Jack in the box, p.5
Jack in the Box, page 5
Although I am relieved that he is willing to play as fast and loose with his own work as I have been doing, I remind him that this dippy court scene is the only complication left before we run out of story into the finale, and, finally left alone by my collaborator completely silent, I stagger toward concocting a finish on my own.
Finally, the day of reckoning arrives. Mr. Abbott and Joy are in their summer residence, a lovely cottage up in the Berkshires, and we three—Mitchell Maxwell, Dan Markley, and I—are summoned for a final assessment. Like dutiful schoolboys, our faces bright and scrubbed, we show up to this really beautiful cottage, which has been Mr. Abbott’s private escape for probably half a century, to be greeted by the indefatigable Joy and Himself, screwed into his wheelchair and, as always, looking mean as a snake. We group ourselves around the dining room table, while outside, the impossible background of some of the most beguiling scenery on the Eastern Seaboard mocks our grim encounter. It’s just past ten in the morning when we begin, and we do not finish until about four in the afternoon. Every single word, every scene, every phrase is scoured, sanded, argued, and debated by this relic of a man at the age of 105. Across the table from me, those brilliant, dazzling blue eyes in a basically dead face burn into mine, ferocious and constant. Not a moment is spared, not a single word is allowed to go by without a lash back by the original author. “Why not? What’s that? How can you do that?” Over and over and over for nearly five hours without even a bathroom break. I defend, I feint, I protest, and finally, when we are toe-to-toe over the problem of Applegate and not young Joe singing “Two Lost Souls,” I am drained of both reason and patience, and I say as forcefully as anything I’ve yet exhibited, “I can’t! I just can’t do that,” meaning returning to his original solution of Lola and young Joe. “I just don’t believe it!”
Mr. Abbott’s hands go up past his ears, and, lowering them, he manages to push the wheelchair back from the table in disgust. “Well, that’s that!” he says with a kind of finality that needs no further interpretation. Silence. No one moves. We’re dead. He won’t allow it, clearly, and we have labored all this time in vain. I’ve gone too far. Even Joy seems to sense it. Gently, feebly, she offers, “Well, George, maybe there’s a way…,” to which he answers with a fervor that is now unmistakable, “No! That’s it! If he doesn’t believe it, he can’t make it work!”
What? What have I just heard? He goes on, remarkably. “If you don’t believe in the material, you can’t direct it. That’s all there is to say.” There speaks a director, not a writer. The writer in him figures that he can always come up with some other solution, supposedly, but the director is stuck with only the material at hand, and must absolutely believe in it, or he cannot expect his actors to believe as well. We have marched to the very edge of the abyss in lockstep, and before plunging over the edge, George Abbott has defended his own cardinal rule, even though it may erase most of his own writing. He effectively throws in the towel.
I’m exhausted, stunned, disbelieving what I’ve just heard, and more than that, I find myself powerfully and emotionally moved at the integrity, the energy, the sheer force of this man, very nearly twice my age, and still able to battle me to a virtual standstill. As we prepare to leave, I offer a kind of bizarre compromise. “Mr. Abbott,” I say, “what about this? We know your version works. It always has. We have an opportunity to do this version in San Diego for you to see, and if we do it and you come out to see it and object, we’ll just scrap it and do the original.” I see Mitchell Maxwell going dead white behind the wheelchair, but he says nothing. Neither does Mr. Abbott. Does he believe me? Do I believe me? Is such a thing even possible? But he graciously seems to accept it for what it is—a gesture, perhaps—and we take our leave.
Months later, Damn Yankees opened at the Old Globe theatre starring Victor Garber and Bebe Neuwirth, with funny, fresh choreography by Rob Marshall, and a book intrinsically rewritten by me, but for the half dozen silver-plated jokes Mr. Abbott had originally crafted for the original Applegate, Ray Walston, and which were still really funny—“Who are you?” “Not a soul!”—and, as opposed to what some witnesses insist, Mr. Abbott did not stride down the aisle under his own steam, but was carried, like a soft bag of autumn leaves, between my business partner, Tom Hall, and our production supervisor, Ken Denison, to be deposited in an aisle seat, but history is right to report that there was, indeed, an immediate standing ovation by the entire audience. They knew a legend when they saw one.
