Everything Was Possible

by Ted Chapin

  One fascinating element of tech rehearsals for an outsider is that you get to see the actors both as the characters they portray in the show and as themselves. Whenever the rehearsal is stopped, usually to address some technical issue, the actors simply hang around while the problem gets solved. Sometimes they just stand there, caught up in their own world. Sometimes they wander over to other actors and crack jokes. Sometimes they find a convenient place to perch. They may steal a moment to look at something on the stage that they don’t get to see when the show is run. To someone smitten with the whole process of putting theater together, seeing the actors in these unguarded, spontaneous moments is both revealing and fun.

  The more the actors became familiar with the backstage traffic patterns and how to get to where they were needed, the more they tended to sneak out into the auditorium through the pass door to watch other parts of the show. Actually, individual actors seeing the show they are in is something that happens only during these rehearsals. As soon as paying customers fill the seats, the actors have to stay backstage, either in their dressing rooms or in whatever areas become social gathering places during performances. Many will never again have any reason to go out into the house unless they’re part of understudy rehearsals. They will arrive through the stage door, go to their dressing rooms, do the performance, go back to their dressing rooms, and go home. Technical rehearsals and dress rehearsals, when the whole theater belongs to the production, are really the last times the cast can watch each other work, look at the scenery and lighting from out front, and get a sense of what the audience will see. It’s a very familial feeling. (Mary Jane Houdina took a week’s vacation from the show during its New York run and decided to come by and watch a performance from out front. She was so impressed she urged her fellow company members to do likewise.) Of course, there are some hazards involved. First, the costume department gets frantic at the idea of actors sitting around in their costumes. Second, the actors have to be in position when they’re needed onstage, and sometimes that is hard to judge. Just when they assume a scene is sure to be stopped, things will be going swimmingly, and then you see them racing down the side aisles to make an entrance they almost forgot about.

  Finally, the first dress rehearsal began at 10:15. Back to the top, but now for the first time, instead of the piano the orchestra was in the pit. That was yet another exciting step, one more indication of completion. Since the orchestra was miked, the sound was out of balance from the start. Some sequences were still not yet orchestrated, so the piano simply filled in. Many of the usual mistakes were made, and by the usual suspects. In “Beautiful Girls,” Michael Bartlett outdid himself with some entirely new words ending in “-able—”nothing reflectable half so injectable . . .” One exit for Phyllis and Ben was now obscured by Suzanne in her butterfly costume, which proved much larger than anyone had expected. Hal, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, bounded up onstage to fix the moment. He moved Alexis and John around, then took off his glasses, put them on top of his head, looked out into the darkened auditorium and said, ”Michael, I don’t know what to do here.” Michael joined him onstage, and came up with two good solutions right away.

  In a line that has to do with asking for Ben’s autograph, Hattie snaps out the name of her grandson—Jerome. “It’s a perfectly good-sounding name,” Hal said, “so please don’t play it like you hate it. Besides, we sell a lot of tickets to people named Jerome!” The placement of the onstage band’s piano had again become a problem, and attempts were made to get it positioned correctly. There were sight-line problems in “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs” that were adjusted easily. Then came Fifi’s entrance for the Montage. She had previously been in an acute nervous state over it, and tonight was no different. The rosaries were now her constant companion. Not only was she a bundle of nerves, but word got around that she had had her agent call Hal to say that she would quit if she didn’t get billing equal to Yvonne’s, that she had demanded changes be made to her hat—that she was generally unhappy with everything. She came out onstage looking terrified. The Whitmans and Hattie were onstage, having finished “Rain on the Roof” and “Broadway Baby.” The orchestra played Fifi’s vamp, and she sputtered, not sure of her words. She finally did get into the song, but in the second verse became flustered. “Oh, please forgive me, I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry.” Hal Hastings stopped the orchestra. Here we were, ground to a halt at exactly the same spot as the night before. There was a moment of utter silence that felt endless. Every element of the show was poised—orchestra, company, scenery, lighting, costumes—and no one was sure what was going to happen next or exactly what to do. “Oh, forgive me,” she muttered. Then a familiar voice came booming out from the auditorium: “Nobody needs to be forgiven. I know what to do. It’s twelve midnight, let’s all go home and get some rest.” Walking down to the front of the stage, Hal repeated, “Just go home, get some rest. And, Fifi, come back tomorrow a changed girl.” Fritz called for everyone to knock off, and in a moment the work lights came on and the company wandered off to change.

