GUYS AND DOLLS

Date of Run: September 14-October 14, 2018

ROLE: Scranton Slim

Photos by Eric Chazankin

After I was cast in Comedy of Errors, I felt that would be the last show I'd do in 2018, for no other reason than I didn't think any other show was going to audition. But I was wrong; the 2018-2019 season opener at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, Guys and Dolls, auditioned at the end of June. The show was directed by James Newman, with music direction by Ginger Beavers and choreography by Joseph Favalora.

For my song decided to do the song "Smile" from the musical of the same name. I probably should've done a song from the Golden Age of musical theatre because I heard the two people before me do that. My preferred song from that era was "On the Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady, but the problem was that I'd sung it in so many auditions already that I was bored with it.

My audition did not go as expected because the lighting in the theatre limited the area we could use onstage. A show was still running in the space at the time and they opted not to mess with the light board. I was asked to stand further upstage and as a result, I was too focused on not moving out of the light. After I finished, the director double checked with me about being in Errors and then said they would be making decisions very quickly. I was worried about Errors because I thought the conflicts would be a problem and damage my chances of being cast, though I wasn't the only one from that show auditioning.

The dance auditions were the following night. I was doing fine with it, for the most part, until we turned around to face away from the mirrors and wall amnesia hit me. Not good. After the guys were done the director called over three guys and I overheard him saying they would get sides for the next night, which was principal callbacks. I knew then and there I wouldn't get a lead or a main supporting role. I just had to hope I'd be lucky to get in.


I waited two weeks to hear back about anything. At first I assumed I wasn't cast since I'd assumed that when James said they'd make decisions quickly they'd do it within one week at most. But then I received an email offering me a role. I told them I would accept if my boss could give me the time off work. In the past I hadn't had that trouble, but this time was different. This show was immediately after Comedy of Errors and I had always given a month or so before doing another one. Also in the four years I had worked at this location I had never done a show that had two performances on a Saturday and in this case, there were multiple weekends that did that.

The offer came at the worst possible time because my boss was on vacation at the time, and I had to wait three days until she returned before I could give a definite answer. But before that I saw that for the two weekends where there would be two shows on a Saturday, one person had requested both Saturday and Sunday off. Of all the weekends of the run it had to be those two. After seeing that I dreaded having to ask for it too and I heavily contemplated declining the role.

When my boss returned, I talked it over with her, and she was fine with it, as were the other workers. One person from a different department offered to cover me one weekend. I was relieved, but I had been so nervous leading up to that I felt a bit physically ill after it was over.

The rest of the cast included Ezra Hernandez, Ellie Paul, Ella Park, Ariel Zuckerman, Brett Mollard, Laura Davies, Kit Grimm, Randy Nazarian, Evan Held, Ben Donner, Carl Kraines, Levi Sterling, Austin Maisler, Pales Gensler, Jannay Avelar, Allyson Bray, Laura McGinnis, and Sofia Perez Kempton.

When the read through came it was a bit different than what I was used to. The playhouse was having some kind of gathering for the patrons and donors and allowed them to sit in on our read/sing through. James said it was a long tradition for that sort of thing, but in the 20+ productions I had done before I had never seen that. It was a good read through, even if I had no lines whatsoever. I may have been the only man who had no lines at all. I could only hope I might get some of the miscellaneous ones later.

Rehearsals started during tech week for Comedy of Errors. That got me a little worried because the other guys who could be there would get a head start and since I couldn't do weekend rehearsals I was going to be even more behind. When I finally got there, we had to do a quick lesson in what was already done of the Crapshooters dance before finishing it. It wasn't until the second night I was there that I felt more comfortable with it. Luckily, James decided that we should do this dance at least once every time we were together.



The Crapshooter's Dance

A couple weeks after rehearsals started and long after the Crapshooters dance had been done, we lost one guy. Evidently, he had started school and started feeling overwhelmed by everything; that was the story he gave us anyway. When he appeared at a rehearsal to hand in his script you could see the tears in his eyes, poor guy. But luckily, we found a replacement that very night in Evan Held.

The dance numbers were in the rehearsal room of the Playhouse. I had experienced this room shortly before with Comedy of Errors; no air conditioning and very hot. Unlike Errors, I had to dance and move a lot, so I was the one sweating a lot more this time around.

