Story Archive (Page 5 of 37)

For luck, I wore my Jimmy Durante t-shirt: the black one showing Jimmy alone on a darkened stage, picked out in the beam of a single spotlight, wearing his trademark trenchcoat and crushed fedora, his hands in his pockets, saying good night to Mrs. Calabash, wherever she was.

It didn’t do any good. I was lousy. Everyone else was great.

“Wish we had more women,” said director Staci Johnson, as she scanned the mostly male turnout for the first night of auditions for The Acting Company’s production of You Can’t Take It with You, the Depression-era political comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman.

There were women, of course, but no obvious leading lady. Nor was there any standout male lead, at least based on appearances.

The parts of Alice Sycamore and Tony Kirby, the two love struck youths around whom the whole plot pivots, call for an ingénue and dashing blade.

It’s not that the actresses and actors who turned out for the first night of auditions hadn’t all been fresh-cheeked ingénues and handsome heroes at one time in their lives, but time had taken its toll on every one of us.

Some of the candidates’ faces were familiarl some not. The big surprise for the night was Tim Van Zant, who had played Herbie in the Ponderosa Theatre Company production of Gypsy a couple of years back. I’d heard he had left town, then that he had returned, and now there he was.

“I can do a great Grandpa,” Van Zant said.

He hiked his pants up around his belly, stooped slightly and moved his jaw forward to affect toothlessness. He spoke a few words in that high, thinned-by-time voice associated with codgers. A cliché, but a good cliché.

Shawn Measles, an energetic actor with a full-face beard, was there. No need to ask him what part he was shooting for: Boris Kolenkhov, the mad Russian. Measles loves doing accents.

Bonnie Williams from Grease was there, so were Heidi and Chris Ramey, two stalwart actor/volunteers inTAC.

The stage was dimly lit by two fluorescent ceiling lights. The were from thrifty Dramatists Play Serivce, Inc. in New York, which saves printing costs by keeping everything in agate type, with long stage directions jammed in italics between the spoken lines. Nothing set off in bold face.

I could not find any YCTIWY scripts online. The Hollywood video store had no copies of the movie to refresh the memory of the characters, story and lines. For me it was going to be a cold reading.

I read for the parts of Martin Vanderhof, the kindly, but zany grandpa, and Anthony P. (for plutocrat) Kirby, the Wall Street financier and father of the prospective groom.

And was I terrible! Worse yet, everyone else was good. Very good. Some, like Michael Colvin, who read several times Grandpa, were fabulous. Van Zant, with his deep and pompous voice and slick hair was the epitome of a tight-fisted tycoon. I was sunk. It was “Good night, Mr. Calabash” for me.

“Everyone back tomorrow,” Johnson instructed.

Well, I’d come back, more out of politeness than hope.