  Hal Hastings thanked the orchestra, gave them their call for the next day, then crawled over the railing and walked up to where Hal, Michael, Steve, and Jim were in a huddle. Once all actors had cleared the stage, Hal Prince turned to his group and said, “That was my best George Abbott imitation.” “I know,” said Hal Hastings, “I recognized it. But let’s not forget that it’s going to be tender for a while with Fifi. I think she’ll pull through. She was terrified, and these rehearsals are for actors to get over their fears.” Sometimes it was good for everyone to hear from the musical director, since he is the one who will be in constant contact with the company when the show is in performance.

  There was a concern about one of the side units on stage left. Dorothy made an entrance sitting on this unit while it moved downstage, and she didn’t feel she had a secure enough perch within the rubble. So Hal Prince decided to take a ride on it himself. After being winched downstage, he said, “Let’s fix this piece of rubble so a human being can sit on it, please.”

  Friday afternoon saw the completion of the dress rehearsal, beginning where things had left off Thursday night. Because “Ah, Paris!” was where things broke down, that is where the rehearsal was to pick up. Ethel Shutta, standing in the costume she hated, but to which she was fast becoming resigned, was in place in the wings. She had no patience for Fifi’s antics. She turned to me and said, “If that French bitch screws up once more, I’m going to go out there and sing ‘Broadway Baby’ in French!” This time Fifi got herself onstage where she belonged, sang her song, and seemed a little calmer and somewhat contrite.

  Yvonne was now getting through all of “Can That Boy Fox Trot!” without messing up the words too much. Gene Nelson was mastering most of the words and all of the movements to “The Right Girl.” The transition into Loveland went smoothly. The showgirls were allowed to do this run-through wearing only the headdress part of their costumes, and two walked out in blue jeans, one in green pants, two in black leotards, and one with nothing but a pink towel wrapped around her middle. Turns out that the last one hadn’t gotten the headdresses-only message and this was the way she would emerge from her dressing room before having the large skirt lowered on to her. More costumes were completed: the Follies dresses for Young Phyllis and Young Sally were bright and cheerful, with full, mid-length skirts with hints of the electric blue and bright orange of Young Buddy and Young Ben’s suits. Heidi Schiller’s costume was completed—white, beaded, and decidedly Germanic. She looked a little like a German drag act.

  The chaos scene at the end was starting to come together. It was bold and complicated, beginning with the disintegration of “Live, Laugh, Love” into a visual and audio nightmare. John McMartin was almost scary at how well he played a man losing his grip, and it was chilling to hear Hal Hastings throw him a lyric. The orchestration hadn’t been completed, but Hal was able to maintain order and tempo throughout. Then, as bits and pieces
of the Follies scenery began to fly away, other characters were revealed standing at different spots around the set, each doing his or her own character thing. It was positively macabre, but it seemed to be working. At a designated moment, Ben cried out for Phyllis. That was the cue for the chaos to end. Once again, Fritz Holt stopped the proceedings to ensure that everyone knew how to exit safely. This was a very tricky sequence, since the company was perched on all available areas around the set and had to make their way off with care. Fritz was concerned that it be worked through precisely. Once the cacophony faded away, the lights went out, everyone exited, and the four principals were revealed standing on an empty stage in their initial party clothes. As with all the complicated traffic patterns, it took a couple of passes for everyone to straighten out who was to go where, but the company was getting accustomed to these moments. And the stage managers were always ready with a helping hand, a flashlight, and an encouraging and sympathetic word. This time, the actors couldn’t go back to their dressing rooms, since the curtain call, not yet staged, would follow after the brief final scene. Once the lights came up on the last scene, the only difference to the set—and it was subtle—was that a street could now be seen through the upstage center panel. The night was over and the new day had arrived. But seeing daylight coming through also revealed that part of the wall of the theater had in fact already been torn down—something that was never made clear until that moment. And thanks to a curved element in the architectural detail, it looked as if the first thing that had been torn down was the theater’s marquee.

