Well, that was interesting.
So “The Speakeasy” opened tonight, or
did it? It’s either our fourth or fifth or sixth week of performances (I’ve
obviously lost track), but tonight was the first press night (apparently, all
the reviewers couldn’t come tonight, so there’ll be more, even if they don’t
have a dedicated night), so, as I said on Facebook, we’re open – I guess.
As I’ve said ad nauseum, this show is a unique one. But tonight’s show stood out
even in that context. It started early. I got there at 6:00, as usual, but the
energy felt different from any other night; it was not business as usual. I assume
it was because we all knew we’d have reviewers in the house, making it feel
like everyone was on edge. I always find that interesting. While we never want
to give a sub-standard performance, everyone seems to want to turn it up a
notch to impress the reviewers. (I find this rarely works for me, by the way;
things feel forced and squeezed. Nothing flows easily or naturally.)
Now, in spite of my remarks of yesterday
about not being able to gauge a performance I’m directing, I think I have a
pretty good handle on whether or not the acting I’m doing is any good. There
have been some shows – and some reasonably recent shows, unfortunately – where I’ve
felt I’ve just been going through the motions. I could all but feel the lines
coming stiffly out of my mouth; that I was just repeating words from a page
(even more than usual). There was no thought process other than “Is that my
next line?” And, for the most part, I’m happy with the work I do, but I feel
like I’ve been doing this long enough to know if I’m getting across what I want
to (whether what I’m trying to accomplish is any good is an individual
decision).
But, a lot of actors tighten up a little
when they know a critic is in the house or a review has come out. There are a
lot of companies where even the discussion of reviews is verboten. While I don’t
subscribe to this prohibition myself, I honor the tradition for the sake of
others. (Much as I do for the whole “Macbeth”/”Scottish play” thing. I don’t
think there’s a curse on the play. It’s a play with a lot of battle scenes
taking place on dimly-lit stages; accidents shouldn’t be surprising. But if
someone is superstitious about mentioning the name of the play, I’ll go along with
them. Why rock the boat?) Personally, I enjoy reading reviews, even bad ones.
It’s always interesting to see if the reviewer got it or thought we missed the
mark – and why. And I’m not saying they’re wrong and I’m right – or vice versa.
It’s always just one person’s opinion; it’s just that this particular person
has a more public forum than most. My concern used to be “Will it sell tickets,”
but I realized tonight that it’s actually just the opposite: “Will this hurt
ticket sales?”
I understand the importance people place
on reviews, though. A good review can get an actor noticed and lead to possibly
bigger and better opportunities and there’s a natural tendency to want to be in
a well-reviewed show. It just feels like more fun. And audiences who have read
the reviews are primed to enjoy it. (That said, I’ve seen plenty of well-reviewed
shows at which I’ve had terrible times.) But there was an itchy quality to the
cast before the show tonight. Everyone seemed just a little on edge and everyone went around wishing everyone else a
good show, which hasn’t happened until tonight. (People have done the “break a
leg” thing, but not so many people to so many other people.) It’s like everyone
wanted to make sure they’d personally ensured everyone else’s success.
It didn’t help things, though, that we
got a couple of a things thrown at us that we’d never experienced before. It’s
sort of an unwritten rule – and one I certainly try to adhere to – that you
never give a cast something to do in performance that they’ve never done without
rehearsal or preparation. This can include new props, new costumes, new cues,
or new staging. You never know how something’s going to work and trying it for
the first time just might throw off the performance. But we got two new things
tonight. (I won’t detail them here; not only do I not want to give anything
away, but they may well change again.) The changes were abrupt, though, and not
in keeping with what we’d been doing up until tonight, so we were all disrupted
in various degrees. I was mostly okay, even if my mood was a little disturbed;
I didn’t think the changes were as effective as the old stuff, but it’s not my
call. I’m happy to go along with them; it’s just they were so unexpected
tonight. (They were a popular topic of conversation among the cast at the
after-party. No one seemed to like them, but we shall see …)
One of the peculiarities of this show is
that, for various reasons, cast members check the audience in. Normally, if
critics are in the house, we suspect it, but don’t actually know it – and even if we do, we don’t know where they’re sitting.
They get good seats, but we can’t see them. With this show, though, not only
did some of the cast know exactly who
was there, but, since they had checked them in and they’re right on top of us during
the performance, there was little doubt who the critics were, where they were,
and who and what they were watching (and even how they were reacting). Of
course, if nothing else, seeing all those people taking notes in their
notebooks would have been a giveaway even if we hadn’t checked them in.
Overall, it was as typical a performance
as this show gets. In the post-mortems, some of us felt like we’d had a good
show, some of us felt they were just okay, and others thought they’d had an
off-night. In my experience, it’s rare when everyone in the cast – and especially
in a cast this big – feels like they all had a good – or a bad – night. The
range of reactions varies from performance to performance.
The upshot is that, whether we sparkled
or sucked tonight, we’ll be back twice more this week, and, no matter what we
did tonight, both performances will differ from that one. That’s the beauty and
the frustration of live performance; that you never know just what happened. I’m
reminded of the famous story about Laurence Olivier’s “Othello.” Olivier had
worked for a year on lowering his voice an octave or so to portray the Moor,
and I think the results are quite successful. (I think the movie version of the
production is the most consistently entertaining of his filmed Shakespeares.)
But the story goes that, one night, he was just on fire. He’d probably never
ever been better in his entire career, to the point where most of the cast spent
the night watching him from the wings. After the show, Maggie Smith (who was
playing Desdemona) went to his dressing room to congratulate him. She knocked
on the door, went in, and found Olivier in tears. She said, “Larry, what’s the
matter? You were brilliant tonight.” He replied, weeping, “I know. But I don’t
know how I did it.”
Whether we shine or stink, we generally
don’t know how we did it – unless something goes really wrong. Then we
know. All we do know is that, come curtain time, we have to do it all over again
from scratch and hope for the best.
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