“Yeah, well.”
The room was quiet. Then, on this Thursday in April, spring busy in the earth, sunlight glowing on the hills, a small, seemingly insignificant statement was made that was to change the rest of Theo Ryan’s life. Ford Rexford made it. As he threw a slender hardcover onto the floor, he sneered, “Scottie Smith! A Theory of Theatricality! That stupid little schmuck thinks he knows the theater. He wanted to direct something of mine, showed me a scale model of his ‘concept,’ and I vomited on it.”
Theo’s heart tightened. “You know Scottie Smith?”
“He doesn’t know fuck about shit.” The playwright kicked A Theory of Theatricality with his boot.
Theo, who moments earlier had been wondering why Rexford didn’t commit suicide in self-disgust, now bounced out of his chair, lifted the smaller man, and hugged him. He said, “I hate Scottie Smith.”
Rexford socked at him. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“The Pit ’n’ Grill okay?” Theo ran from the room, calling back, “It’s redneck, just your style.”
When Theo returned with a briefcase under his arm, the playwright stood and groaned. “You’ll have to pay. I’m busted flat.” He flicked his cigarette into the open hearth, from which Theo quickly removed it, stubbing it out on the chimney brick.
“Ford,” said Theo as they left the house, “how can a man who’s made the kind of money you have, who’s made millions of dollars, be broke?”
Rexford shrugged. “Beats me. But don’t say that when you write my ‘Life.’ Make up something with a little more intentionality, all right?”
“Intentionality is irrelevant.” The critic smiled.
“You’re telling me?” agreed the playwright.
Chapter 6
Music Is Heard
The play’s the thing.
—Hamlet
Ford Rexford raised his voice over the twanging jukebox of the Pit ’n’ Grill, and tapped his chest with his fork. “Morris, one of my producers, fixed up a meeting so this schlemiel kid Smith could show me his stuff. That pretentious trendy-bender Amanda Mahan, Morris’s partner, had gone hog-wild for Smith. So this kid had a fancy little model all rigged to demonstrate how he was gonna set Her Pride of Place in a giant red womb!”
“A womb?” Theo paused with the sparerib nearly in his mouth.
“Yeah. Whole stage was gonna be this womb with thirty-foot fallopian tubes waving all over the place and ovaries dangling and sperm zipping in and out on a back scrim.” His arm raised high, Rexford squirted erratic swirls of catsup down on his french fries.
Theo thought over this description of Scottie Smith’s plans for Her Pride of Place, one of his favorite Rexford plays. “He didn’t want it set in Miss Rachel Green’s funeral parlor?”
“Nope. All those bereaved folks, and the corpses both, were supposed to stand around shooting the breeze in old Rachel’s womb. Swear I did, Theo; I puked right on it.”
Theo frowned. Earth mother giving birth to life through death? Capitalism as the root of infertility? “On the model?” he said.
Rexford grinned shrugging. “Probably shouldn’t have mixed all those margaritas with the gumbo at lunch.” His tan, wrinkled throat lifted as he swallowed beer. “Imagine? I told Scottie Smith what I did was sweet, compared to what an unmarried lady like Rachel woulda done, she’d known some little putz was planning to invite all of Broadway in to gawk at her womb. Then, you’ll love this, Theo, this brass-balled brat hands me a copy of my own script where he’d inked in his ‘editing suggestions!’ Looked like his coked-out nose had bled all over it. ‘Cut this.’ ‘Move that.’ The booze threw my timing off, or I’d have clocked him instead of poor old Morris who was just trying to calm me down. Amanda was livid. That’s what she said, ‘Ford, I’m livid.’ I told her she’d be black-and-blue if she ever let Smith near one of my shows. I don’t know why Adolphus Mahan married that bitch. He already had plenty of money.” Rexford ordered another pitcher of beer.
Quickly, before he could change his mind, Theo reached for the briefcase. It sat beside him in the dark booth, where wood was gouged with the initialed generations of collegiate love affairs. His heart was thudding. “Ford? Ever seen a production that Scottie Smith’s actually done?”
“Two. Two’s enough from that California cube.”
“California? I thought he was British!”
