ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

Date of Run: September 13-29, 2019
ROLE: Mortimer Brewster

I almost lost my chance for this role because of a mistake made on my email address when they tried to contact me.

After the previous season with the Raven Players, I felt very strongly that I would get a role in something this season. After all, everyone who went to the general auditions seemed to get something the previous year. And this year there were two shows with roles I wanted desperately. One was this show; the other was Barefoot in the Park. After doing my audition they reiterated the process from last year, that they'd try to cast as much of the season as possible from the general auditions with possible callbacks later, and that I would know shortly.

Two weeks went by that stretched into three, then four and I heard nothing. I had hoped to hear something before my three week vacation to Europe, but still nothing. Then on the second day of my trip I only found out the shows were cast, only because I saw a friend's Facebook post announcing his role in this show. I asked him if they'd sent out an email with the lists of all the season's show casts and it turned out that I was on the list for callbacks, but I never showed up.

As luck would have it, the role I was called back for was not cast, but it was at the worst possible time for me to find out because I was at the beginning of my European vacation, and I wouldn't be back for nearly three weeks. All I could do then was hope that they would wait long enough and give me a chance. When I got back, I had to wait a little longer because the director went out of town for a week. Finally, I got to come in and read the role. Even if they hadn't cast me, I wouldn't have minded so much, since they did allow me my chance.

And I got the part! After ten years and twenty-five productions, I finally had a leading role!

As Mortimer Brewster

The rest of the cast included Rebecca Allington, Priscilla Locke, Michael Romero, Steve Cannon, Robert Bauer, Sophia Ferar, ERic Yanez, Paul McKinnon, Dale Harriman, Frank DeMartino, John Green, and Danny Bullington.



Cast Photo

The Brewster Brothers
(L to R: Steve Cannon, Michael Romero and Me)

Rehearsals for the show began in late July, occurring Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Since I was in many of the scenes in each of the three acts I was called each night. We did not have Priscilla for the first to weeks after the first read through and then no sooner did she return then Kerry, the stage manager was gone for a week. She had a major health problem which forced her to the hospital. Rebecca had the same problem as her about a week after Kerry returned, though she was not out long.

We had a small problem trying to find three older men for the show. Personally, I felt we could have double cast a couple roles, since each role we searched for was only around for one scene in one act and that was it (It also would've saved a little money). In the end they did find three men for the roles, but I had doubts abut one of them; he wasn't quite what I pictured for the role.

Two weeks before opening Kerry took over the directing duties for a week while Joe was gone on vacation. Kerry was a very direct person, very much like myself. On her first day, when we were going to work on a few scenes that needed attention, she flat out told me that my scenes with Sophia, who played my love interest, had to be more flirty and playful. She said I had to be more "like a horny high school boy."

This was the first time I had to kiss a woman, or anyone for that matter, on stage and as such, this was new territory for me. The honor (for lack of a better word) of my first stage kiss, fell to Sophia, who played my love interest, Elaine. Now, I had nothing against kissing, nor did I have anything against Sophia, but I was reluctant to do anything. In the era of the Me-Too movement, I felt I should be very cautious, lest she get the wrong idea. That night when we worked on one of our scenes, I told Sophia to let me know if I crossed any lines. However, Sophia claimed to have done more risqué things on stage, so she was a good sport about it. Nevertheless, my hands never went below her waist. 

While the first couple weeks felt like a normal rehearsal, two weeks before opening we were not making the progress I had hoped for, which was souring the experience for me. Two weeks before opening, some people were still not off book and not even attempting to muddle through it if they forgot a line. To make matters worse, Rebecca and Priscilla obsessed over their blocking on every page, whereas I did what felt natural to me. I relied more on my instinct onstage, getting out of someone's way if I needed to or trying to roll with the flow if someone was not where they were before. But if they so much as didn't budge an inch from where they stood or realized they had to be at another spot-on stage, they'd stop and hold up everything and fix it, only to forget it again later. Rebecca was far worse in my opinion because at one rehearsal when the stage was being set for another show we had to work with a cramped set, and she continued to obsess over blocking even though the easier thing to do would have been to just do what we could with the limitations. 

Every day I was at rehearsal was a struggle to keep my temper and how I ever got through it without shouting at someone amazes me. I was worried because quite a few people were not getting their lines down even up to a week before opening. But I did learn to think quickly during performances to cover someone if they dropped a line or said the wrong thing.

While Priscilla, Rebecca, Sophia and especially Michael R. had to go through costume changes, I was lucky enough to escape that. For my costume though they had to order a suit for me since literally nothing they had fit me and anything they could get from another company was not the color they wanted. When the suit arrived, I found the sleeves were only one inch too short, but it was hardly noticeable.

This was the first time I did promotional photos for a show I did. Since the suit they ordered for me didn't arrive until a couple days after the show I had to wear one that didn't quite fit, not that it mattered since I would only be sitting. I wasn't satisfied with my hair at the time, but it was too early to cut it. I did, however, cut my hair about a week before opening for the cast photos for the lobby, which meant my hair would look good for production photos and not get too long by closing weekend.

One of the promo photos

As I would learn later, my daily schedule would make doing this show very hard for me, especially once performances started. On Sundays I could sleep in, but my schedule for a day with an evening performance went like this. I woke up at 7:15, so that I could shave and do my hair, then I'd have breakfast and I'd be out the door at 8 and start work at 9. I'd work from 9-5:00 or 5:30 and then I'd have to drive fifty minutes to an hour to Healdsburg and have to get ready for the show, no time for dinner. The show would start at 8, be done at 10:15 or 10:20, then, if I was lucky, I'd leave the theatre at 10:30. It was a twenty minute drive back to my town where I'd grab dinner, which was never fast enough, and get home by 11:30. I'd eat, shower and I wouldn't be in bed until midnight and then I'd have to be up again at 7:15. 

