Moose Murdered: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb (11 page)

“I just officially quit my day job,” he explained. “God, I’ve always wanted to say that. You’re looking at a free man—in another two weeks, anyway.”

“Congratulations!” Lillie said to Dennis, before turning her attention back to me. “So,” she said, “when are
you
leaving Air France? We have a play to put on, you know.”

“Soon,” I promised, fighting back acidic pangs of jealousy. I knew Lillie would never have to worry about anything as mundane as “egg money.” But because my own financial cushion was nil, and since it would be some time before any royalties from the show started to come my way, I couldn’t afford to bite off the hand that had been feeding me for the past few years until I’d secured a
Moose Murders
weekly salary for Dennis. I was all too aware that if I didn’t close this understudy deal with John soon, I might very well find myself booking yet another medical convention to Bombay via Paris on the night my show opened on Broadway.

These gruesome thoughts were set aside as I watched Jack Dabdoub—a burly teddy bear of a man and the veteran of thirteen Broadway shows—take the stage as our best Joe Buffalo Dance to date. He was naturally funny and seemingly strong enough to carry out the many extracurricular activities assigned to this role (including running around in the second act, brandishing an axe and wearing a moose head), and would fit in nicely with the assortment of loonies we were slowly bringing into the fold.

By this time, Marc was once again waiting in the wings, showing off his lustrous new golden locks to a cluster of similarly coifed little girls, the crème de la crème of our previous search for the youngest member of the Holloway brood. Scott Evans was there too, but with his mousy brown and relatively short-cropped hair, the poor boy was obviously destined to win merely the title of “Mr. Congeniality” in today’s pageant.

Most of the little girls had brought tape cassettes with them, to accompany their jazz and tap routines. One of them even brought along batons and hula hoops. None of these young ladies, however, could hold a candle to Mara Hobel, whose angelic face belied the sailor’s mouth and swagger she could assume on cue. It was impossible for me not to think about the amazing scene in
Mommie Dearest
where Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford—enraged by a speck of dirt she’s discovered in the bathroom—goes into a rampage and covers everything in sight with Bon Ami cleansing powder—including her daughter Christina, played by Mara. The camera zooms in for a close-up of Mara as she sits forlornly on the floor and utters an incredulous “Jesus Christ.” Only ten years old, and already carrying the weight of Joan Crawford’s world (along with about a pound of Bon Ami) on her tiny little shoulders.

Well, by God, in this show, we’d let
her
be the monster.

Marc and Mara made a delightfully abhorrent pair of siblings as they fought over the attentions of their mother, as read by the suitably inattentive Mary McTigue. In this scene, Stinky, stoned out of his mind, has to explain the rules to “Murder in the Dark,” a parlor game played with all the lights off, which requires a randomly chosen “murderer” to stalk and then “kill” a victim of his or her choice with a couple of quick squeezes on the arm. Always looking for new ways to manhandle his mother, Stinky uses Hedda as his demonstration model, and, predictably, gets carried away with the arm squeezes. Marc played all of this to perfection, with the same pizzazz he’d shown the day before. Even Dennis, who’d once claimed that Marc would get into the show “over my dead body,” crossed over from the dark side of familial rivalry to become just another out-of-control Marc Castle groupie.

Marc had found plenty of time backstage to size up the competition, and decided he wouldn’t stick around to watch Scott’s final moment of truth. Just as he (Marc) was stepping into the alley through the stage door, Scott—in the middle of his own “Murder in the Dark” scene—opted to spare his mother and to “murder” his obnoxious little sister Gay instead. This took everyone by surprise—including poor little Mara—and the result was volcanic.

Marc heard the screams of laughter from the alleyway, and his heart sank. “I knew I’d just lost the role,” he confessed to me later.

We stayed in the Belasco after the auditions, to make our final decisions. John asked us all to give our choices along with the reasons behind those choices, and Stuart volunteered to go first: Don Potter for Howie (who could believe Carleton?); Mara for Gay (in addition to the fact that she was very talented, the press would never hurt); Jack Dabdoub for Joe (no question); and Scott Evans for Stinky.

“I loved Marc’s first audition,” Stuart said. “But the more I saw of him and Scott back to back, the more I realized there was a firmer foundation of reality in Scott’s performance.”

“Dagmar’s the stickler for me,” he continued. “It’s between Jean DeBaer and Lisa McMillan. I’ve worked with Lisa, and know she’s inventive—but she just doesn’t have Jean’s experience. I’d go with Jean.”

John and Ricka’s choices matched, with the exception of Dagmar. Neither was sure we’d even
seen
the killer Dagmar yet.

I’m sure the others expected a fight from me about Scott, but they didn’t get one. Scott’s amazing ability to pull stuff out of the air—bringing something entirely different to each reading—had absolutely floored me. Stuart’s comment about a “firmer foundation of reality” also impressed me, in spite of the fact that we were dealing with stock characters in this lowest-of-the-low form of comedy. I agreed that Scott might just be able to make Stinky both funny
and
believable, which seemed a terrific concept at the time.

“But I think Marc should definitely understudy the role,” I said, resolutely. Saying this didn’t do much to relieve my guilt, but if John bought it, I would at least be able to leave with a bone to throw to Marc.

