Attack of the Theater People

by Marc Acito

  As Kelly plays tour guide—over a hundred thousand pounds of steel, fifty miles of cable, blah, blah, blah—I can’t resist the magnetic pull of the stage. Without asking, I step out of the wings, inching down a sloping bowl that leads to the stage floor.

  Behind me, Kelly says, “Edward, I don’t think you should…”

  I don’t care about should. Not anymore.

  The auditorium looks cavernous, nearly two thousand empty seats. I walk downstage, where ramps circle the first ten rows, and stare out at the house. From where I stand, my post in the rear mezzanine looks microscopic, a light-year away, and I ache at the thought of my irrelevance. This is where I belong, down here. Center stage.

  It feels like home.

  But each night I return to a balcony so high up you could probably see Jersey on a clear day. That first week Kelly goes on for two previews, each time as an electrical component, whatever that is. I’m excited for her, but, to be honest, I can’t tell which one she is. Between the cartoon costumes and amplification so artificial they might as well be lip-synching, they could switch actors two or three times a night and no one would know the difference.

  After seething in the dark for a week, I finally figure out why the show makes me so angry. When I go to a musical I am looking to be more than entertained. I am seeking a transformative experience, a transcendental one. There’s something about that Broadway sound—the swell of the orchestra as the King thrusts his arm around Mrs. Anna, the entire chorus telling Mame she’s just sensational—that sends a shiver across my cheeks and down my neck, making the hair on my arms stand on end. The most stirring moments in symphonies or operas and the pulsing beat of rock and gospel may thrill me, but only musicals chill me. Starlight Express, on the other hand, leaves me cold. The only moment that comes close is when Rusty gets religion and sings, “I am the starlight,” but even that feels like the musical equivalent of a Hallmark card.

  Audiences eat it up with a spoon.

  Unless Kelly’s on, I hang out in the mezzanine lobby with my ushering partner, Mrs. Fiamma, a gray, wheezing smokestack of a woman who reminds me of Dustin, the roly-poly hopper car in the show, particularly because she has her Ash Wednesday ashes on her forehead when we meet. She doesn’t do anything during the performance—neither reads nor does crossword puzzles nor knits—she just sits there like a barnacle.

  “Whatcha readin’?” she croaks. She’s got a voice like a shovel being dragged across a driveway.

  “Act One, by Moss Hart.” I found it on Eddie’s bookshelf. It’s a memoir by the playwright of You Can’t Take It with You and The Man Who Came to Dinner. I dove into it to escape from my worries and haven’t come up for air since. Like a toddler who covers his eyes so no one will see him, I’m hoping if I forget about the SEC, they’ll forget about me and the fact that I ignored their deadline. “Have you read it?”

  She shrugs. “He directed My Fair Lady, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “I met him.”

  I blink. “You did?” This feels inconceivable to me, as if Broadway’s Golden Age were the Bronze Age. Moss Hart isn’t someone you meet.

  She fans herself with a Playbill. “Back in the fifties I worked the Mark Hellinger. I musta seen My Fair Lady a thousand times.”

  I put the book down, ravenous to devour the real thing. “What was it like?”

  “Well, the Hellinger was a nothin’ house,” she says, warming to the tale. “One flop after another. Ankles Aweigh, The Girl in Pink Tights. Real dogs. There was that musical about the Amish, what was it called? It had what’s-her-name, Barbara Cook, but she wasn’t really Barbara Cook yet. Anyway, there I am, with the flops, while my girlfriend Maxine is at the St. James workin’ The King and I and Pajama Game back-to-back. In those days, when you had a hit, everybody came to see it and the show was all over Life magazine and Rosemary Clooney’s singin’ ‘Hey There’ on the radio. It was so different back then. And they dressed up, too. Furs and diamonds. Not like today, with these tourists and their hairy legs. Now they show up lookin’ like they’re gonna wash a car. Anyways, I’d been an usher since the war. Ya’ think I woulda gotten a decent house by then, but I always hadda mouth on me. So there I am at the Hellinger, thinkin’, ‘A musical based on Shaw? It’ll last a month, but feel like a year.’ Which goes to show ya’ how much I know. Opening night, there’s the director, Mr. Hart, wearin’ out the carpet in the back of the theater, pacin’ back and forth, and I’m at my station, watchin’ the show, and thinkin’, ‘This is pretty good.’ But the audience is kinda polite, and Mr. Hart is so nervous he actually walks out of the theater with Mr. Lerner and Mr. Loewe. Just walks out.”