I missed our only tech weekend day since I got hit with food poisoning. I woke up in the morning not feeling too well and when I got up that's when it happened. All of a sudden, I felt a horrible cramping sensation in my stomach, and I ran upstairs to the bathroom, and I was throwing up for some time. It completely wiped me out and I just didn't have the energy to go in. The following night I took it easy, only going at half the energy. It wasn't the first time I got sick during tech week, but that didn't make me feel any better.

Appropriately, we opened on Friday the 13th. For the first weekend we had at least fifty people on the first two nights. The second night had a more responsive audience since there was a theatre person in the audience who was a laugher, which made a lot of difference. Surprisingly, the first Sunday show didn't even have thirty people in the audience. The theatre seemed fairly empty from the contrast between the size of the audience and the theatre house.

The second weekend was the weekend when things started breaking. Four of us broke something during that weekend. First, on Thursday, two things happened. Michael broke off the front of one of the stairs, which we were all warned about after. Then, later on, Steve broke the curtain cord right before my character got tied up. I had a feeling something was out of the ordinary behind me where he was, but I couldn't acknowledge it. The following night, the Friday performance, Sophia broke the door frame when she slammed it. Joe did tell her that it could take the slamming, but after doing it so much, I guess it couldn't take it anymore. Right after she exited, I could see the door was jammed, but there was nothing I could do about it. By the time the next person who entered that way came in, the door was indeed stuck. While they did manage to open it, we had to close it gently the rest of the night. On Saturday it was my turn to break something.

I broke not one, but two things onstage in the same moment. In the scene where a man named Gibbs comes to rent a room in the Brewster house, the two aunts attempt to poison him, only for my character to stop him and chase him out of the house. In that moment, he throws a couch pillow at me, which I throw up in the air behind me and then I slam the door behind him. I saw a picture on the wall on the staircase fall because what was holding it broke off, but thankfully it wasn't a glass frame. What I didn't know until intermission was when I threw the pillow, it sailed across the stage and ended up knocking over and breaking a wine glass. I didn't even realize I threw the pillow that hard since that particular night I was trying not to overexert myself. After that I made sure to throw the pillow straight up in the air behind me. We had to use a different set of glasses for the remaining performances and the picture frame never made it back to the wall. 

But enough of the accidents. The Thursday audience of the second weekend had a large audience. That day I had a miserable day at work (I left in tears), but I was in a better mood at the end of the show. The kissing moments with Sophia lifted my spirits a bit, I'm not ashamed to admit (blush, blush). The Friday and Saturday shows did not have audiences quite as large, and neither were too responsive. The Sunday show was an improvement over the previous one. The audience was twice as big, and they were the most responsive yet. I heard laughs where there weren't any before and even different reactions on some lines. In fact, they were the best audience of any we had.

My daily schedule during the run of this show began to take its toll on me. In the middle of the second week, I began to get worried about losing my voice. After the Friday show I could feel it getting fatigued and I went through all Saturday barely speaking a word at all at work (not an easy feat since my day job is working in a kitchen). Then for the Saturday show I held back on certain parts where I shouted or spoke very loudly. I think it was because it was because I was not getting enough sleep since my schedule wasn't allowing for a proper night's rest. On that Sunday I slept until 8 in the morning, and I was able to get through the show with no problems. Lucky for me, this company didn't do two shows on Saturdays, or I don't think I would've made it.

The day before the final weekend a review of our show came out (finally). The critic felt the performance of all the main characters worked...except mine. He felt I was too much like Cary Grant from the movie. Joke was on him; I only saw the movie once five years previously and didn't remember it that well. Kind of disappointing for my first lead role, but I know what night he was there and, honestly, I felt I gave a good performance and that's what matters to me. However, I did agree with one thing he said, that the play was starting to feel old with dated references and the joke about Jonathan looking like Boris Karloff not being relevant with Karloff long since passed (if you don't know the play or the joke, look it up). One of my lines in the show is when I say to Rebecca (Abby) and Priscilla (Martha), "You look like Judith Anderson." If you don't know who that is, I don't blame you. Every time I said that line all I could think was how there may have been laughs at that line several decades ago, but now, none whatsoever.

The final three shows each had an audience between fifty and sixty people with Saturday's being more responsive than Friday's and likewise for Sunday. This weekend was the weekend of tripping. On Friday I nearly tripped three times: once over one of the rugs since it got tucked under itself and twice over my briefcase behind the couch. Michael Romero's character (Teddy) runs up the stairs several times in the show yelling "Charge!" and on that night, on his last one of those, he tripped running up the stairs, but recovered with "I'm all right!" The exact same thing happened the following night, only this time he said, "I'm alive!" At first, I thought he might have done that on purpose, but during the last performance I noticed him grip the banister more tightly and he went up just a bit slower.

On the closing day set strike, there was a very bad situation. On the set there was a staircase that would go "upstairs" and behind the set there was a set of stairs that led off from the upstairs platform. While we were taking the set apart, one person was underneath the stairs behind the set and when someone else stepped on them, they collapsed. One of the men walked away with a slight head injury and the other a hurt ankle. Not fun.

In spite of the frustrations, this was a fun role and show to do, once it got up and running. It helped me to be more aware of what was happening on stage and made me better at carrying and improvising if someone dropped a line or didn't say it correctly. After finally rising to the top role, I could only wonder when I'd get such an opportunity again. Honestly, I wouldn't mind tackling this role again, even though there are several other roles I'd also like to play in this show. The one thing that most disappointed me the most was that not a lot of my friends came to see me in this role. I don't usually expect to see people I know in the audience, but this was a big one. Oh well.