Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb (10 page)

Even as I watched an actor by the name of Michael Linden Green give his impression of one, long, post-nasal drip, and another fellow named Christopher Brenner play Stinky as a precocious five-year-old, my stomach continued to churn. Marc
had
to do better than these guys.

While I was sweating it out in front, Stuart was backstage approaching a young man with a striking full head of long and thick sandy hair, most of which had been gathered in the back and secured with a couple of rubber bands. Several locks were swept in a seemingly deliberate fashion across the left side of his face, prompting Stuart to ask if he was hiding a scar.

“This is a wig,” beamed Marc.

“Oh my God!” gasped Stuart. “Marc Castle? Is that
you
in there?”

This clinched the deal for Marc, who had been having last-minute doubts about the efficacy of his camouflage. If he’d been able to fool Stuart, who was standing only a foot away, he should be home free with those of us sitting in the orchestra.

And sure enough, like an unshorn Samson set loose on the Pharisees, Marc flexed his comedy muscles and devastated us all with a cavalcade of sight gags and outrageous bits of stage business—most of which (like the wig) he’d managed to keep a secret. At one point, while giving Mary a crushing bear hug, he turned his head toward us and shivered with delight, smiling from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat.

“Look at that baby face!” screamed Ricka.

He told me later he’d felt like he’d been giving a recital at the “Frances Bavier School of Mugging. Except I had more hair than Aunt Bea.”

Marc was clearly the sensation of the day, and John worked with him longer than he had with any of the other actors—including Scott Evans. I truly think that if Scott hadn’t shown up that day, Marc would have been signed on the spot. But Scott
had
shown up, and both he and Marc—the last two remaining Stinky aspirants—were scheduled to duel it out the following (and final) day of auditions.

As soon as I stepped foot inside the theater the next morning, a pale and wraithlike figure sprang at me from the shadows. My assailant turned out not to be the ghost of David Belasco, but rather the broken and earth-bound spirit of Reader McTigue, who was obviously very near the end of her own mortal coil. Her jaws were clenched, and her eyes were wild with determination—I don’t think I would have been any less comfortable encountering the old “Bishop” himself.

“Can I speak with you for a minute—in
private
?” she hissed.

“Sure,” I said, and followed her back into the shadows. When she was sure nobody else could see or hear us, she popped the question that I guessed had been on her mind from the first day of auditions.

“Would you consider reading me for Dagmar?”

To be fair to Mary, being an audition reader is one of the most thankless jobs the business has to offer. You’re asked to exhibit just enough skill not to throw off any of the dozens of actors you’re reading with, all the while remaining virtually invisible yourself. Good work for a ghost, maybe, or for an accounting temp looking for a break from sharpening pencils and running for coffee, but not so good for an aspiring actor.

“Let’s see if we can take care of this right now,” I said, relieved to have finally gotten to the bottom of Mary’s chronic bad mood, and happy to do whatever I could to make it go away for this last day of auditions. I talked to John, who, equally interested in keeping the peace, invited her up on stage immediately.

She didn’t require her own reader, because she’d reworked the designated “Dagmar” scenes into a single monologue. She knew just about every line in the play by heart, so nobody was surprised that she was off book. No longer encumbered by the script, she was now free to be just as demonstrative with her right arm as she had been all along with her left. She was also decidedly louder. Other than that, her solo performance as Dagmar was the spitting image of the hundred or so previous readings she’d given over the past month.

“Thank you,” said John, when she had finished. “It was almost as if you’ve done this part before.”

“Do you have any notes?” she asked. “Anything different you’d like me to try?”

“No,” said John. “I think we’re good.”

She remained standing center stage, apparently waiting for John to rethink this response.

“Thanks again,” cued Ricka, and Mary finally made her exit into the wings.

Just a moment or two later she was back.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Lisa McMillan is here, but I need to settle something before you see her.”

“What’s up?” John asked.

“I was just talking to Amy, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask that she not bite me.”

“Amy wants to
bite
you?” I asked, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that.

“No,” said Mary. “
Lisa
bit Amy. Last night.”

“Lisa couldn’t make the auditions yesterday, so I read her at home,” explained John, doing his best to stifle a laugh. “Mary wasn’t there so Amy played Nelson. And Lisa is very…resourceful, so, at one point she, you know,
bit
Amy. On the arm.”

To his credit, he was able to get out this entire explanation before cracking up with the rest of us.

“It left a mark!” verified Amy, who’d followed Mary on stage.

“This is where I’m going to have to draw the line,” Mary declared, staunchly ignoring the loud snickering erupting from the orchestra seats below. We had become a group of obnoxious school kids ganging up on the substitute teacher.

“I must insist that Lisa not bite me,” said Mary, without a trace of irony. “I have a show to do this evening.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Lillie, who had joined us again today. “Miss McTigue can’t go on this evening. Rabid, you know.”

“Maybe somebody else could do the honors—just this once,” suggested Mary.

“Don’t look at me,” said Stuart. “I’m still getting over Joan Copeland.”

“No sweat,” said Amy. “I’ll do it. Let her give me her best shot!”

While Mary enthusiastically took one of her final five-minute breaks, the six-foot tall Lisa McMillan came on stage to stand beside the five-foot tall Amy Schecter. They were a cartoon couple: tall and short, skinny and wide—Natasha and Boris chasing after “Moose and Squirrel”—only without “Squirrel.”