  I hear these names and they scarcely seem real to me.

  “A half hour later they come back, smellin’ of booze, just in time for ‘The Rain in Spain.’ And I am tellin’ ya’, the audience blows the roof off. It’s like nothing I have ever seen. And then, two minutes later, Julie Andrews steps downstage and sings, ‘I Coulda Danced All Night.’”

  Mrs. Fiamma lays her hand on her breast, almost in supplication.

  “It was like goin’ to heaven. And Mr. Hart turns to me, so handsome he was, with those dark eyes, and he says, ‘We’re a hit.’ Just like that, like I wuz somebody.” She smiles, her eyes misting. “’Cuz that’s when he knew. He was a very nervous type, y’know, did a lotta psychoanalysis—I’m not gossiping; he talked about it in the papers. But that’s when he knew the show was gonna be okay. And I was Right There. Oh, you shoulda seen it. When it was over the audience came runnin’ down the aisles to the stage, standin’ on their seats, clappin’ with their hands over their heads. From then on it was the hottest ticket in town, sold out for two years, the number one record album in America. People camped out in sleeping bags to get standing-room tickets. Everybody came to see it. You name ’em, and I showed ’em to their seats. Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Eleanor Roosevelt. During the show you’d look out at the audience and they wuz all smilin’. Like they wuz in love.” She pauses, lost in the memory.

  “What other shows did you work?” I ask, a child stalling at bedtime. One more story, please, please, please.

  “Well, it musta been, I dunno, 1958, they opened the Lunt-Fontanne over on Forty-sixth Street and I got assigned over there. Boy, was I mad. For me, My Fair Lady was better than church. But I hadda go, and it opened with this thing starring the Lunts, The Visit? You ever heard of it? I still don’t know what the hell it’s about, and I thought, ‘ Uh-oh, here we go again.’ And then we got The Sound of Music.”

  “With Mary Martin.”

  “No, Dean Martin. Of course Mary Martin. The critics hated it, called it The Sound of Mucous; oh, they were so mean, but I loved it. So beauteeful, it was. I watched it every single time. The curtain went up, and there was Mary Martin in a tree. In a tree! She hadda be forty-five years old, but she seemed half that. She really was Peter Pan. And people would come back five, six times.

  “One night, just before we open the house, there’s a blackout. Poof. The whole city goes dark. So the house manager goes out on the street and tells everybody waitin’ that it’s so dark backstage nobody can put on their costumes or their makeup; they can’t even move the set. But the audience won’t budge. So Mary Martin’s husband, who was also the producer, sends the crew out to get as many flashlights as they can. Naturally, they ask all us ushers if they can use ours, too. Then they do the show in the dark holding flashlights under their chins. Like they’re tellin’ ghost stories at camp. Oh, it was so much fun. No costumes, no sets. Just…The Sound of Music. About a half hour inta the show the lights came on, and there they all were, in their bathrobes and street clothes, like a spell had been broken. So they took a little break and the crew moved the set and the actors put on their costumes, but we wuz almost disappointed. It was so…magic.”

  From inside the theater we hear the siren announcing another train race onstage, and my rage returns. If New York was plunged into a blackout, you couldn’t d
o Starlight Express by flashlight. The orchestra isn’t even in the goddamn theater; they’re piped in from a studio on the fourth floor by the men’s john. It’s so dishonest, asking us to root for a plucky little steam engine while garishly reveling in electronic overkill. They ought to call the show Starlight Excess.

  I got to the theater too late. Broadway is dying, just like Eddie Sanders and his friends.

  Thirty

  After the show, I walk Mrs. Fiamma to the subway, pressing her for details, hoping for more stories of Broadway’s Golden Age, maybe a tale of New York during the war—a night entertaining soldiers at the Stage Door Canteen, a quickie marriage with a sailor before he ships overseas? Or perhaps a melancholy tale of dreams deferred—the failed chorine who resigned herself to a life taking tickets. I want to—need to—go back to a time when the theater still seemed to matter. When the only steel onstage was Ethel Merman’s vocal cords. When doing a hit song in a hit show could land you on the cover of Life magazine. When Moss and Kitty Carlisle Hart lived a Cole Porter–infused fantasy.

