My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [40]
We arrange ourselves in our seats in the first balcony. Our view, not only of the stage, but of the whole opening-night crowd, is excellent. Nice seats; they must like Stacey a lot around here.
“Sure are a lot of fur coats in here,” I observe. “If I were with PETA, I’d totally stand in the lobby with buckets of red paint.”
She casts a sidelong glance in my direction. “I imagine the ushers would take issue with that.”
“Pfft, they’re each about a thousand years old, and they’re unpaid. No senior citizen is going to voluntarily take a bucket of paint in the teeth to save your chinchilla. Foolproof is what this idea is.”
Sometimes when Stacey and I are together, I leave her at a loss for words. This is one of those times. After a very long silence, she says, “I can honestly tell you that in all my theatergoing years, I’ve never had that thought.”
“Maybe I’m expanding your horizons, too.”
“My question is why would that even occur to you? Judging by some of your Facebook wall posts, you hate PETA.”
“I do, but I feel like it’s my purpose in life to coach people who are doing their jobs wrong.81 I mean, PETA could be so much more efficient. As it is now, all their paint-tossing activists have got to wait for Fashion Week. Here, they could do it every night from November to April. And twice on Saturdays!”
“Noted.”
I continue to scan the crowd, which I wouldn’t do were I otherwise distracted by, say, popcorn. “There are a lot of kids in here, too. That’s going to be trouble. I bet you’re glad you’re no longer responsible for all the little monsters being forced to see the show.”
Stacey’s eyes light up at the mere mention of her old job. “Not at all,” she says emphatically. “I loved teaching those kids. And I kept them from being monsters.”
Since the theater Nazis won’t let me have a beverage, I drink in the scenery. The set’s so elaborate. On the right side of the stage, there’s an enormous pile of rocks, leading up two full stories and exiting stage left.82 On the left, there’s a perfect rendition of an old farmhouse, but it’s hanging about twelve feet above the stage from ropes, which I find a tad disconcerting. What if it falls and crushes poor Brian Dennehy? Then what?
Scattered above the whole set are more enormous boulders hanging from what look like nooses. Nowhere onstage is anything that looks like an elm tree. I bet this is where my lack of theater education shows the most. I’m probably being way too literal here. Perhaps having an elm tree in a show with “elm” in the title is all weird and awkward and obvious, like when someone wears a band’s shirt to that band’s concert or when my mom says, “Don’t go there, girlfriend.”
The play begins and I’m instantly enthralled. I haven’t been to a show since Fletch and I saw Cabaret in the late nineties with a couple of college friends. Bless his heart, Fletch tried to like it, but big musical productions are never going to be in his wheelhouse. Even though I was mesmerized by the performances and haunted by some of the songs, I never went to anything else. I could have forced Fletch to accompany me, but he was so miserable that I couldn’t bring myself to torture him.
Still, I’m full of regret for letting all that time pass. If I’d taken the initiative, I’m sure I could have talked someone else into coming with me. Or I could have gone alone.
I forgot what a thrill live theater can be. I mean, this is the ultimate reality program. Anything can happen, and there’s no tape delay for the West Coast broadcast or team of editors to fix what went wrong in postproduction. Stacey’s recounted various hilarious snafus that happened during her tenure—props breaking, actors breaking wind, forgotten lines, cues missed, and once a director’s French bulldog wandered into the middle of the scene and refused to be coaxed off the stage.
I used to love seeing plays and even thought I’d be a stage actress myself at one point. My plan was to be a big triple threat on Broadway— despite being utterly tone deaf and uncoordinated—and then to break into television, having established