Wuthering Heights - a post-script


So it's over. I have Wuthered and gone to emotional heights alongside a brillaint ensemble and my character died and no one cared because I was just Someone's Mother.

Was it a success, you ask? Well, if by success you mean: did audiences like it? would YOU have liked it if you saw it? it would seem that depended on the color of your hair.

If you look in the mirror and notice that the top of your head is yellow, reddish, black, or some shade in between, chances are good you would not have liked our show. You would have found the dialogue cliche´, the romance over-played, the deaths repetitious. you may even have found the whole thing so overly-dramatic as to tickle your funny bone, as many blonde and blue and black-haired people did.

However, if you peer into the mirror and see perhaps a strand of gray, or two, or maybe a whole headful (or perhaps you must admit to yourself that it is white-ish underneath the Feria) you may have come to our show and found yourself muttering things like "WONderful!' under your breath after every song. Which some people with gray were known to do. These were often the same people found to be saying to one another things like, "Who's that?" "that's the SISter! he's marrying the SISTER!" "Ohhh!" loudly enough during the touching, quiet moments that we could hear it backstage. These were generally, overwhelmingly the same people who filled the seats in the lobby to capacity more than one hour before the show, (indeed they were there long before the cast) and could be heard arguing about the six dollars they had to pay for tickets (the irony of it being that if you'd been one of those who liked it less you'd have paid the full fare of eighteen dollars.)

My explanation for this preference by hair color is that the show, being written by a man in his 80's, at least, simply used an older language than that of Genertion X and Y-ers, dramatically, verbally and musically. This language is more heightened, more melodramatic, and uses more legit singing than modern plays. It harkens from the innocent days of silent movies and vaudeville and operetta. And a population with gray hair is far less cynical and willing to accept on stage things as truth, things which those of us in the younger crowd, assimilated to television and reality shows and "The Lion King" from an early age, simply cannot.

But was it a success? If by success you mean did i have a good time, it was quite smashing. I found every member of the cast to be someone I wanted to get to know; interesting and varied people. REAL people, with lives and stuff. It was especially fun for me during the run of the show because I had such a small role and so little to sing I had absolutely nothing to stress about (except the day after i nearly ripped the toenail off my big toe with the door to the deli across the street and i had to stuff that foot into high heels for a few minutes on stage, somehow). i also had, therefore, plenty of attention to give to chatting with my fellow cast members backstage, in whispers, of course, who proved themselves to be an unusually stable bunch. Three had homes in the suburbs, two had families, all but one of the cast (and the children) was attached, romantically (and i set him up with my friend who lives upstairs, with initially stunning and five days after, disastrous results.) The director also turned out to be a very competent guy, and he brought in a set and costume designer, both Yale grads like him (and colin - he approved) and they also proved themselves to be extremely professional and accommodating.

This made for a highly friendly, functional group, lacking in sensibility only at the very top. Our shining producer and her husband, the composer/lyricist, thankfully paid us our meager wages on time and secured the space. And also thankfully there were less hearing-related misunderstandings in person than we'd all had over the phone as they were trying to hire us. (When Kimberly called to accept the role of Catherine, our producer became determined her name was Tim, and for five minutes demanded to know how she'd gotten this number.) Alas, each teetering on the threshhold of both sanity and health, they were a bit out of touch, and though inexperienced as producers, believed with all their hearts their mode of operation was "the standard." They sometimes gave us a littel something to moan about.

One night we virtually forced the composer to call an ambulance for his nearly unresponsive wife. Usually very, um, feisty, she had been slumped in a chair all evening; it took me 10 minutes to walk her 12 feet to a more comfortable chair. She lacked balance and coordination, and seemed to forget what she was doing every few seconds. (Amid this, horror of horrors, the stage manager mumbled to me, "you're the closest thing to a nurse we've got...") Well, that would just not do. We placed a phone call to the mother of one of the children, a real nurse by trade, and she came over from her hovel at Starbucks, where she waited for her daughter to do the show every night, and she took control of Mrs. Producer during that night's show. She recommended immediate hospitalization. Still they both refused medical assistance.

To us, it seemed incomprehensible for Mr. Composer to deny Mrs. Producer's illness and pretend it would go away with going home. Anyone with eyes could clearly see she was not herself, and very sick. Finally, after a recommendation from a male friend and doctor, our esteemed producer went kicking and yelling away from the theater toward the hospital, to be diagnosed with pneumonia, and kept for further testing.

After that we missed her relative competency at the ticket booth, as her creatively inspired husband would rather chat with one of us, (especially if we were pretty,) for 10 minutes than attend to the crowds of people with walkers lined up to buy tickets to his show. One practically had to beat him with an umbrella to get a seat.

As annoyed as we could all be with the antics of the couple, we couldn't help but be inspired by their admiration for one another. As Kimberly put it, "I can only hope that when I'm that age, I'll love someone as much as they love one another." Indeed the composer credited his love for his wife for his ability to write two characters so desperately in love, one haunts the other after her death. And indeed the main characters of Wuthering Heights are both indeed, flawed. As is my writing, as I repeat certain words too much. Perhaps, then, we can all love one another, flawed, and maybe until death do us part.