  After only a short break, Hal wanted another complete run-through without costumes before dinner. This went fairly smoothly, with some portions even beginning to look confident. It finished by the end of the afternoon.

  There was to be a complete dress rehearsal after dinner with costumes and orchestra. This was Friday, twenty-four hours away from the first paying audience. A few New Yorkers had arrived to rejoin the family—Judy Prince and John Guare, several of the New York-based staff, like press agent Mary Bryant, with Louis Botto and Bill Yoscary from Look magazine in tow, general manager Carl Fisher with his wife, Joan, and others. The cast was energized at the prospect of performing for even a small and familiar audience. Hal wanted to show his friends and colleagues how much had been accomplished. It was also actually a clever way of preparing for what was coming. Confidence was building, but the show was still not technically smooth. Those who appreciated how bold in concept it was were slightly apprehensive about what Saturday night would be like. How the audience would react was anyone’s guess, so letting the company play the show first for a theater-savvy “sort-of” audience who wouldn’t be shocked by a technical glitch here or there was a smart notion.

  Larry Cohen was also up from New York, and he and I went to dinner together, sharing stories and gossip. He told me that Weismann’s first speech was being questioned—it needed to be clearer and more focused. There was concern that the setup of the young characters versus the older characters needed to be better established early on. A question had been raised as to whether having the showgirl ghost figures without present-day counterparts would confuse the audience. Were they just part of the scenery? Were they specific people from the past? Are they actually at the party? The question had been raised about why Ben and Buddy, neither of whom was ever a performer in the Follies, had songs in the Follies sequence. Everyone seemed to agree, however, that the set was brilliant, that although it was vast and complex, it was still able to isolate characters when they needed to be isolated. The jury was out on the costumes, especially the modern-dress ones. At least that is what had filtered back to Larry from Michael, with whom he had stayed in touch during the week.

  The orchestra had been called before the rehearsal in order to go over some late-arriving orchestrations from Mathilde’s music-copying department. One was “Losing My Mind,” which had been left for last. Of course, very little in the way of staging was required for the song; it was just one person making some subtle movements. Dorothy squatted down on the front of the stage and looked into the pit as Hal Hastings played through the song with the orchestra. Mathilde and Jonathan stood in the front row at the orchestra rail, scores in hand, listening. Dorothy beamed all the way through. Hal suggested they do it again with Dorothy standing in the approximate position where she would be. She quickly walked upstage and marked through her singing while the orchestra played it again. She was giggly with delight and afterward came back down to the front of the stage to thank everyone in the orchestra. Jonathan stood smiling, more than willing to accept the compliment. Then the orchestra played through the chaos, which was now fully orchestrated. Since it was meant to be chaos, there was a general sense of bemused excitement. It seemed noisy enough to everyone. Jonathan Tunick gave his characteristic shrug, as if to say, “Okay with me. Okay with you?”

  The dress rehearsal went fine. In fact, it was really beginning to feel like a show. The actors were ever more confident, the scenic changes were getting smoother with the units hitting their marks with greater ease; the light cues were also getting smoother. Each time the show was run, it got more fluid. There was a certain giddy nervousness arising at the prospect of playing for the first real audience. What will they think? At this point, no one knows, and emotions run the gamut. They’ll love us; they’ll hate us. They’ll be dazzled; they’ll be bored. I’ll win a Tony; I’ll be fired. My song will stop the show; mine is the song they’re going to replace. I’m the best thing in the show; I’m the only one who isn’t any good. My career will take off; I’ll never get another job. But there was one thing everyone knew: it was time for some honest-to-God audience reaction. And as a group, the audience doesn’t lie; their reactions are genuine. Will they get the marvel of “Who’s That Woman?” Will they make the connection between the lead characters and their Follies songs? Even the company-pleasers, like “Broadway Baby,” aren’t necessarily the things a paying audience will respond to.