"The Oldest Established" was a song that was easy to stage. It wasn't a long song and it mainly involved walking to different spots. But the song I dreaded was "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat." It was a song that wasn't long, but there was a lot to it on paper.

As always, I had to lowest notes in the songs. The person I was with for most of that was Ariel, who was doing his first musical.  Since he was playing Nathan Detroit, he didn't have to do much singing anyway, but he did rely on me a little for help during the first singing rehearsals, standing next to me. He called me his secret weapon and said that as long as he had me, he was good. I'm not sure if I was really the one who was right for help because I never had enough proper singing training and I was anything but perfect. Also, my ears have a mind of their own; sometimes I sang the part of the person standing next to me, though it wasn't my part. Brett often gave him help as well. 

Unfortunately, I didn't do so well because Ginger recorded our parts with the recording of the original Broadway cast, which was bad for two reasons. First, it was tough at times to hear the piano over the recording and second, at a couple moments, she stumbled on the notes, and it didn't come off as clean as it should have been.

For what it was worth, Ariel was actually not bad for having only recently started singing. I recalled two similar people in past shows who had never done a musical, only one was not very good at all and the other, while showing some improvement, never quite got it right. Ariel on the other hand, in spite of his role not being one of the larger singing roles, seemed to have no trouble learning his music at all.

Ginger was a regular taskmaster in the groups with particular attention to "The Oldest Established." Once we started adding the choreography, we all started singing the same part. I, for one, was the only one in the section of men on the side of the stage singing my part and I couldn't hear myself sing at all. Especially not with Randy (Nicely Nicely) standing next to me singing his tenor part as loudly as he could. We began singing and running through that song before every show. The other song that was the most trouble was "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat." To that end we had to run the last minute or so of it each rehearsal night and then before each performance.

"The Oldest Established"

The rehearsal schedule, for me, was inconvenient. The first two weeks they rehearsed things that I wasn't in on days when I wasn't available and things I was in on days when I wasn't available. I missed a lot of things, but especially the musical numbers, which included two days of "Sit Down," both in music and choreography. Then later on I found out that during one weekend they not only did that, but they staged "Luck Be a Lady" and the dance that takes place in Havana, both of which I'd have to be in. Or so I thought.

Three weeks before we opened, I had a nervous breakdown because so much had been staged and I had missed all of it and I was worried I wouldn't be able to catch up. There was one day where it weighed so heavily on my mind that I was weepy for an entire day and unable to pull myself together, except when I was onstage during Comedy of Errors. But it was literally all I could think about. On that day, I began to seriously consider leaving the show for the reason that I'd never catch up.

But then relief came my way. On the first rehearsal after I watched the videos of these songs, I found I wasn't in Havana at all. Originally, I had been cast as "Havana Man 2," and I wondered whether they'd spot this and omit that from the programs (they did). I could breathe easily again with that weight off my shoulders. As for "Luck be a Lady" and "Sit Down," they were not too tough to learn. For "Luck be a Lady," it just depended on which side of the group I was placed and for "Sit Down" I was behind two rows of people, so I followed what they were doing, and Evan helped me with the rest.

Being absent so much I was overlooked for the small bit roles, like a waiter in Havana or a drunk that says a line "What vulgar jewelry" (That one ended up being cut). None of that surprised me because that's what happens when you aren't there: you don't get anything. Then about two weeks before we opened, I was asked to be a waiter in one scene, and I scored two lines. By that time, I thought that I wouldn't have any and be the only man in the show with no lines. It doesn't matter I suppose, since I got paid the same.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the rehearsals and the run, for everyone, was seeing Allyson's dog, Howie. She always brought him to rehearsals and performances along with his bed. It was impossible to resist petting him at least once each time.

Howie. Isn't he sweet?

I missed the daytime part of tech weekend, which included the sitzprobe, but when I got there on Saturday, I found out that there was a miscommunication with the orchestra and the entire schedule got thrown off by it. As a result, I didn't really miss much. As it was, when I got there, they were all but done and doing the costume parade. Lucky for me I was able to make it to that because by then I still hadn't done any fittings.