“Bullshit. He got that accent off Masterpiece Theatre. He’s not British. He’s not even Southern. He’s from a San Fernando Valley shopping mall. He’s from a vacuum, a vapor—”
“Well, a lot of critics think he’s the best director in America.”
“A lot of critics,” mumbled the writer, stuffing the last of a chiliburger past his lips, “thought Moby Dick sucked. The best director in America is a fat young broad running a theater in the Village. Barbara Sanchez’s her name. She did a Desert Slow Dance that made me cry!”
Theo unbuckled his briefcase and took out a smudged manuscript with a rust spot under the big paper clip and foolscap typed across the cover. He had removed it from the bottom of his locked desk drawer just before they’d left the house.
“Ford?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to ask you a favor.”
“You can’t fuck Rhodora. I know how much you want to.”
Theo blushed. “Isn’t that, after all, her decision, not yours?” Had she ever thought of it? he wondered.
“Oh, I expect it’s crossed Rhodora’s lustful mind,” said the playwright, as if his ear were so good he could hear unspoken dialogue. “But she says fidelity’s the best bet for a peaceful home life. So give it up.” He licked his fingers. “What’s the favor? Want a loan?”
“You said you were broke.” Indeed, Theo wouldn’t be surprised if he had more cash than the wealthy playwright—who had borrowed fifty dollars from him last November and had not yet repaid it. “No, I’d like to ask you if you’d read something of mine.”
How often over the last two years had Theo thought of doing this, but held back—because, while he was at times forced to doubt that Rexford knew what his own plays meant, the writer undoubtedly knew that they worked; he knew what would play, and what wouldn’t, and would say so.
“I wrote a play. A while ago.” His long arms outstretched as if he carried a flaming plate, Theo held up the manuscript of Foolscap.
Rexford crooked his chin in his palm. Smoke curled around his liver-spotted hand. “Yeah, I figured when I read Shakespeare’s Clowns.”
“Figured?”
“It was in you. But one lousy play, and you’re thirty-three?”
“Well, no, I wrote some others, but I threw them away, they weren’t any good. But this one…I wrote it in a workshop. With Scottie Smith. He didn’t like it.”
“So?”
Scottie Smith, the bête noir of Theo’s nightmares, just a wisp of breath blown to nothingness with a “So?”!
“So, I—”
“Quit?” Rexford wedged his back into the corner of the booth, scratched his ankle under his boot, and reached for the dog-eared typescript. “This one any good?” Theo shrugged, but didn’t answer. “Come on, Professor, you tell me. If you don’t know, I’m gonna get me a new literary biographer. The thing any good? Your book’s damn good. Alive, feeling, gorgeous. I’m surprised it didn’t ruin your career. But a play’s—”
“It’s good.” Theo blushed, but he nodded.
“Oh, Lord,” the playwright said. “I hate reading other folks’ stuff. If it’s bad, it bores me. If it’s good, I get jealous. But I’ll make you a deal. Grab the check, find me a preacher, and I’ll read your play.”
Energy swelled back in Theo, he who’d been of late so hesitant, so slow of pace. “I’ll take you right now to Cavendish Chapel. Norman Bridges mentioned something about a new chaplain there who’s—I think he said—up-and-coming
or up-to-date, something like that.” He watched with some trepidation as Rexford stuffed the manuscript into the big pocket of his suede vest. “Ford…maybe I should Xerox it first. That’s my only copy.”
“I don’t lose plays, kid.” Rexford’s knees creaked as he slid from the booth. “And I won’t bullshit you,” he growled. “Bullshit’s scary.” He threw Theo the car keys. “You drive. Rhodora’s on the rampage about me driving without a license.”
In response to their inquiry at the college chapel, an elderly sexton snarled at them, “She’s over there at that auditorium.”
“The college chaplain is a woman?” Theo was surprised. “Reverend M. E. Fletcher?”
“Name’s Maude. A woman priest!” mourned the grim old sexton. To his added disgust, the Reverend Fletcher was right now over at Cavendish’s new Spitz Center, trying out for a part in the Faculty Drama Club’s production of Guys and Dolls. “A woman priest. Tap dancing!” he sighed.
