Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb by Bicknell Arthur

Author:Bicknell, Arthur [Bicknell, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781630030056
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2013-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Dennis itched to take a crack at Eve’s problem himself. He was convinced we were all just a pack of suck-ups, and that what Eve needed was a little old-fashioned discipline. “Better yet,” he said, “we should have Mara’s mother take over. Have Eve join Mara’s homeschool sessions. And keep her there until she’s learned every fucking line. If nobody wants to play ‘Daddy,’ then let’s have ‘Mommy’ handle this!”

One night Dennis returned from rehearsal and confided that although he continually laughed at the bits all the actors threw in regularly from day to day as he sat watching them rehearse, he sometimes wondered about the general effect of the play as a whole. How will all this nonsense play to an outsider?

“You mean an audience,” I said.

He nodded. As a full-time captive observer, he had some other questions, too: Was John aware of the play conceptually? Were there gaping holes in logic? Was anybody watching the store or just gorging on penny candy?

He said he’d chatted briefly with June about this, who’d told him, “You know, my friend Orson Bean didn’t want me to do this play. He didn’t think it worked.”

“I think I should try to prepare us both for divergent reactions,” Dennis said. “There’s a lot of rah-rah team zeal that tends to make certain truths a little opaque, you know?”

I said, “Yeah, I know.”

“I just hope that someone is remaining objective…” he said.

“And I don’t think it’s you or John” he also said.

After that little heart-to-heart, I became defensive and withdrawn, and we had quite a row. The end result was a discussion of the play’s ending and my discovery—not for the first time—that a large portion of it was indecipherably convoluted. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember the airtight logic I just knew I’d found when it was first written. I began to panic. This, I thought, was the sort of discussion I should have had with John before rehearsals even began.

In John’s defense, Dennis also told me that our director had prefaced this last runthrough with an order to all the actors to keep on top of the cues. “No business between lines—keep it at a clip.” This was an essential element of farce I hadn’t been entirely certain John subscribed to. With Eve’s lines down, I rationalized, we should soon be getting some fabulous results. All of the other actors, after all, were each continuing to grow in his or her own way.

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