These were costumes that gave me a few problems. One of my pairs of suit pants was four inches too big and until they replaced it with another suit, I had to be pinned into the pants. Another pair of pants was very tight and, as I found out very quickly, I couldn't sit with the zipper up or I would've risked ripping them. Two days before opening they found a new suit for me to replace the one that was too big and this one fit perfectly.

It was awesome in the dressing room sitting near Ezra (Sky Masterson). He was as big a fan of musical theatre as I was. In the past I had known several people who were musical theatre actors, but that didn't necessarily mean they knew about the show's history or casts from Broadway. With Ezra I found someone who knew not only the show plots and characters, but also the casts from Broadway productions and song choices for different voices. I finally met my match in musical theatre knowledge. It was so much fun going back and forth on which shows should come to Sonoma County and the venue where they should be done, characters that he and I would fight to play and which shows were better than others. More often than not I found myself disagreeing with him. He thought Passion, Merrily We Roll Along and Road Show were Stephen Sondheim's best shows and I disagreed; he felt some theatre company in Sonoma County could and should do The King and I or Ragtime in the area and I argued that while it would be good if they were staged, it couldn't be done (The Sonoma County theatre community is the same as Sonoma County- predominantly white); he felt certain I could sing certain high notes and I- well, you get where this is going. Whether I agreed or disagreed with him, our discussions were what I most looked forward to in the dressing room.

One of his moments in the show was where he had a fermata during "I'll Know." For those of you who don't read music that means you hold a note longer than the note's written duration. He always held that particular note for longer than seemed necessary and for the first couple of weeks I thought he was hamming it up. But then I remembered at one point in the staging of that song, Ellie (Sarah Brown) sits on the end of a bench and he picks up the other end and turns it. It suddenly occurred to me that that's why he was holding it so long. My bad.



On the whole this was a good cast that was good to work with, with one minor exception: Randy. He was an equity actor that we didn't have for a couple weeks since the Actor's Equity Association held up his contract for whatever reason. No fault of his own of course, but, looking back, we may have been better off without him. To be blunt, he was difficult and did things his own way. I got the feeling from watching in rehearsals that he probably wanted to be in charge, always trying to tell the actors how to do a scene, under the guise of suggestions, even at times making offhanded insults. As the run went on, he got, if anything, worse.

First, one night he missed his cue in the scene before Havana and an entire section got skipped over because we didn't know what to do; Levi had to resort to come in for his entrance to keep the show going. In subsequent performances Randy would go around stealing and/or ruining other people's bits, jokes, and lines whenever he could; for example, Evan held made physical choices as his character, Rusty Charlie, and after a time, Randy started copying him. To make matters more frustrating at times, he changed what he was doing most if not every night, at one point kicking Ben onstage. In the scene where we entered before "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" he entered at bent over into the orchestra pit, completely breaking the fourth wall. Ginger instructed none of the musicians to acknowledge him, which he noticed. To that effect, he'd come stomping onstage toward them and when they didn't look at him, he stomped away. Then at the end of that song he waved his arms as if trying to stop the song himself, not that anyone was paying attention to him.

Not only that, but he disrespected Ginger in a long text message to someone else. I don't know the contents of it, but I know he referred to her as "That woman."  From what I found out after the show closed, there was some surprise that he was hired at all because he had a reputation of being difficult to work with from other companies. His behavior was unprofessional and disgusting; none of us were sad to see the back of him at show closing and I heard that he was blacklisted after the run ended. Thankfully, since he was Equity and had his own dressing area, we didn't have to deal with him in our dressing room or see him anywhere, except during performances.

I had not performed on this particular stage since appearing in Victor/Victoria four years earlier. I had been trying to get back, but with no success. Not only that, but I had not done a musical in nearly two years since Sweeney Todd. That first night when we sang our final notes in the show, the feeling I had when I looked out into the packed, standing audience was glorious. Just imagine the most wonderful feeling you've ever felt. And then multiply it by ten.

On the second night I decided to have a race of sorts. On Youtube there's an animated video of the Titanic sinking in real time, which is to say, two hours and forty minutes. I remembered reading somewhere that the ship sank in the length of a theatre performance so I decided to see which would end first: us or the video. I paused the video at the moment the ship hits the iceberg and as soon as I heard the opening music start playing, I pressed play. Pretty soon, all the guys wanted to see how we were doing in comparison, looking over and checking on the progress as the show went on. In the end we beat the video by six minutes. Not too bad.

