Well, dear readers, time is funny. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, time is funny. My friend Udana Power, who was the original leading lady of my musical Together Again when we premiered the show at LACC, asked me if I could make her a copy of the show – we’d had a little one-camera tape of one performance, which I transferred to DVD some years ago. So, I found it and am going to bring it to her so she can get a copy made (I don’t have a DVD burner except in the computer and I don’t really even know how to upload video from a DVD, so easier for her to do it. We did the show in September of 1982. I only used one student – I’m surprised they allowed that, but they did. The rest were pros and in addition to directing and writing I also played in it. At the time, I thought the idea of the show was really good: A comedy troupe had broken up, nobody was happy, nobody worked and so they try regrouping and get together again. The two founders of the group, Annie and Andrew, had a romance that, like the group, had gone sour. He’s never gotten over it, and she’s kind of moved on although is not in a relationship. In the LACC production they’ve been apart for seven years or something even though the group’s only been apart for one year – it was a little confusing, actually. In any case, in act one we’re in the room where they create – a table, a piano, a window with a life of its own and chairs. In a series of scenes we watch them warily get back on track, but all the old stuff is really still there, but they know they’re a terrific troupe together and they just go with it. Andrew of course is pining for Annie and she’s not having it, but during the act they have a moment, and come back together. Then she gets scared, stops it, and with that hanging over everything, the troupe is set to premiere their new show as the act ends.
The second act is backstage and on stage for the show. So, I got to have the fun of writing sketches and songs for their show, in addition to the plot stuff that takes place backstage. I was very happy with the idea of it and I wrote the songs and the show over the course of three months. Now, when I’d done my show Stages, I hadn’t acted in it at LACC – I just directed it and got it where I wanted to get it – then when the show moved, because everything direction-wise was all done, I took over the role that was based on me and had a blast doing it at the Matrix. But here, with Together Again, I was acting in it AND directing it, something I enjoyed doing, but not with this show. I needed to just direct – to be out front so I could actually see what was going on and what was and wasn’t working. Because I was onstage, I couldn’t, even though I had someone walk my stuff when I was blocking. I did make a few changes during rehearsal, including cutting about eight pages of an act one sketch that the troupe is reading. I knew some of it was pretty funny, and was worried about other parts.
We opened and had a successful run. I would get entrance applause every night, and that was really odd to me, but fun. The funny stuff worked well, but there was way too much of the show that didn’t land the way I wanted. But because I was in it, I just never addressed any of it. Still, lots of laughs and the audiences seemed to enjoy it. I thought I gave a pretty good performance, and the rest of the cast did very well with what I gave them, which, in certain cases, wasn’t much.
Then we moved the show to a little theater in Burbank and I changed leading ladies. My new leading lady took me aside at one rehearsal and she said, “Can we discuss your character?” I thought that was odd, but I said sure. She then proceeded to tell me that the way I’d written him pining away for seven years made him unpleasant, stalkerish, and a little nuts. I was about to argue with her but I just shut my mouth, thought about it for a minute and realized she was completely right. That’s why I’d been struggling with certain aspects of playing the guy and why I felt occasional audience resistance to that part of the story. I changed it instantly to make it that they’d broken up when the group broke up – one year prior. It was really just a few lines, but boy was it easier to play and boy was he more likeable than he was at LACC. I made other changes, but nothing too major. We had a horrible run there, due to no publicity and no audiences. And that was that.
Over the years, I’d shown people one or two scenes from the LACC production – the ones that were really laugh out loud funny. But I hadn’t watched the entire show for probably thirty years. It seems inconceivable that we did the show thirty-three years ago. And last night, I watched it from start to finish, except for a couple of parts that were so excruciating to watch that I had to fast forward through them. And here’s what I felt: My performance, which had two or three really good scenes, was basically not so hot – I can see that I’m just not fully invested because my third eye is also watching the other actors, the staging and all that stuff. I’m distracted from fully committing to my fellow. The opening two minutes does what is really hard to do – big, big laughs right out the gate, in a scene with Alan Abelew (George Brenner in The First Nudie Musical) and I. I don’t love what I’m doing that much, but it’s funny so there’s that. Alan, on the other hand, is priceless throughout the show – I didn’t appreciate just how good he was and how great his energy was. The scene where Annie and Andrew come back at night to the room, after everyone is gone, to have some private time after they’ve gotten together, is the highlight of the show and is everything I do well. My performance in that one scene is quite good with timing that works and I’m not distracted by six other people. Udana is also excellent in the scene. My second leading lady, Penny Peyser, brought a whole different thing to that character and she was great to act with and I was probably better in the Burbank version, and at least had the changes in that helped my character not be such a jerk. The laughs are really big in that scene – the seduction to a Barry Manilow song, the taking our clothes off, the one-liners – all good. Then the capper to the scene is we’re finally starting to get passionate, when two others from the troupe show up, having had the same idea as us – to use the room for romance after hours. We hear them outside the door, and scramble to get out of the room via the window. She grabs her clothes and goes out, I grab mine and go out, but the window falls and gets stuck with me half in and half out of the room. It’s a visual I knew would be killer and it is. We’ve already set up several times that the window does this kind of thing. Then they come in the room, start to undress and the girl sees me and it’s just one huge laugh after another, screaming laughter really. Would it have been that the whole show was like that.