And the next morning, again the dutiful schoolboy, I presented myself at the hotel where he and Joy were staying, as she wheeled him into a conference room where I sat with pen and paper to “take my notes.” Again he glared across the massive table at me—an arena far too big, too wide, for the sour little packet of what was intended to transpire between us. I lifted my pen and opened the pad, but Mr. Abbott waved a thin hand my way. “What does it matter what I say?” he said. “They stood, didn’t they?”
And that was that. There spoke a practical theatre professional, the man who’d nearly invented the profession itself. He was anything but sentimental. His Paper Mill Playhouse version hadn’t fired the way he believed it would. This one had. Big-time. So this was the version he wanted. After all, he was still making a living.
My name was never to appear alongside his with any sense of authorship. The producers paid me fairly decently for my direction, trying to compensate for what I had contributed, which would now play for well over two years, but a director’s royalties don’t last remotely as long as an author’s. Mr. Abbott knew that, and there was no way, after all I had done to his original script, that he would invite me onto that page. The consummate pro, he simply swept all the chips off the table. “Neuf à la banque!” His show. His rewards.
And what of the illusion of anger? Was he, indeed, angry at me, as I have presumed all these years later? I don’t think so. Oh, he was angry, all right, but not ultimately at me. On some level he had made his peace with me, and if he didn’t approve, there was a grudging respect after all. “The kid smiles and agrees with you, and then he goes on and does what he goddamn likes!” But those eyes … the power of a lifetime winnowed down to two blazing blue orbs in a surround of failing flesh. He could never forgive the fact that he was no longer the one doing the work, giving the orders, making it “happen.” It probably didn’t matter who else did it, so long as it worked. But the final unforgivable insult was that it was no longer him. And that was all that was left smoking in that collapsed face.
Facing my bed in my new Connecticut home, ironically enough, is a bust of George Abbott, an award that bears his name given by our union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, for distinguished work over a career, and which was presented to me a number of years ago. He watches me, I suppose, as I sleep. And those lines—neither his nor mine—float in the room between us: “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
What a man.
4
“What’s That For?”
Some tricks of the trade you may want tucked up your sleeve
Coast of Utopia rehearsal, 2005
I am in no way mechanically oriented. Whatever it is, I can master turning it on and turning it off, and that’s about as far as I go. It would never occur to me to raise the hood of an automobile, should I ever find myself by the side of a road in a car that has quit on me. When I was in college, I did once know how to change a tire. I’m not sure that was not something imprinted on all children born in Michigan in the early part of the last century, but don’t ask me to do it anymore. That’s what cell phones and AAA memberships are for.
If mechanics are comfortable and familiar with the mass of incongruity that compels a car to move, you would suppose that practitioners of the theatrical arts would similarly want to be as familiar with all possible aspects of production. But here I blush to have to admit there are directors of both sexes currently working in the theatre whose knowledge of the component parts of play production is pretty much confined to “I think this is pretty good,” or “I’m going to direct it.” And damned if they don’t. And more than a few have been given prizes for their efforts, I can promise you. Although I tend to cringe in the dark in my theatre seat witnessing their efforts, I don’t wish them ill, and, hell, they could easily be far ahead of me at this game, for all I know. But when I assert that the act of directing is something not readily absorbed from books, or learned in a classroom, that’s not to suggest there are not aspects to be understood, respected, and, most important of all, taken advantage of. It might be helpful to sift through a few of them, just to gauge the distance between what we might agree are bona fide directors and those best considered pretenders to the throne. I confess these may qualify as prejudices, as opposed to requirements, but in my experience, some of these aspects have at least proved to be helpful.
