John Morogiello – American Playwright

I just returned from New York, where I spent the most glorious week since Betsy and I went to Italy in 2002. I can’t resist passing along my impressions.

EASTER SUNDAY
I train into the city from my in-laws’ house in Cortlandt Manor, smiling at the suggestion of my mother-in-law that the upcoming production of Engaging Shaw was simply an excuse to avoid mass. I’ve not ridden on Metro-North in about ten years, and immediately I begin to think of the many times I’d traveled the route before, with Betsy, with Danny Vermont, or on the way to college. There are new luxury condos and townhomes along the way; and I think of how the poor owners are paying–in different senses of the word–for both the river view and the proximity to the railroad.

I arrive at the theater, very excited to see the final run-through and scene work before tech week. It’s my first opportunity to see what they’ve been working on, and my last opportunity to suggest any changes. Everyone seems happy to see me. Later, I’m told that some of the actors were intimidated by my presence; though I can’t understand why, because I’ve done nothing but gush about them and the entire experience from beginning to end. Marc Geller, who is playing Sidney Webb, warns us that he’s had a revelation about his character and wants to try something different today. His new take on the character is brilliant, as is the entire run-through. Claire Warden, playing Charlotte, is an absolute revelation: funny, strong, vulnerable, and able to hold her own against Warren Kelley, who delivers an intense and hilarious Shaw. I’m head-over-heels in love with her performance and tell her so. I’m honored that my play will be Claire’s New York debut, because she’ll be running that town in a year or so. My only note is to Warren, instructing him to keep all of his bandages on as he plows through Act Two, scene two.

Speaking with director Jackob Hofmann after the rehearsal, I’m a little embarassed because I’m so pleased with what everyone is doing, that all I can do is gush again. Everyone feels they need to return the compliments, which makes me want to run away. Before I go, Kim Sharp, the associate artistic director, gives me some suggestions for script changes, with which I agree. On the train back to Peekskill, I have a fun text exchange with my younger son about the Yankees/Red Sox game.

MONDAY
Betsy and the boys are heading back to Maryland, while I squat at the home of an old college friend in Astoria until Friday. I train into the city again, only this time I’m dragging an eighty pound suitcase behind. Frustrated that I’d be away from the gym for eight days while in New York, I packed the suitcase with dumbbells; but as I struggle to carry it up and down subway steps, avoiding tourists, it is clear that the genuine dumbbell is not the item within the suitcase, but rather the sweaty, grunting idiot who drags it.

The actors have a day off as the tech crew overtake the theater to focus the lights and write the cues. The set is gorgeous, particularly a huge reproduction of the Fabian Society’s emblem, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, which was painted by Jackob’s husband Hugh. Mickey McGuire, the stage manager, is great to work with. He’s wonderfully professional and keeps everyone in the loop. While they are managing the lights and music, I sit down to revise the script the way Kim suggested. Everything goes so smoothly, that we finish four hours early. I ask if I can leave the giant suitcase in the theater, while I explore the city until my college friend gets home from work. Jackob suggests I go to MoMA for the naked people exhibit. Though there are few things I like better than art and the nudity of people other than myself, I haven’t the courage to attend.

So, instead, I grab a couple slices of pizza, and drag a half ton of clothing and exercise equipment to Queens. Arriving at my friend Mike’s place two hours early, I drag the suitcase, like some herculean hobo, to a pizza place down the street, where I have another slice of pizza. Finally Mike arrives and we have a wonderful time catching up, and are pleased to discover we are in the same camp politically. He is in the process of planting blueberries, raspberries, and clover in his front yard, and having beehives installed on his roof. I’m fascinated, but can’t help asking how his neighbors feel about it. For dinner, he suggests pizza and I do not refuse–but I eat no more of it for the rest of the week.

TUESDAY
Tech with actors and a run-through. Much of the show is little more than, “Lights up. Lights down.” So we are running the show from the start of rehearsal. Victoria (Jamee) Vance, who plays Beatrice, has come alive during this rehearsal after a conversation with Jackob. All four actors are working as a unit. I voice only one concern when a light cue doesn’t match the script. I mention to Jackob that it’s an important one for me, because I have never seen it the way I wrote it in the previous productions. Just this once, I’d like to see it my way. Jackob justifies the theatricality to the performer, has a small conversation with Mickey and the lighting designer, and the cue is rewritten to reflect the script. It works and is kept.

