recommence once the “lights out” was lifted. He hoped everyone was enjoying the show. The bombing ceased, and about fifteen minutes later the performance was completed. Mr. Olivier took the star bow as Hamlet, the first of many times he would play the role.

The next day, my cousin went back to watching radar screens and looking for Germans. Life goes on. It simply has to, otherwise what would we all do to fill our days? Now, I’m not suggesting that the events and distractions of earlier this morning were tantamount to the London Blitz. Of course not. Not even for a moment.

Yet what I was thinking as my rehearsal began and everyone was focused, all in good humor and actually working at a heightened level, was that life does go on, and as long as it does, we should make the most of it. In London, they did this as they tiptoed through the bombings. Here today at PBT, six o’clock would arrive and Colon might reappear. At eleven, I’d meet Gary Golden, my new best friend. Until then I’d work, and on my breaks I would check the radar to see if anyone else was trying to blow up the building.

I
n addition to the minutiae that goes into a rehearsal, today we had two major things to accomplish. One was a “star” issue about Katherine Fitzgerald and her position in the lead role. She was either going to meet the challenge or fall short. It was not a question of ability but psyche, which is always a deep-rooted conundrum. The other was fun, but could lead to tedium if we were not on top of our game. It would require focus and creativity from everyone; we were going to run the scene that ended the first act as many as twenty times so we could set up the first act finale perfectly. With each run, the artists had to bring something new to the scene. If they did, it would be time well spent. If not, then both the scene and rehearsal would be deadly. We chose to work on the end of act 1 first.

Funny Girl
is the musical biography of the great Ziegfeld star Fanny Brice. It was a huge hit on Broadway and made Barbara Streisand an international sensation. She won both the Tony and the Oscar for her performance in the lead role. Like all classic musicals, it has some brilliant moments and a few clinkers that I am sure the original creators wish they had the liberty to fix before opening night. Act 1 ends with one of the great musical numbers in Broadway history, “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” The setup is simple, the execution difficult.

Producer Flo Ziegfeld forbids his star to go and meet the man she loves. She defies him, intent on leaving the show. She books a train ticket to be with her lover. Ziegfeld sets her straight, saying if she blows off her responsibilities, she is through. He throws down the gauntlet and exits the train station, leaving her to make a life choice: the man or the career. When Ziegfeld exits he is followed by his minions, which include press, staff, other actors, and Fanny’s best friend, who in our show was played by Ronny Feston.

Moving fourteen people around a stage is not an easy task. Subtlety and nuance are essential. The timing has to work, the visual has to be arresting, and most important each of the fourteen actors has to play something unique to him or her. Each has to have a point of view and personal reaction to the situation. Everything must appear to be happening for the first time.

The scene takes place in the early 1920s at a New York railroad station. The performers are dressed in the more formal clothes of the period. The setting is adorned with all the accouterments of travel that a major star like Fanny Brice would enjoy. Fanny’s dilemma and her conflict with Ziegfeld are the heart of the scene, but without the supporting cast the scene will play unbalanced and fall flat.

First I blocked the scene that came before the big confrontation, then the exit. I placed the supporting players to draw the audience’s eye to center stage, where the big showdown would occur. It was essential for the characters to be aware that a confrontation was brewing, amping up the energy so when Brice/Kat makes her entrance, the scene is just short of breathless. The stars enter in full conflagration and all eyes are on them.

“Flo, I’ll be gone a week. Your follies will survive,” she says.

“You are the star of my follies and with that you have a responsibility . . .”

“What about my responsibility to me!”

I stopped the rehearsal.

“Kat, what’s left?” I asked “You still have the whole scene to play, and you’re screaming at him like a crazy bitch. Be vulnerable. Coax him. Seduce him. Let him know you’ll die if you lose this man. Then, when he says no again, get angry and use the anger to infuse the song.”

She ran it again and it was better. Then again and better still.

Secunda, who was playing Ziegfeld, had it right from the start. He was royalty and he was powerful, and he didn’t give a damn about her or her man or her love. He cared about one thing, selling tickets, and to do that he needed his star to be on stage and not chasing a dream of puppy love.

He listens to her plea, and for an instant there is a glimmer of hope in the audience’s heart that he will acquiesce. Then he says, “Damn it Fanny! If you get on that train you’ll never work again.”

I asked Secunda to pause to show his power. I suggested he lower his voice to practically a whisper and show his strength through an innate knowledge that no one ever says no to Flo Ziegfeld.

He took a moment to allow the note to register. Then, “Damn it Fanny! If you get on that train you’ll never work again!” he shouted. He held one, two, three, almost four beats and added in a heated whisper, “Never is a long time, young lady, and I mean what I say.”

He exits and everyone follows, leaving Brice alone on stage.

We ran the exit a couple of times and it looked okay. Yet it was void of any color; it was all sort of gray and nondescript. We talked it over. We asked each actor how his or her character felt. Did they side with Ziegfeld or Brice? Did they resent the intrusion into their life? Did they wish they were her or did they wish they were Ziegfeld? Did they have a boyfriend or girlfriend waiting in the next city? Did they fear that this conflict might affect their jobs? And so forth. Make a choice, make it your own, make the scene about many people, make it about every individual on the stage, not just the two leads.

The talk was fun. The scene was energized and each time we ran it, it had more color, more excitement. It has been said that the only people in the theater who don’t know what happens in a show are the characters, and that started to ring true in our rehearsal. We ran it over and over. Each time it was better. I was ready to let it be, revisit the scene another time.

I called ten and said we would start with the opening after the break. Ronny Feston raised his hand. After yesterday’s histrionics, I wondered what was in store. “What’s up, Ronny?” I asked.

“Would everyone mind if we ran this just a couple more times? I’m feeling almost comfortable and if I have another couple of shots I can set it. Everyone?”

It was silly, but I felt so proud of him. I had been hard, perhaps even abusive, yesterday, and yet here was the kid that had blown us away at auditions. I walked from the house to the stage and put my arms around him, patting his little mop-top head.

“You rock, Ronny Feston.” I said. Then turned to the cast and added, “Let’s run it again for Mr. Feston and then we’ll take ten.”

ASK started to clap, slowly at first, then Julie then Cindy then Rush then Trudy. And now the applause came from everyone with whooping and cheering and clapping as if Feston had just sold out the house. It was wonderful to be in the building for those few minutes. We rehearsed the scene three more times and Feston was better with each go round.

During the ten, Mary Holly, our ingenue lead and costume designer, approached me along with JB, Jojo, Duncan, Secunda, Ellie and the good Doctor. She looked both troubled and a bit fearful.

“Sam, we can’t build the clothes for ‘His Love Makes Me Beautiful.’ We don’t have time and we don’t have the money. Even Josh said we don’t have the money.”

I turned to Secunda and asked, “Are you not feeling well?” Then I looked back at Mary. “This is the big production number in act 1. How can we do it without production value?”

“I have a thought,” said Jojo. We looked at her as if she were E. F. Hutton.

“I think we should do the number in rehearsal clothes. The girls can wear leotards, which are sexy, and the guys can wear simple clothes that will add color. It will also save us tech time. Anyway, the most important bit in the song is the reveal that she’s pregnant, and that stays.”