  But Mrs. Fiamma is tired. She tells me she grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives, got a job ushering through a family friend, and has been doing it ever since. It’s rough on her knees, the audience has no manners, and she hates the commute. Her son keeps tellin’ her to retire.

  “Why do you still do it?” I ask as she waddles down the street, purse in one hand, tote bag in the other, like a pack mule.

  “You know that joke about the guy who shovels after the elephants in the circus?” she says.

  “No.”

  “There’s this guy. He works at the whaddya call it, the Barnum and Bailey’s Irish Circus, and it’s his job to shovel after the elephants, y’know, shovel their, uh, bowel movements, right? So he’s shovelin’, and some guy who’s just seen the circus comes out all excited—he’s eatin’ Cracker Jacks and swingin’ one of them little flashlights. He says to the guy shovelin’, he says, ‘Buddy, you’re one lucky fella. It must be real exciting workin’ here.’ And the guy shovelin’ says, ‘Excitin’? Look what I’m doin’. Every day I stand around these smelly elephants and shovel their bowel movements. Then I come home and my wife makes me sleep on the fire escape ’cuz I stink. Believe me, brother,’ he says, ‘This is the lousiest job in the circus. No, no,’ he says, ‘this is the lousiest job in the world.’ So the other guy says, ‘If you hate it so much, why don’tcha quit?’ And the guy shovelin’ says, ‘What? And leave show business?’”

  She laughs, like a car needing a new muffler. We stop in front of the Fiftieth Street station, the Nowhere station.

  “You need help down the steps?” I ask.

  “Nah, I can manage.” She heaves her purse onto her shoulder.

  “Well, good night, Mrs. Fiamma.”

  She pats my hand. “Call me Lily.”

  Lily.

  As I pace down Broadway, a veil of sadness descends over me and I speed up, trying to shake it off. Maybe it’s enough for her, but, when I’m Mrs. Fiamma’s age, I don’t want my theater stories to be about a three-word conversation with a director in the back of a theater, or having my flashlight shine on the face of someone else, even if it is a Broadway legend like Moss Hart or Mary Martin. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, but I know I don‘t want to spend thousands of nights in the dark in the rear mezzanine while someone else stands in the spotlight center stage. I will not play a minor role in my own life.

  As I pass Colony Music I scan the covers of the vocal selections in the window—Huck and Jim in Big River, the dancers in A Chorus Line, the urchin from Les Miz—my face reflected in the glass. How did I end up on the outside looking in? When I was in high school I thought for sure I’d be the next Kevin Kline, a serious Shakespearean actor who also does Broadway musicals and movies. When I saw him romping around as the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance—at the Gershwin, as a matter of fact—I knew that’s who I wanted to be, albeit a shorter, stockier version. It was the same feeling I had after I saw Annie when I was eleven and spent months bumping and grinding while belting out “Easy Street.” I’m sure my parents took one look at me and thought, My son’ll come out—tomorrow.

  Then, as if I were actually peering into my past, I spy Paula wearing a tartan tam-o’-shanter with a matching scarf, a large rhinestone pin attached to her herringbone overcoat.

  She glances up and immediately starts talking, as if I can hear her, her fingers knitting sweaters in the air. She heads toward the entrance, bumping into another shopper as she goes. I enter the store, relieved to get warm.

  “I shouldn’t be happy to see you,” she says. “I should be bitter and resentful that you missed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I should walk right past you like I don’t see you.”

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “What has gotten into you?” she says, swatting me with a glove. “You abandon us on your birthday. You don’t answer my calls. It’s so rude.”

  She punctuates the statement with an exceedingly noisy fart.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she says, embarrassment rouging her cheeks. “It’s this wretched diet. You’re supposed to stay full by eating as much cabbage soup as you want.” She pulls a bottle of perfume out of her purse and spritzes the air. “And do you know how much cabbage soup I want? NONE! But otherwise I’d be reduced to eating paint chips.”

