Today’s matinee was cancelled. Covid in the cast. There was a round during the last week of rehearsals before tech (when I was still in Europe) which had dissipated by the time I returned. And now it has returned felling a central cast member and a member of the crew overnight. Backstage environments with people all crowded together in dressing rooms and the wings are a perfect environment for viral disease to spread. Hopefully it’s missed me and everyone will be back in fighting form, and we’ll get through our second weekend without major mishaps. Covid remains a significant health issue and has shut down a number of community theatre productions locally over the last few years. On shoestring budgets and limited resources, understudies are generally not a thing so there aren’t a lot of options when someone goes down. While I was sad not to do the show today, I can’t say I minded an unplanned free and unstructured day. I mainly noodled around the house working on a few projects.
My role in Arsenic and Old Lace, as one of the beat cops, is a book end plot device. I and the other beat cop are on about five minutes into the show for about five minutes of exposition. Then we disappear and I doze in the dressing room for two and a quarter hours until we hit the end of the show where we show up to help tie up the plot. I seem to be specializing in this sort of stage role recently. My last part was a cameo bookend role as well. They’re easy to do; the greatest challenge lying in not actually falling asleep in the dressing room because, if I do that, I befuddle my mind and the lines for my second scene don’t stick the way they should. I blanked on one at yesterday’s performance. Fortunately, a cast mate fed me what I needed, and I was soon back on track. I hate it when that happens. Unfortunately, in my sixty fifth year, my mind is not the steel trap it once was. Learning a role takes a lot more work than it used to.
Arsenic and Old Lace is one of those American plays that is consistently revived in high schools and community theatres. It is technically simple, with a single box set. It has a number of juicy roles. It’s a comedy… of a sort. In a lot of ways, it is sui generis. There’s no other play quite like it. A black comedy about serial murder and mental illness. The sweet old ladies busy performing euthanasia on lonely old men. The nephew who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt. The psychotic murderer with his weasel of a sidekick. The drama critic trying to hold on to his sanity and protect his family when everything spirals out of control. The play was written in the late 1930s by Joseph Kesselring (who never wrote anything else of major note) and originally produced in early 1941 on the eve of America’s entrance into World War II. It ran on Broadway through most of the war, not closing until late 1944. Looking at the work in historical context, one sees that the play is a metaphor for America at the time. The Brewster family, descended from the Mayflower and decayed into madness, is the country: Projecting one view of itself to the outside world but something else entirely on the inside and in a house built upon dreadful secrets and bodies buried in the basement. You have to keep the play in period with the war in the background and the aunts as relics of the bygone Victorian era. If you were to update it to today, the aunts would be aging flower children and Teddy would think he were Ronald Reagan and it doesn’t have quite the same impact.
My introduction to the play (as it was for many) was through the 1944 film version starring Cary Grant and with most of the stage cast recreating their roles. It was directed by Frank Capra and he took a lot of the bite out of the material and managed to get a subpar performance out of Cary Grant by encouraging him to go bug eyed and overact throughout. The stage veterans (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the aunts, John Alexander as Teddy) on the other hand are marvelous. Boris Karloff played the villain on Broadway but did not do the film. The film was actually made in late 1941 while the show was running. Boris Karloff was a producer and the main box office draw so he stayed in the show while the others left for filming. His part was played by Raymond Massey in the film, made up to look like him.
I suppose I should say something about the midterm elections. I am still processing what I think about all of the results, and I will likely return to the subject later. I am, of course, pleased at the outcome. I don’t think there is any way to interpret them other than the people’s repudiation of Trumpism as expressed in the policies of his second term which have been so incredibly destructive to so many of our social institutions. The Democrats will take both houses of congress with substantial majorities and have an opportunity to reassert legislative power within the constitutional structure of checks and balances. I am a bit nervous as to how they are likely to do this. I’ve lived a long time now and I’ve seen the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over and over. The Democratic coalition has many constituencies with very different agendas. If the leadership allows them to fracture over purity tests regarding ideologies, get bogged down in process at the expense of progress, or continue to govern at the behest of money and corporate donors rather than the needs of the electorate, we’re going to get nowhere fast.
Politics is show business for the unattractive and the same sorts of personalities that require attention and adulation are found in both. If the Democrats spend their time on talk shows or in televised hearings that lead to nothing, this blue wave will quickly dissipate and return to the sea. What do I hope happens? Legislation to codify ethics and close up loopholes that Trump and his administration have exploited to end run the usual norms of government. Investigations into things that are obviously of dubious legality with real consequences. The use of the power of the purse to hamstring the administration’s more outrageous excesses. Constant communication with the American people of what steps they are taking and what steps are to follow which will ease the financial disasters that are destroying the middle class. The release of the Epstein files as demanded by law. Will we get any of this? Time will tell.
Trump and his minions are definitely circling the wagons. I don’t know what the strategy is but the dismissal of Susie Wiles, one of the few adults left in the inner circle in favor of Stephen Miller suggests that he wants to destroy what he cannot have or control. Things are likely to get more dangerous this next couple of years than less. Personalities like Trump cannot bear to be told no and can react in very negative ways when that begins to happen. I just pray that not too may lives are destroyed in the process. The president has a formidable arsenal of weapons at his disposable for going after his enemies, which now seem to include a majority of the population who voted against him and his policies. Hang on to your hats. The winds are going to blow.