After a break, we tackle Act Two scene two, the letter-writing scene. “Finally!” Mickey exclaims, “I’ve been waiting for this day since the first rehearsal.” It’s a whirlwind of lights, music, words, and set changing. Jackob’s staging, along with the lights and Larry Spivack’s music, keep the scene constantly in motion. Jackob has solved the problem of that scene, and I cannot restrain my smiles. Again, we break early because everything looks tight and Jackob is worried about Claire’s health. She has had a cold for nearly two weeks.

I head back to Astoria after grabbing a drink with Jackob. Turns out Mike doesn’t have the YES Network, so I head off to an Irish sports bar to watch Yankees/Red Sox. It is perhaps the toughest bar I’ve ever entered, and I don’t think I’ve heard the F-bomb dropped so frequently since I did Glengarry Glen Ross in Amish country (Yes, I really did). Everyone there is a Mets fan, so I need to cheer surreptitiously to avoid fisticuffs. The bartender is drinking along with the patrons, and by the eighth inning I am his best friend and he’s offering me beers on the house.

WEDNESDAY
Warren compliments my outfit, which I consider high praise, since he is always impeccably dressed, wearing a tie. He also likes the way I lounge across the chairs, declaring it sexy. I don’t think the word sexy has ever been associated with my name, unless there was a giant “IS NOT” between them. Warren then pays me one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received by asking why I’m not playing Shaw. Again, I am staggered by how pleasant and talented everyone is, particularly in light of every previous production of this play. Ordinarily, I wait for the disaster to occur, or to create one by worrying unnecessarily about what happens next; but this time I’ve decided–for once–to enjoy the moment. Dress rehearsal goes very smoothly and we break early.

I spend the evening with Mike and another college friend named JoAnn. We head to a sushi bar on 3rd Avenue and 27th Street, then sit on a park bench and talk until ten. JoAnn is a wonderful promoter of my work professionally, and I relish her sarcasm personally. The conversation is jovial and never lags.

THURSDAY
Invited dress. We run Act Two, scene two, a couple of times in the afternoon. I have dinner with Meg, an actress and scholar, who teaches at Brooklyn College. She is perhaps the most brilliant woman I know, aside from my wife, and I love talking theater with her because she not only knows the practice of it, but the history as well. She shows up at the restaurant with a carry-on bag, filled with research material for her doctoral dissertation.

As we walk toward the theater, Meg refuses to let me carry her bag. This frustrates me, because my manners are from a bygone era and I know I’d be in trouble with my wife if I didn’t at least offer. But it’s a beautiful evening and the sun is setting as we walk toward Times Square. I recognize Henry Winkler heading toward us, and we nod to each other. Meg and I head west to Ninth Avenue to avoid the tourists, still talking energetically about theater and Billy Joel. No one is on 36th Street as we turn onto it. Then, directly in front of us, a man steps out of a building with a bicycle. I recognize him as David Byrne, and he shyly turns away, riding past us.

The glance of David Byrne affects me like one of Stephen Dedalus’ epiphanies. I see myself from an outside vantage point: walking through New York on a golden evening, talking theater with a beautiful, intelligent woman, on the way to see a play of mine off-Broadway. It is a perfect moment. From a life I’ve dreamed of having since I was a kid. I get goose bumps and start babbling like a teenager about how amazing everything is. Meg laughs.

There are about thirty people at the dress rehearsal. The cast, again, is fantastic. There is lots of laughter, applause, and shaking of my hand by strangers. People exit the theater, tweeting their friends. Meg and I repair to a bar in Queens midway between her place and Mike’s. I am gratified by her response. She speaks about the way she would have directed certain scenes, delves for information about the future of Shaw and Charlotte’s relationship, and ends with stories about her personal past wherein she behaved or did not behave like Charlotte. We close the bar, and I stagger back to Mike’s around 1:30.