Ford Rexford circled his biographer’s shoulder. “Theo, she sounds like the preacher for me.”
In the enormous Spitz Center, auditions were in progress, and no one participating in them looked remotely clerical. Now, standing in the back of the tiered semicircle of luxuriously cushioned seats, Theo felt the old rush that always shot through him whenever he stepped inside a theater. “It’s excitement,” said his therapist. “Fear and loathing,” Theo growled.
He stood there listening to a tall slender dark-haired woman in a black blouse singing on stage. She was singing, “Ask me how do I feel…well, if I were a bell, I’d go ding dong ding dong ding.”
Theo whispered, “Who’s that?”
Rexford grabbed him. “My God, I can’t believe it!”
Theo shook off the arm. “Try not to forget you’re in love with Rhodora.”
Rexford pulled down the younger man’s head and kissed him. “I’m in love every minute I’m alive. What are you? Father Time?”
“Come on, stop!” said Theo, jerking away to look back at the stage.
“One of these days, let’s fucking hope, you’re going to be in love too, babe,” the playwright predicted, proving himself indeed, as Ryan had once written of him, “the poet of the heart.” For Theo felt right now like falling in love that very minute.
But the desire that had brightened Ford Rexford’s battered face when he first saw the stage was desire not for anyone on it, but for the Spitz Center itself. “I can’t believe this!” He whistled. “Look at that raked thrust! Look at those sight lines!” He took in the gigantic space, the acoustical wall panels, the high hydraulic flies, and it was love at first sight. The old pro felt as a great jockey might feel to see Secretariat used to trot toddlers around in circles at a church fair. “Jesus God, Theo!” he spluttered. “Joe Papp would kill for this! You son of a bitch! You didn’t tell me about this! Where’d they get it?”
“Some rich alumnus donated it.” Theo explained, as he walked Rexford down the plush carpeted aisle. “And just wait’ll you hear who they’re planning to turn it over to. Scottie Smith, that’s who. They’re planning to hire him as artistic director.”
“Scottie Smith! Bullshit! Well, stop ’em, for Christ sake!”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Who cares? Do it! They want an artistic director? Hell, I’ll get em’ Barbara Sanchez. She’s sick of getting mugged up there in SoHo anyhow.”
“You’ll help?” And as Theo asked this, a plan began to slide like mist out of a dark burrow of his mind.
part two
{scene: A Playhouse}
Chapter 7
Here a Dance
For what’s a play without a woman in it?
—Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
The Arnold and Inez Spitz Center, Cavendish University’s new theater complex, was the gift of a Mr. Doug Spitz, which is why gilded Ss were embroidered into the wing curtains. Immediately after graduation, this young man, making practical use of his economics major, had sold sufficient junk bonds to buy two fast-food chains and a Hollywood movie studio; in gratitude, he’d built his alma mater a theater; in filial devotion, he’d named it after his dead parents, Arnold and Inez Spitz of Kansas City. Mom and Dad had loved nothing better, he’d told Dean Tupper, than going to shows, especially musicals, particularly in dinner theaters serving good buffets. Mrs. Spitz had walked down the aisle at her wedding to “People Will Say We’re in Love” from Oklahoma, and at the Spitzes’ silver anniversary, “It’s Almost Like Being in Love” from Brigadoon had been their first dance. “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” was sung at their funeral, after a weekend of Broadway shows ended in a tragic plane crash. Young Spitz and his tax lawyers had wanted the best for his parents’ cenotaph, and he’d certainly gotten it, as the profane exclamations of Ford Rexford (wandering backstage now) would seem to attest.
All that Cavendish had to agree to do, as beneficiary of this munificent gift, was to put on two of the senior Spitzes’ favorite musicals every year; other than that, they could do whatever they liked with the place. Since there was (as yet) no official drama school, what Cavendish did was use the Spitz Center for official university functions like the monthly brawl known as the Faculty Senate, for band concerts, and for highly attended classes like Herbie Crawford’s “Modern Capitalism: Origins to Collapse” (he did a lot of what he called “visuals,” among them film clips of The Battleship Potemkin and music videos of the Rolling Stones, and needed the projection booth). The rest of the time, the Spitz Center was rented out to anyone who wanted it.