  When the rehearsal was over, a five-minute break was called. Little groups huddled around the auditorium in different places. What were they saying? Hal, Judy, John Guare, and Steve made up one group on the stage-left side, talking softly enough that no one could make out what they were saying. Ruthie had been excluded, so she was pacing nearby. Flossie and Joe Tubens were huddled in another corner. Michael and Bob Avian were sitting calmly. Tharon was at her desk, resolutely going over notes with her assistants. The stage managers had come out into the house, but they were keeping a safe distance. Clearly, the five minutes were going to be filled by these little huddles, and when the curtain came up and the cast began assembling onstage for notes, they, too, congregated in small groupings—Harvey Evans with Marti Rolph, Michael Misita and Mary Jane Houdina wrapped in each other’s arms.

  The notes to the company were brief and simple. It was clear that energy needed to be preserved for Saturday, because there would be a complete, full dress rehearsal with orchestra, costumes, hair—everything—starting at noon. Then there would be a lengthy break before half-hour call for the first preview at 7:30. Hal simply said that he’d have a few notes before the run-through, and we’d stage a curtain call before the run as well. Then he wished everyone a good night’s sleep.

  Heading into Child’s restaurant on Saturday morning for breakfast, I ran into Fred Kelly sitting alone at a booth and asked if I could join him. As I sat down, he asked how my journal was going. He taught theater in New York, he said, and would be very interested to see what I came up with when I was finished. I made a couple of overall comments about what an interesting experience I was having, and then, before I said anything about the show itself, he leaned over the table. “You know,” he said, “nothing unusual has yet happened on this show.” I couldn’t believe my ears. My first thoughts were instantly defensive: “Are you crazy? Don’t you get how amazing this show is? Has anyone ever assembled these wonderful old-timers together with such a gifted group of young performers? Can’t you feel the
tension between Hal and Michael? Don’t you realize that Steve Sondheim is the most interesting writer of musicals to come down the pike in years? Can’t you see what’s being created here?” But I said nothing. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was the norm. Maybe by the very nature of the beast, the norm in the theater is indeed the kind of creative and emotional mosaic that I had been observing. Each specific situation may be different, but is it always the same? To be truthful, I wasn’t impressed by Fred Kelly onstage; he wasn’t a particularly memorable performer and hadn’t been given much of anything to do. He had a great name, but I really couldn’t figure why he’d been hired, or even why he would want to be part of the company. And yet on the couple of occasions when he and I chatted, he was highly articulate, with a very distinct point of view. I left breakfast wondering whether maybe I was too caught up in everything to have any perspective. Maybe the show was more ordinary than I thought.

  At noon, Hal and Michael staged a curtain call. Curtain calls rarely get attended to until the last moment, partly out of superstition and partly for lack of time. Choreographers and directors prefer to work on the show itself rather than on the portion of the evening where the cast gets congratulated. Since the curtain call for Company, was brilliantly staged, I wondered if Follies would get a similarly clever treatment. For Company, the call was almost entirely choreographed, and at one point the entire company danced downstage so far that the curtain came in behind them. All of Bobby’s friends took the call, leaving him alienated, behind the curtain. This clearly wasn’t the moment when Follies was going to get a fully choreographed set of curtain calls. For now, the call was staged strictly according to the billing. After the ensemble, out came, in order, Ethel Shutta, Mary McCarty, Fifi D’Orsay, Yvonne De Carlo, John McMartin, Dorothy Collins, Gene Nelson, and Alexis Smith. The company walked through the blocking, rather businesslike, Bob Avian and a couple of others providing a sense of the applause that would greet them. In fact, Follies never did get a carefully conceived curtain call. The music was adjusted to reflect each actor, but that was it.