Opening Post Mortem

What an opening! Despite all the troubles that led us there, opening night was a smash success.

Not that it went perfectly by the book.

For one, I misspoke a line. Where I should have said “I gained fourteen pounds, seven on each hip” the words “I gained seventeen pounds…” escaped my lips, rendering the rest of the line inaccurate. I had to fix it fast enough to keep Florence from skipping to her next line, so I continued, after a pause, “What is that, eight and a half pounds on each hip?” It’s not everyday you actually have to DO the math on stage. It played; and I was amazed to have gotten it right.

For another, Florence missed her aim when throwing the cup. It is supposed to crash off stage. Instead, she walloped it into an onstage bookshelf where it shattered and splintered and went flying all over the set. Olive incorporated a bit of slobbish move-the-mess-around to clear the more dangerous shards, chucking one from the sofa into an abandoned drink before others entered at risk of piercing their bottoms.

Even the stage hands had opening night jitters. The third scene of the second act opens with Florence vacuuming, but the vacuum cleaner was set for the second scene instead. In that scene, Florence has gussied-up the apartment for a date with the Spanish boys upstairs and is perturbed when Olive comes in late, making a mess. Cleaning up after Olive gives Florence the perfect opportunity to rid the stage of the vacuum cleaner, but she doesn’t. Fortunately, Olive’s opening lines allow a bit of leeway. “What’s the matter Florence? Something is wrong, I can tell by your conversation.” In the pause I'd allowed her to put forth no conversation, I dragged the vacuum off stage. If it hadn’t struck you as odd that Florence had left the vacuum out in the first place -- and that it then failed to bother her when she went about cleaning up after Olive -- you'd never have known it wasn’t blocked that way.

Florence jumped a few lines that set up punch lines for me, but we continued smoothly, with no one the wiser. None of the dead air I so feared. And while her arms are still flailing with implements of doom, she kept a better distance last night than she had in rehearsal. If she keeps it up, I might just escape the show intact.

It was an unbelievably fun evening. The full house was responsive and I enjoyed thinking on my feet in front of them. And in a reception afterwards, I received some of the best compliments of my life and the hint of future work. It was the moment that you work toward. The moment that makes the whole trip worthwhile. Now to repeat it seventeen times.

And, yes, this time I meant to say seventeen.