“There’s a problem with that,” said John. “I’ve talked to Eddie, and he thinks we should wait until the show is running before splurging on individual understudies for either Hedda or Stinky. We’re better off now hiring somebody who could stand in for both Stinky
and
Howie—and maybe even Nelson, in a pinch.”

Ready or not, I had my cue.

“You know we’ve talked about Dennis understudying Nelson,” I said.

“He could do that,” said John. “But, you know—we also need somebody to play Sidney.”

“Aha! The ‘fetid roll of gauze,’” said Dennis, who was, after all, standing right there in the same room. He was quoting Nurse Dagmar’s profoundly succinct description of her body-bandaged charge, Sidney Holloway.

“He may be fetid, but he gets his name on the marquee,” said John. “But it’s up to you. You can play Sidney, or you can understudy Nelson
and
play Sidney, or you can just understudy Nelson—and we’ll get somebody else to wear the gauze.”

“Door number two! Door number two!” shouted Ricka.

“Hey,” said Lillie. “You’ll be immortalized as one of the original cast members! And bless their little old hearts, nobody
ever
remembers the understudies.”

“You all know I’m claustrophobic,” Dennis pointed out.

“You’ll be wearing a bathrobe and slippers,” said John. “We’ll only have to cover your hands and head. And maybe your ankles, I don’t know, we’ll have to check with the costume designer.”

“And I’m sure they’ll cut out little holes for all
your
little holes,” chuckled Ricka.

“You’re all enjoying this, aren’t you?” grumbled Dennis.

“Yes,” we all said, none of us missing the beat.

“I don’t know,” Dennis said finally. “May I at least sleep on it?”

“Sure,” said John. “But don’t take too long.” He smiled maliciously.

“We need to wrap this thing up.”

“This is pay-back time,” said Dennis when we got home that evening. “He’s never forgiven me for being your agent.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But at least it’s all on the table now.”

I had planned to stop by Marc’s apartment right after the auditions to deliver the news—whatever it was—in person, but the decision that Dennis now had to make had shifted my focus. And, under the circumstances, I didn’t think our little quandary would have been of much interest to Marc. I called him instead, bracing myself for the worst.

“That’s okay,” said Marc while I was apologizing for calling with this news from the safety of my own home. “I figured when you and Dennis didn’t show up that Scott had been cast. It would have been nice if you’d come over anyway,” he added, not accusingly, but stating a simple fact.

“Listen,” he said, “I figure if things work out the way they normally do in my life, Scott will come down with some strange, exotic disease just before opening and I’ll end up doing Stinky yet.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s just keep looking at the
bright
side.”

Dennis took the weekend to decide whether he wanted to show up backstage every night of the run of
Moose Murders
to play poker with the other understudies or to be rolled on stage every evening as the quadriplegic Holloway patriarch. A third option, of course, was to preserve his dignity and just bow out of the project altogether, and, trust me, he found this to be the most appealing solution by far. But having just quit his day job, he was in too deep to abandon the Moose now. On Sunday night he called John to tell him he had decided both to understudy Nelson and to make his Broadway debut as the mummified Holloway patriarch.

It was during this phone conversation that we learned that John and Ricka, after much deliberation, had decided to offer the role of Dagmar to Lisa McMillan, and that she’d accepted. We also learned that Carnegie alums Andy Matthews and Suzanne Henry (whose teeth were just fine now, thanks for asking) were both on board to join Dennis in those backstage poker games.

Unlike the rest of us, Jane had a few other pressing matters to attend to at the moment (not the least of which was going over the edited galleys of her book), so telling her that Sue Henry would be understudying Snooks was far easier than telling Marc he’d lost the role of Stinky. Still, it saddened me that I hadn’t been able to book passage on the good ship
Moose Murders
for either one of them.

But at least Dennis was aboard, and now that our unsinkable vessel had a full passenger list, it looked as if we were ready to finally set sail into the icy waters ahead.

I certainly hadn’t expected to lock antlers with Eve at our very first meeting. As Dennis and I drove north on the Pacific Coast Highway a few days after this battle of wills, those ominous words “we can take this all up again with John in New York” played back in my head like a loop from some God-awful B movie. Was Dennis right? Had I single-handedly managed to screw things up with the star even before rehearsals began? Was I just another temperamental hack? Were hacks even
allowed
temperaments? And what kind of reception would I have to face when I got back to the city in another week?

I managed to calm myself down a bit once we entered the state of Washington, the final stop on our itinerary. We spent these last few days at the Benedictine monastery on the campus of Saint Martin’s College in Lacey, where we were guests of Dennis’s old army buddy—a musical prodigy-turned-monk who now went by the name of Brother Aelred. Dennis had long considered Saint Martin’s to be his “soul center,” and even I—the designated nonspiritual member of our party of two—found the austere charm of this woodsy retreat extremely seductive. As I took in the sobering beauty of Mount Rainier looming on the horizon, or sat with the brothers in front of a crackling fire inside the abbey’s community room, I was tempted to renounce my wicked, wicked ways, swallow my unearned pride, and just give in to all of Eve’s ideas—provided, of course, I would ever get to see her again.