Tuesday night. The first preview. We have, what I would call, a dark show. This often happens as we are trying to find the right tone or "the sweet spot" for performance. It’s still a good performance, just a bit darker than the ideal. We talked about it as a team that night and figured out what alterations we needed to make.
Wednesday Night Madness
Understandably on Wednesday night we're all excited to see the performance after all of our adjustments. However, it just so happens that that’s when the primary rule of theatre takes hold: What can go wrong, will go wrong.  |
| The flying cue ball - One of many "surprises" on Wednesday night's preview |
ACT ONE
The house is almost full and there's the usual buzz of excitement in the air. Our cell phone warning goes off – a not-exactly-subtle, not-exactly quiet cue of ringing cell phones swirling around the space, moving into phone ringing ridiculousness. You immediately see folks reaching to turn off their phones. Works like butter. Lights up on Brian Dooley. He delivers the first three lines of the show. Great. Good. Everything is going smooth.
Until I hear it. The crinkling of candy-wrapper number one.
Whatever.
Candy-wrapper number two.
No big deal.
Candy-wrapper number three.
Slightly irritating because I’ve missed Dooley’s fourth, fifth and sixth lines. But it’s okay. It happens. We get through it. I make a mental note to institute a candy-wrapper warning for the rest of the season and we move on. Things finally start to move along nicely. The actors are in the “sweet-spot” as I like to call it, and all in all, everything is going well.
Or so I think.
I spoke too soon.
Near the end of the first act, we subtly drop light snow in the window of the set as Tremblay relives a moment from his childhood. During what is normally, in my humble opinion, a magical moment, our elegant light snowfall becomes a large avalanche. It obviously gets a big response from the audience. The poor actors know something is up, but since they don’t see it, they have no idea what. Thankfully, we all have a good sense of humour and we laugh it off at intermission saying ‘well better tonight than tomorrow at the opening’. Ha ha.
ACT TWO
We should’ve known that Act Two was off to a troubled start when we have to ask two ladies to remove their coffee cups from the stage.
Then, at the top of the act, as Tremblay waits for Jack Kerouac to finish reading his play Les Belles-Soeurs, he leans on the table. Well this night, the table – which we’ve been rehearsing with for weeks - snaps and is suddenly in two pieces. Fortunately, the audience howls as it does play well into the scene. The actors take it in stride and even add their own comments, creating more laughs. And even more laughs as Tremblay tries to re-set up the now broken table. Very Charlie Chaplin. It's all very funny, but the actors now have to be thinking ahead to the end of the play, since the blocking is going to be completely different with the table out of commission. Not that I'm worried about that – I know they can handle it.
The next surprise awaiting us: audience participation.
About five minutes after that, Michel Tremblay sits down at the newly broken table, and I hear a booming voice from the audience: “Don’t be scared go get him a beer!” I thought he said, “Don’t be scared go get him a dress!” so I'm super confused why – in this play – he thinks Kerouac should be wearing a dress. But whatever – everyone has their own interpretation, right? (I was later corrected by the actors, who thought my version was much funnier.) This happens more often than you'd think. An audience member will forget that they're not at home and we're not the TV that you can just yell at or talk to. Don’t get me wrong, it can definitely be a compliment – it means they’re very engaged, however it can also take the actors and audience out of the scene!
Then, of course, two cell phones go off right after each other. The first, in the middle of the audience and the second, down right, where the ladies with their coffees are sitting.
Okay, can't get worse right?
Wrong.
Tremblay and Kerouac start playing pool. I should have figured. Tremblay hits the cue ball so hard that it not only flies off the table (as planned), but flies right off the stage and almost hits one of the coffee ladies, (there is justice), but thank our lucky stars it’s only a close call.
Then, during the climatic struggle when the characters actually wrestle with each other, one of the small booze bottle flies off the stage - again close to hitting one of the coffee ladies down front. Seriously? Seriously.
Thankfully, that was the last of our bad luck for the night.
After all that – thanks to an awesome script, actors and crew – folks still stood for a standing ovation. I immediately went backstage after and congratulated the team for getting through it. They were excellent - it was just everything around them seemed to fall apart!
So, once again I was reminded that what can go wrong, will go wrong - and that, my friends, is why we have previews in the theatre.
PS - If you haven't seen them yet, here are a couple video previews of the show.