Lisa wore Dagmar’s requisite black evening gown, a pair of gigantic white sneakers, and a visor to suggest a nurse’s cap.

“You again, Shorty?” she asked, while resting her arm on top of Amy’s head.

These preliminary visuals were so hysterically funny, it was almost unnecessary for Lisa to do her scene. She didn’t bite Amy this time around, but did just about everything else she thought she could get away with. Her arms and legs, like strands of toothpaste freshly squeezed from individual tubes, oozed their way under, around, and over just about every one of Amy’s moving parts.

Just at the point when Nurse Dagmar (fantasizing about the systematic deaths of each member of the Holloway clan) reaches more than a metaphorical climax, Lisa turned full front, and, in a voice that must have emanated from somewhere in the bowels of the Belasco, bellowed the single word “Ow.”

“Ow?” asked John. “That’s an interesting choice.”

“I have just been bitten,” said Lisa, still in character. “On one of my McNuggets.”

“Oh, boo
hoo
,” said Amy, popping her head out from under the tangled coils of Lisa’s appendages. “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it!”

“I don’t know,” said John once the commotion had died down. “Lisa’s great, but if we cast her as Dagmar we’re going to have to let Amy play Nelson. I don’t think we should break up their act.”

June Gable’s agent had phoned the theater that morning to advise us that his client had been called back a number of times as a potential replacement for one of the cast members in the musical
Nine
—a job that would carry with it a guaranteed one-year contract. This warning had its desired effect on me, at least, especially since it followed Wendy Wolfe’s nose dive the day before.

I told Stuart I was afraid we’d seen the last of June; he wasn’t at all concerned. “Her agent’s just testing the water,” he said. “It’s the oldest ploy in the book.”

Sure enough, June strutted on stage later that morning, still clad in her skintight chinos and leopard top. “My teacher at Carnegie Mellon always said you should wear the same outfit to callbacks,” she explained—which, of course, incited a mini college reunion among the various Carnegie alumni present in the auditorium.

In the middle of her scene, she broke character to set up one of her planned bits of business.

“I think Snooks’s only source of reference for being a detective would be
Columbo,
” she said. Like the typical impressionist, she turned her back a moment to “get into character,” and then finished the interrogation scene as Peter Falk—complete with the one-eye squint that must have been very difficult to maintain for such a long stretch.

“How did you write Snooks?” she asked me, while John and Ricka were discussing what they’d like to see from her next. “Admit it—you
are
Snooks!”

“I’m pretty lousy at impressions, though,” I said.

“There’s so much room with this part,” she went on. “You can be happy, sad, funny—plus sick. A
lot
sick. I figure Snooks sits in her motel room eating chocolates and working on her routines.”

I was about to challenge this notion that the caustically spontaneous Snooks would ever have the patience to actually sit around
working
on a routine, when John called June back on stage to be paired with Don Potter—one of our two favored candidates for the role of Howie. Don was short, sprightly, and utterly adorable—so it had come as no surprise that he’d originated the title role in the world premiere of the musical
Snoopy!!!
at the Off-Broadway Lamb’s Theatre the year before. Lovable and nurturing, he was the perfect foil for the fierce and feisty Snooks. Together, Don and June looked like grown-up versions of Cubby and Karen, the littlest Mouseketeers from the original
Mickey Mouse Club
.

Right after Don left, June was teamed up with the lanky Carleton Carpenter, whose prissy mannerisms and impeccable timing had swept me off my feet at the Bennett Studio. I loved the way this man came off on stage, and if June hadn’t unofficially become the show’s linchpin, he would have been my hands-down choice for Howie. Try as I might, though, I just couldn’t picture him as June’s husband. It crossed my mind that he would make a very intriguing Nelson, but that would mean having Eve play Hedda as a woman closer to her actual age, which—aside from screwing up the casting for all the Holloway children—would undoubtedly be a deal breaker for Miss Arden. So I kept my mouth shut, and resigned myself to the fact that Carleton and I would have to forego our own “Aba Daba Honeymoon.”

“You ready to do this?” asked John, once June was left standing alone on stage. With the Sword of
Nine
looming over our heads, we all thought it best to act quickly, so unanimously voiced our consent.

After taking June aside for only a minute or two, John came back smiling. “She’ll do it,” he said.

“Wait a minute!” cautioned Ricka, as the rest of us were exchanging hugs and back slaps. “Eddie needs to call her agent
now
! I’ll phone him!”

Ricka was gloating when she joined us a few minutes later.

“June’s still here, making phone calls,” she reported. “I overheard her telling somebody ‘I got it! I told you I would! This’ll bring back my name!’”

“So much for any objections from the agent,” said Stuart.

“Oh, spare me!” said Lillie. “This is a chance to
originate
a role. Of course she’s taking it!”

We were just beginning to come down from this high, having all but ignored the handful of Joes and Dagmars that had shown up after June finally left, when Dennis quietly walked down the stage ramp to join us in the orchestra.

“Well,” he said, “I did it.”

“Really?” asked John. “Did you leave any witnesses?”

“About three of them,” said Dennis. “Two of them were in tears.”

“What
are
you talking about?” asked Lillie.