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Went out putting postcards at Fringe venues yesterday, but didn't make it to all of them as planned - I had forgotten why I had decided last year to only ever do it again by car and went on foot instead. Dumb. It's not the walking all over the LES/Village/Tribeca/Lower Manhattan that wears me out, it's the carrying 15 pounds of cards while walking all that distance that does it. And I was carrying more cards over more distance than I had before (in 2005 when I first did this I had just the World Gone Wrong card; last year it was two cards, NECROPOLIS and The Hobo Got Too High; this year, it was three - that did it). I got through a third of the venues (plus just as many non-Fringe theatres in the area), and I'll get the rest by car tomorrow - too much to do today to get set for the next five days and seven performances.
Tomorrow (or tonight), I also have to write my thank-you letters for the Materials for the Arts donors. Can't forget that. And something for The Brick's blog. Oh, and send some photos to The Brooklyn Courier -- I'll do that now . .
Ah, got some breakfast, too, in that little pause . . . feeling much better now.
Still, worried about houses for the shows. But then, I always do. And I have to be reminded that on shows of mine in the past which I remember having great houses for the whole run, my memory is pretty faulty -- whenever I mention the original 2005 World Gone Wrong as always having good crowds, Fred Backus reminds me that about half the shows were actually played to pretty sparse groups - especially felt when the cast numbers 21 people. The box office figures bear Fred's memory out better than mine, for that matter - WGW wasn't an especially expensive show, and, unlike usual, we made a profit from it, but the profit was a bit under $100. Not so great, really.
So, I should expect and bear through the slow middle weeks of a 4-week run to get to the bigger last ones. As with Ambersons, where we wound up having to turn a few people away at the last show.
I was expecting a review of Harry in Time Out New York today, but it's not online yet - don't know about the print edition. Unfortunately, the blurb for all three shows has been changed to include the reviewer's opinion of the production, and it's not good (it also might be all we get, rather than a review, which is fine by me). And unlike the Backstage review which basically says we did a good production of a not-good play, this one says we - well, very specifically I - did a bad production of an okay play. Great.
Not that I care about the opinion, but I care about the potential effect on butts in the seats - not that I think this will turn people away who were planning on coming to see it, but it won't bring any new people, I think. Oh, well.
And another two people died, who I had some kind of brief sharing-of-moments with that brought back memories.
George Furth was an actor and playwright who wrote the books for the Sondheim musicals Company and Merrily We Roll Along and co-wrote the underrated mystery play Getting Away with Murder with him as well. I worked as a tech on the 1994 revival of Merrily, on which both Sondheim and Furth were quite involved and present most of the time, and both of whom were quite friendly with all of us on the cast and crew - I was working for projection designer Wendall K. Harrington, who Sondheim particularly liked, so I got a nice shock at one of my first rehearsals when Sondheim dropped in a couple of scenes into Act One, saw Wendall sitting on my left, smiled and said hi to her, then plopped down in the seat on my right (as Wendall, who knew I was a big Sondheim fan, enjoyed my nervousness for the rest of the Act).
George was even more outgoing and chummy with everyone, and I liked him a lot - a great storyteller and very very funny and cutting while also generous and warm. I wish that I had realized at the time why he seemed so familiar to me - I knew he was also an actor but didn't place him from the many things I had enjoyed him in, especially Blazing Saddles, where he gets some memorable lines as "Van Johnson" ("The fool's going to d-- . . . I mean the SHERIFF's going to DO it!"), but also The Man With Two Brains, Sleeper, Myra Breckinridge and about every damn sitcom of the 70s. I would have loved to have heard his stories about those - and I bet he would have had some good ones and been MORE than willing to share them.
He enjoyed playing with the members of the company as well who were a bit starstruck by being in the presence of *S*T*E*P*H*E*N*S*O*N*D*H*E*I*M* by throwing out examples of especially human and silly behavior by The Great Songwriter, or needling cast members about their overdone attempts to not seem starstruck.
At the opening night party for the show at Sondheim's Turtle Bay townhouse, Furth walked in on a number of us lounging around the "composing room." I was sitting with my date at the grand piano, imagining the composition of all those great songs there, Malcolm Gets was sitting at the immense wooden desk, looking around with wonder at all the boxed original scores on the shelves, and several other actors (I think including Phillip Hoffman) were sitting on the big leather couch. George walked in, sized up the fanboyishness of the room, smiled, and casually said, "Actually, when Steve and I write, he's almost never at the piano - usually I sit at the desk there, and he sits over there on the couch." And EVERYONE on the couch jumped slightly. And George smiled again and walked out, chuckling.
Sweet guy.
I never met Bernie Brillstein, of course, but I saw him speak once, at Jim Henson's funeral service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and he had one of the best lines I've ever heard at a memorial service.
Brillstein had some hard acts to follow: Frank Oz had just given a beautiful remembrance of Henson, telling an incredibly funny (and long) story about his employer (and Oz's eulogy made it clear that Henson was always his employer and collaborator, but they were never really close friends - which was interesting) - then, after he got his laugh, Oz tried to say something else, but suddenly broke down and had to be helped from the podium.
THEN, Big Bird walked out, wearing a black armband, and sang, "It's Not Easy Being Green" in a broken, crying voice.
Okay, so, not a dry eye in the packed Cathedral, right?
Big Bird finished the song by looking up and saying, "Goodbye, Kermit." Now -- people were still wondering at this point if Kermit the Frog would actually outlive Jim Henson, since they seemed inseparable. Of course, Henson had made plans for the continuation of his characters, but no one knew that yet. So, now everyone's crying harder.
Brillstein is introduced, and has to take the podium after all this. He stands there a long time, crying himself (a friend who's a son of one of the Muppet performers said to me later, "My god, you saw a high-powered Hollywood agent CRY!"). Then Brillstein says, finally, in his best "tough agent" voice, "Jim always said, 'don't follow the Bird, nobody can follow the Bird.'"
Which doesn't maybe sound so great, but damn if it wasn't exactly what was needed to release the tension, get a huge laugh, and bring the day back to being one of joyful remembrance. Nice job, Bernie.
Okay, Berit's up and demanding breakfast and laundry duties from me. Off I go . . .