MAPS, HANDY TOOLS, AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS
CASTING DIRECTORS: No one today can assume to be au courant with the graduating classes of the rafts of establishments annually granting legitimacy to hordes of young men and women seeking fame and fortune in the theatre. So, like the rise of the director in the previous century, we now welcome, veritably blooming happily in this century, both the casting director and the dramaturge. The first is meant to show you the range of available acting candidates, assuming you are too busy to research this by yourself, and the latter is there to help edit the text, explain the meanings, and basically do the kind of research that directors were once expected to do themselves before … what?… we became too busy looking at those too many actors, I suppose. You have to learn to use both properly: The casting director and/or their staff, depending on how many productions they are effectively juggling, should at best have a similar personal relationship to you and your work as, say, your designers have. The same feelings of comfort, honesty, and candor apply; these people are tools and not miracle workers, nor Solomons, and as such, you are the one finally responsible, but at the same time, you must watch for a tendency some may have to “push” their oft-unemployable favorites onto you. If you’ve read someone for a role, say, twice, and nothing interesting has leapt between the two of you, you know your answer; the casting director doesn’t. I would put both of these helpers more in a category of “references,” as opposed to skill sets, if you see the difference. “Caveat emptor” is also a safe way to approach it.
FIRST DAY OF REHEARSAL: If you can manage it, if you are so inclined, this can be the first serious brush in your paint box … the first hint of color slashed across a blank white canvas. (Or it isn’t.) It’s your first chance to imprint upon your company something of a secret, a brand, a glimpse of why in all probability you couldn’t wait to get to rehearsal on this particular morning. (Or it isn’t.) It comes down largely to a matter of temperament, I suppose. I was trained, probably “indoctrinated” is a better word, by men and women for whom that first impression was an opportunity not to be taken lightly; they wanted, they were after, something of an event. John Houseman, Eva Le Gallienne, Ellis Rabb, Bill Ball … they none of them just walked into a first rehearsal … they arrived! God, it was fun. This first moment was utterly theirs to mark the difference between yesterday and this auspicious mint-fresh today, and, by God, you woke up vulnerable to whatever they might have planned for you. Even something as individual as what they chose to wear—Le G with a navy silk jabot at her throat … Ellis in calf-high boots, a billowing silk shirt open at the neck with a gorgeous Pendleton shirt over it, the sleeves rolled up to show he was all business … Houseman in a coat and ridiculously tiny black string tie, dressed as if for a funeral … The sense of drama started there! They had previously arranged for a parade of introductions, usually announced by the production stage manager, beginning with the producers, then the designers, then the company—self-consciously stuttering their names and what they were playing, if appropriate—and then the staff, until the moment they themselves chose to step out from the pack and … dammit!… the actual magic began! I was around enough accomplished demonstrators in the early years to mark the differences: Stephen Porter, Ellis’s preferred backup director, dependable, immensely intelligent, and prepared (if no competition!), whose standard note, once the work had been run uninterruptedly before him, was “I think, with profit, we might do all that again,” and who never did create much of a stir with his first day. Alan Schneider, at the top of his Albee / Virginia Woolf fame, who directed an Archibald MacLeish one-act for APA-Phoenix called Herakles, seemed distracted, slightly irritated with everything, as if he knew tons and wasn’t about to part lavishly with any of it. But when that metaphoric gun was cocked, somehow, and placed in the proper hands, an entire production seemed airborne at the outset, and in my imagination I sensed something important had been gained—a tone, information, shared enthusiasm? If you are into it, if you know how to pitch the opening ball in such a way as to compel the day into narrowing its focus to the work ahead, it’s not just another day’s workload … you may, indeed, be able to imprint your singular significance on it all.
(Or … you won’t.)