But given the location—“Let’s face it,” said Doug Spitz, “not L.A.”—and with the town of Rome being on the small side, few clubs and civic groups had need of a thousand-seater for their modest get-togethers. The Friends of the Rome Library had felt fairly lost when only fourteen members showed up for a discussion of Iris Murdoch. The Rotarians never came back, and neither did the Medieval Woodwind Ensemble. Billy Graham, of course, had packed them in, and due to a Jaycees’ boycott, the national touring company of La Café aux Folles did very well. But such sure-fire draws were rare in the hills, and often the great modern spaces of the Spitz Center sat dark and empty.
As for the college’s commitment to the memory of the tune-loving Arnold and Inez, Dean Buddy Tupper Jr. managed that nicely. (He managed all the university’s business, for its elderly president was a figurehead, pure and simple—indeed, “pure and simple” characterized General Kaney precisely.) Dean Tupper arranged for a coup of professors to take over the Cavendish Faculty Drama Club who would vote to put on a musical comedy in Spitz every January and every May. At first, the rank and file of C.F.D.C. grumbled at this typical administrative intrusion on academic freedom—since 1928 they’d devoted themselves to headier stuff, like Maeterlinck and Gorky performed in the basement auditorium of the old science building—but they soon yielded to coercion and greed. Beginning with Annie, then Brigadoon, on Doug Spitz’s long list of his parents’ favorite shows, the Drama Club was charging fifteen dollars a seat by the time they got to Fiddler on the Roof. Affluence seduced them; frankly, even free, The Lower Depths had been sparsely attended. By now, only diehards continued to plead for Pirandello and to refer to their leader, Dr. Thayer Iddesleigh, as “Tupper’s puppet.”
As acting head of the Spitz and director of these shows, adjunct Professor of Music Dr. Iddesleigh, the Cavendish marching band conductor, was king, but no Hal Prince. Although he’d taken to dressing in black like the Bob Fosse character in All That Jazz, and to yelling at his casts like Warner Baxter in 42nd Street, and while he was exactly the same size as Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms—these surface resemblances to the Greats had gained him only muffled mockery from some of his disrespectful players, who felt that Iddesleigh’s approach was too heavily influenced by his background in football stadiums. For example, he’d had the dancers in A Chorus Line form a giant C that marched sideways offstage at the finale, with
the four Iddesleigh children trotting in their midst under a huge sequined top hat. For the number, “You Gotta Have Heart,” the shirtbacks of the baseball players in Damn Yankees were seen to spell out “h. e. a. r. t.” in neon, when one by one they turned cartwheels at the footlights. And two winters back, to the annoyance of Tara Bridges who’d played the part, Evita’s followers slowly waved green pom-poms in her face the whole time she was singing, “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” Now they were doing Guys and Dolls, and Theo Ryan was certain that Iddy (Thayer Iddesleigh’s nom de théâter) was planning extensive precision drills for the Salvation Army’s first big entrance.
Iddy also upset textual purists by his Protean attitude about making whatever changes in his scripts he needed to meet the limits of his casts: the old became young, men became women, the wealthy lost their servants, and cities lost their streets. If speeches could not be said well, he cut them; if songs were nicely sung, he repeated them. “Use what you’ve got,” was his motto, to which he often added, “And if you’ve got nothing, make it up.”
Theo had never been a part of C.F.D.C. While unwilling to take on the burden of direction himself and refusing (despite the pleas of Tara Bridges, who’d heard him sing) even to participate in the club’s productions, the young drama professor was human enough to assume that were he to do it, he would do it much better. After all (as Dr. Bridges kept reminding him), Theo did know the theater. He knew it inside out. But not even Bridges was aware of the lessons in everything from tap dancing to juggling, taught by his parents and their friends, that had been practiced on Theo since infancy; that as a result of thousands of hours spent trapped in rehearsals or squirming on stage whenever an extra baby/child/teenager was needed, Theo Ryan had memorized the scores, the dialogue, and even a little of the choreography for most of the canonical American musicals—including Guys and Dolls.
Foolscap Page 7