FRIDAY
First preview. I leave Mike’s place for a hotel in Manhattan, believing correctly that it will be a late night. My metrocard is bent and unusable, I break a wheel of my suitcase, and the stupid thing still weighs eighty pounds.

When I check in with the theater, I learn that the show is sold out. Obviously, the tweets from last night were positive, and had an effect. I am unbelievably nervous, almost nauseated. The audience, however, is very responsive, laughing in all the right places. But what is strange to me: they start cheering and booing the intellectual points each character makes as if it is a sporting event. When Charlotte proposes to Shaw, a woman in the audience loudly gasps. I’ve never seen reactions like this to a play. Clearly they are positive, but they are unexpected.

Seated behind me in the audience is a friend from my high school drama club, whom I’ve not seen since graduation–back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It’s great to see him again, and to meet his wife. I sit beside a very good teacher friend from Maryland, and after the show the two of us duck into an Irish pub called The Playwright to talk shop until the wee hours. Around one, we walk through Times Square, which illuminates us like 1940’s atomic test observers in the New Mexico desert. She catches a cab to her friend’s place. It is another perfect evening.

SATURDAY
I skip the matinee of Engaging Shaw to see Christopher Walken in A Behanding In Spokane with a couple of actress friends from the DC area. The play is good, but not brilliant. It has a substantial structural flaw, which is easy to forgive; but the dialogue given to the African American character puts me instantly in mind of Hollywood Shuffle. It’s embarassing and a big mistake on McDonagh’s part. Walken, however, is riveting–but I can’t explain why. Everything he does is so strangely wrong: shambling around the stage aimlessly as he speaks, delivering almost every line directly to the audience. I don’t know how he gets away with it. And yet, he is compelling, and saves the show. The understudy filled in for Sam Rockwell, so I don’t know whether or not his performance would have improved the script for me.

After the show, I abandon my friends and zip down to Abingdon to meet some of my wife’s family just as Engaging Shaw gets out. It was another sold out house, which is virtually unheard of. No one sells out the second preview–the matinee! Despite the full house, I’m told the audience was very quiet, except for a cell phone that went off and a woman who insisted upon talking back to the actors. My wife’s cousins have only nice things to say, however, and insist upon taking a picture with me in front of the poster, to prove to my father-in-law that they were there.

I have trouble reconnecting with my friends–though I do spot Tony Shalhoub coming out of Lend Me A Tenor–so I have dinner with the cast. They tell me that the evening show is sold out as well. I will need to give up my seat to a paying customer. But four seats are empty as the show starts, and the house manager seats me in one of them. Unfortunately, the four empty seats belong to a college friend of mine, who later provides an e-mail account of his failed efforts to attend. I hope he is able to make it another night.

The evening performance feels off somehow. Warren is misplacing his props and changing blocking. Claire is stepping on laughs by coming in too early. And the audience isn’t so much laughing, as smiling warmly. The energy is low and I start to get depressed. I mention my concerns to Jackob during intermission, and he sits in for act two, which goes much better.

After the show, Warren introduces me to Peter Bennett, the director of the original Broadway production of Crimes Of The Heart. I’d met him before at SUNY Albany in 1988, but he doesn’t remember. We have many friends and colleagues in common, however, whose names we drop; and he pays me the compliment of being glad to “finally” meet me after hearing about me for so many years. I’m grateful, since I never believe anyone thinks of me unless they’re sticking pins in my effigy.

Some of us head to a bar next door, where we enjoy a horror movie trailer on Jackob’s iPhone, in which one of our table mates has a role. We cheer every time her face appears on the screen.

Though there was much to enjoy, this particular day feels awkward and dull to me. As I walk back to the hotel, I am overwhelmed with boredom and paranoia, and I’m ready to head home.

SUNDAY
I arise at seven, having not slept a wink and with an aching back. I grab a Diet Coke, wander the streets a bit, and drag my suitcase to Penn Station, bearing a small grievance against the cavalier gratitude of youth. On the train, Jackob texts that we had our fourth full house in a row for the matinee, and that the laughs were huge. He declares that there’s a buzz throughout midtown and it’s all about Shaw. I smile, believing it to be hyperbole. But I smile pretty smugly nonetheless.