THE TABLE READ: I’m mad for table work, to be honest, and a great believer in just how much one can accomplish before getting up on one’s feet. I’m jealous of those days; I hoard them, and usually suggest privately to the production stage manager that I may want one or two more, depending on how much has been absorbed. If it’s verse, if it’s Shakespeare, you find yourself back in school, trying to forge from a disparate group of actors, all dissimilarly trained, a common language, a basis for making a company in which the subtle climate of communication is designed to bring something remarkably new to light. Should it prove a light entertainment like Bell, Book and Candle, say, or Junior Miss, you may feel foolish pretending to bring days of Chekhovian richness to the material, but it’s a very rare script that cannot benefit from further digging, more careful listening. It’s basically why we revive older pieces at all … There’s got to be something more to contribute. The table work seems to me to represent the welcome application of universal brakes, a compulsion to slow everything down, take time, look deeper, examine more than one familiar approach, avoid, at all costs, that dreaded word—“results.” Every actor has preconceived notions of what they intend to do with what is on the page, and it is the director’s responsibility to widen those choices, listen for something else to reveal itself, something only a contemporary awareness might suggest. The closer you can bring the actors into the playwright’s mind, using the words as he fully intended, the clearer and surer the trajectory will be to a common experience unique to this particular group of talents. Often both directors and actors are too eager to get up on their feet and try out their instincts immediately, and sometimes it works well. But I have found with enough really considered and efficient table work, I’m not having to invent things for the actors to do; when I hold all that back and leave them steeping, basically, in the relative two dimensions of sitting at a table and studying the text over and over, the actors are yoked to the playwright’s words, with nothing to distract or interfere, and whenever that happens, by the time each actor finally does get up to begin to explore the third dimension of making something manifest, he or she knows intuitively where to move, how to approach the material, and you as director are in the much more interesting position of not only urging the creativity, but editing, rather than doing all the work yourself. Early in my career, as I’ve indicated, I found myself using trinkets to represent my actors on a ground plan, preparing the moves. “My way!” Now, of course, I prefer to almost sit back and watch just what the table work has brought to light to fill in the blanks. When both the actor and the director are fully participating, contributing equally, that seems to me to be the ideal creative bliss.
STAGE DIRECTIONS: This can be a tricky and often confusing element of a script: “Here be dragons,” said the old maps, but they’re lurking here, too. It seriously depends. Take a playwright like Shaw: he wrote pages, volumes of instructions about the rooms, the wall coverings, the portraits, the furniture, the fabrics … It’s exhausting. Your set designer will be glued to these instructions, and that’s appropriate, because in addition to being an intellectual bully, Shaw was extremely knowledgeable about all elements of stagecraft. Early in my apprenticeship, the APA Repertory was doing a production of Man and Superman with the oft-excised “Don Juan in Hell” scene included, so with extensive cuts, the performance was running slightly over three hours in length. It was directed by Stephen Porter, a highly intellectual director with enormous respect for the words and the intentions of the playwright. I was not required as a production assistant for these rehearsals, but happened to be close by when, early in the process, the company broke for lunch. Rosemary Harris, playing Ann Whitefield, was in something of a swivet, complaining that for her first encounter with Tanner, played by Ellis Rabb, she couldn’t figure out how to land a laugh she knew full well must be hers in the script. Her guardian, the stuffy Miss Ramsden, has just exited the stage with her mother, and she finds herself for the first time alone with Tanner. Shaw indicates that she removes her hat and says simply, “Jack, are you glad that you are my guardian?” And Rosemary knew she should be able to get a laugh just on the word “Jack!” But the furniture was placed in such a way that she was left with her back to the audience, and that’s a severe handicap for anyone attempting to land a laugh. Although both Ellis and Stephen Porter were keen to dismiss this objection as the typically worrisome fidgetings of the leading lady, Rosemary wouldn’t let it go, and, reaching for the printed text and scanning for Shaw’s directions, she realized that Porter and his designer had placed the furniture and exits directly opposite to what the author had indicated, and when, eventually, they all went back to Shaw’s specific ground plan, she found herself up left, nearest the exit where the elders had left, and turning downstage, in full view of the audience, she didn’t even have to move a muscle to be able to shift the entire tone of the scene. Huge laugh! You don’t mess around with Shaw, if you are paying attention.