This is the link to that video. When the opening music started, I played it starting at 1:03 and left the video running until it was over, two hours and forty minutes later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9w5bgtJC8&t=8465s



Every show of the first two weekends was sold out or very close to it. It was wonderful to have a packed house every night.

The show was not without it's, for lack of a better word, interesting moments. For example, at one performance, someone farted (silently) onstage at a fairly appropriate moment. In the sewer scene before "Luck be a Lady," Sky Masterson has a line "the air in the mission smells cleaner than the air down here" and at that exact moment I caught a whiff of a disgusting smell. I had to move a little bit upstage just to get away from it.

The third weekend had packed houses for each performance, but this weekend it was more apparent than the previous two weekends that there definitely were empty seats out there. Not many, but if you took a good look, you'd see them.



In the opening scene, as a "blind" man in Runyonland

The fourth weekend was the weekend of hiccups and the weekend when the show appeared to begin running out of steam; the empty seats in the audience were much more noticeable by then. The Thursday show had a fairly small audience with the center section full, but the sides and the upper section had many empty seats. And as a bonus the audience was very unresponsive. On Friday it was a bit fuller, but toward the end of the first act the curtain stopped working. It stopped opening at three feet in and couldn't be fixed until intermission, so the audience could see set pieces being moved on and off. On Saturday, the matinee house was about the same size as Thursday and the evening much fuller and both were very responsive. The Sunday show, of course, was full. At that performance the curtain got stuck again, but earlier this time, though it may have just been a fluke because it was working again much more quickly than the first time.

The Saturday evening show of that weekend was the most interesting of all. Before the show started, I pulled up videos on Youtube of theatre shows that were either terrible or where something went wrong. We all had a good laugh at them. The show then went on to have a few hiccups. At the final scene of the first act when the gamblers all run out of the mission, Evan ran out a bit too fast and crashed into Brett. Then after we all were off and Levi ran on, he slipped and fell down. But the biggest incident to happen was during the Crapshooter's Dance. A couple minutes into it, we all heard a crack-crack-crack-CRASH noise. An end piece of one of the walls just broke off on its own and fell to the stage. I'm not sure if it really threw anyone; for my part I took a quick look over at it and then went on as though nothing had happened while it was quickly and discreetly removed. Thankfully no one was hurt, but a few moments later that spot was where the choreography took me, so had it happened then, it could very well have hit me. A lot of people said it was my doing for tempting the theatre gods with those videos.

Running out of the mission at the end of Act 1

In spite of the show seemingly starting to run out of steam, it sold well enough to extend another weekend, though I wondered whether we really needed to do so. Four shows that weekend brought the grand total to twenty-one. For this weekend there was no Thursday show, which was a relief since it meant an extra night off. On the Friday show we had a fairly decent sized audience. The Saturday matinee was the smallest audience we ever had in the entire run, only about sixty people. I think that we could've done without that performance since it hardly sold at all. The evening show had a larger audience and was, arguably, our most responsive audience. The Sunday audience was the smallest Sunday, but they really enjoyed themselves and we ended the run on a strong note.

One of my favorite moments in the show was during Kit's song "More I Cannot Wish You." It was the scene right before the Crapshooter's Dance and during that time the curtain was closed. Sometime into the run I realized I could lay down on the dark stage alone and in peace for a couple minutes.

The audiences were more often responsive than not; a couple quiet ones to be sure, but they were usually responsive to certain things. Kit could always be counted on to get laughs with his act two line "If you don't pay off on that marker, I'll tell the whole town you're a dirty welcher." Never failed, not once.

Other than cards from various cast members, on closing night Laura McGinnis gave each of us something special. She made all of us, cast and crew, a little wooden doll of our characters. What was amazing about them was the attention to detail that she gave to each one. For instance, mine was my first costume, as the blind man, and she perfectly captured the tie I wore and in the little cup the doll held, there were little coins inside. 

I was a bit sad to end this show because it was a wonderful experience. It was the main thing that got me through a day of work and the highlight of my entire week. I didn't necessarily need to keep doing this particular show, but I wanted an experience just like this one again.