  She continues talking as she leads me outside.

  “It’s positively mortifying,” she says. “The other day I was rehearsing my scene for the presentation to agents, and, at the climactic moment when Mrs. Kendal touches the Elephant Man’s hand…fffftttttttppppp. Don’t laugh; it was like a truck backfiring. I tell you, I’m at my wit’s end. And don’t even ask how things are going with Marcus….”

  “Why? What’s going on with—”

  “I can’t even talk about it. He’s completely unreasonable. If I didn’t love him so much I would hate him, loathe him with every fiber of my being.” She thrusts her arm through mine and starts walking in the exact direction from which I came. “He simply isn’t qualified to run a theater company. There’s no schedule, no organization. We keep losing actors. I’m like, ‘Who’s going to rehearse on their off hours in Hoboken for no money for three months? I don’t care if it is deconstructed and ironic, it’s still just the fucking Music Man.’”

  “You said that to him?”

  “No. But I thought it really hard.” She pulls her scarf around her neck as a bitter wind whips down Broadway. “I tell you, I can’t sleep, I’m so worried. I’m just hoping that, once I get a little seed money for the company, we can start paying…What? Why are you looking like that? What happened?”

  I stop, the cold stinging my cheeks. “It’s about your money.”

  “Oh, my God. Natie lost it.”

  “Sort of, but—”

  “I’m having palpitations. Look at my hands.”

  “Let me explain.”

  She grabs my arms and shakes me. “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? MY RENT IS DUE!”

  “We have it; we have it!”

  She clutches her hand to her chest. “Don’t do that to me. I’m very vulnerable these days.”

  I explain to her what happened, and how Natie’s earning back her $500 by ushering.

  “That’s very decent of him,” she sniffs. “Y’know, it says a lot for Natie that he would return my money.”

  I don’t tell her the part about the trade being Almost Legal.

  There’s the usual pile of take-out menus on the floor of the vestibule, branded with the footprints of neighbors who couldn’t be bothered to throw them away. I swear, this building is like Gorky’s The Lower Depths. I scoop them up without looking, trying to convince myself how delicious my cup of Top Ramen is going to be.

  But my appetite disappears the moment I open my mail:

  UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND

  EXCHANGE COMMISSION

  Washington, D.C. 24601

  SUBPOENA

  Pursuant to Sec
tion 10b-5 of

  The Securities Exchange Act of 1934

  EDWARD ZANNI

  Is ordered to appear at

  3 World Financial Center, Suite 400

  No later than 10:00 a.m., Friday, March 20, 1987

  Failure to appear will result in a charge of contempt, with a possible fine or incarceration.

  Thirty-one

  I’m covered in sweat by the time I reach my apartment. Four floors, steam heat, and possible incarceration will do that to you.

  I need evidence. I need a lawyer. I need a Valium.

  I need my father.

  Damn.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  Get a root canal. Work in a bank. Watch Sally Struthers in the female version of The Odd Couple. These are trials I would rather endure than admit to my father that I need his help. He’s going to go ape shit.

  I look at the genuine fake Cartier I bought on the street, which reads 11:15 Edward Standard Time, which means it’s 11:04. Clenching everything clenchable, I succumb to the last refuge of the truly desperate, I call home.

  A woman answers, her accented “Hello” indicating it’s mi madre nueva.

  “Hola, Milagros,” I say, trying to sound chipper and bilingual. “Uh, esto es Edward. Como estás?”

  I figure I should make an effort now that we’re family.

  “Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish,” she says. “Spanish Spanish Spanish.”

  Unfortunately, my facility with pronunciation far exceeds my comprehension. “Despacio, por favor,” I say, “despacio.”

  “Slower Spanish. Slower Spanish. Slower Spanish.”

  “No comprendo, no comprendo,” I say. “Uh, dónde está mi papá?”

  “Slower Spanish…”

  “Mi papá! Mi papá!”

  “Alberto,” she calls, “tu hijo loco.”

  I hear the thunk, thunk, thunk of the three locks to my apartment opening, followed by the thud of the door dislodging. I put my finger in my other ear and hear my father say, “Gracias, mamacita,” before taking the phone. “Eddie?”