The scene that follows it is also pretty funny in its staging and writing. But for most of act one, as a writer I have let down all the actors except Alan – he had good material. The other characters are okay as characters, but my dialogue for them is, at times, truly wretched and unfunny, and for a couple of them they basically have one beat or joke to play for the entire show. Just bad, lazy writing and it embarrassed me to watch it. Again, I fixed some of that when we moved the show. Then act two’s show within the show stuff was a mixed bag. The comic musical numbers were all fine. The sketches not quite as fine – the restoration comedy as done by a bad Equity Waiver theater, had its moments, some really good, funny moments. But my performance in that scene is terrible – I was going for something (that you can rarely understand a word I’m saying) but I just don’t pull it off. I do get laughs, but they’re not honest and I don’t like it at all. Who shines in the sketch is Jeff Maxwell, who’s playing an understudy going on at the last minute, Alan, and the marvelous Debbie Tilton, who is great in the show. She’s got the best song in act one – her character is very neurotic and crazy, and she played it so well – her song is called A Slight Neurotic and it regularly brought the house down – people were in tears because she sang it so beautifully and was so moving with it. Poor Joan Ryan (then Joan Vigman) was saddled with the worst written role – she struggles to make something of it, but she can’t because there’s simply nothing there. Her show within the show number, though, is very funny. The one student, who was then called Debbie Moradzedeh (not sure about that spelling! – she’s now called Gracie Moore), is really wonderful, too. In the show within the show, there’s what we called the Improv Bit, where we get suggestions from the audience, but do whatever we want instead (all scripted save for the banter with the audience). Some of that worked okay, but boy could it have been better. Stages suffered from the same erratic dialogue, but for whatever reason it just didn’t matter in that show – people just loved the show. And Rick Waln is very funny with his show within a show number, Ode to the Musical (I Hate Musicals) – yes, sorry Ruthless, but we were there a decade before you.
I can’t say that I enjoyed watching it, but it was fascinating to me just how awful I thought some of it was. I really came into my own as a writer three years later with my first straight play, the comedy The Good One – that’s where my dialogue skills really got good and I have, since then, been very proud of my dialogue writing in scripts and especially my novels. There is an interesting little postscript: Together Again was seen by a TV producer during the Burbank production. I was summoned for a meeting about the possibility of making it a pilot – they loved the idea of it – the backstage vs. onstage of a comedy troupe and I said we could change it from a theater comedy troupe to – wait for it – a Saturday Night Live kind of thing. Sound familiar? It should. I occasionally seem to be there first, but rarely at the right time. Maybe someday that will change, although at my age, one would hope that would be soon.
Yesterday, I slept almost ten hours, got up, did a jog, and then we had a rehearsal in a much too small rehearsal room in North Hollywood, as the theater wasn’t available to us. I gave some notes before we began the run-through, and had Sami just run a few things. The run-through itself went as well as it could go in such a stupid tiny space, but it was good that we did it. After, several of us went to Hugo’s for a meal. I had my beloved small Caesar salad and my beloved pasta papa – both excellent. Then I came home, answered e-mails, and then sat on my couch like so much fish and watched Together Again.
Before I continue, may I just point out the painfully obvious – this is the final day of August. How the HELL did that happen? This month flew by, like a gazelle doing the Lindy Hop. And tomorrow it will be September, and let me just say that it is my fervent hope and prayer that September will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful.
Today, I’ll jog, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then we have our first Kritzerland rehearsal. After that, I’ll just relax.
Tomorrow we’re back in the theater and will have a run-through. I’ll probably get there a bit early to see how much of the set has gone up. Wednesday is another run-through, Thursday is the second Kritzerland rehearsal, Friday I’m in the theater all day with the lighting guy and then we do a full tech run-through, Saturday at noon we do a complete tech run-through, then have the Kritzerland stumble-through, after which we may or may not go back to the theater, Sunday we do a full tech run at one, then we go to The Federal for sound check and then our show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, eat, hopefully pick up packages, have a rehearsal and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: Have you ever looked back at something you’ve done and thought you could do it much better these days? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, having revisited the only partially successful Together Again again.