Last Drops

Okay, now, this really is going to be the last entry about STONE SOUP … this production anyway.

Some people have asked where the characters names come from … here goes …

Billy Bill Williams: Obvious enough.

Brooke Lynn Manero-Epstein (aka Brooklyn): Brooke Lynn is a play on words I’ve wanted to do for a while. I also wanted a last name that was both Italian and Jewish, as those tend to be the “city kid” types that show up in the types of movies to which I was paying tribute. Yes, Manero comes from John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever and Epstein from one of his fellow Sweathogs on “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

Sgt. Ignatz Ratski-Watski (aka Sarge): Nobody got this one. Nobody. Wow. Okay, so in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, a classic Preston Sturges comedy, Betty Hutton plays Trudy Kockenlocker (seriously) a young woman who goes to a party to see off some soldiers shipping out to fight in WWII. She gets a little drunk and hits her head, for the sake of the Hayes office, who wouldn’t allow pure drunkenness as an excuse for what follows. When she wakes from a daze the next morning, she finds she has married a soldier who has since shipped out (she’s also pregnant by him, but she finds that out later). The closest she can come to remembering his name is that it’s something like “Ignatz Ratski-Watski.” Ta-da! Am I implying that Sarge is wooing Hildy despite having a pregnant wife back in Morgan’s Creek? Um … gee, I hope not. Or, at least, if he is, he was drunk, too, and doesn’t remember. Hmm … a Google search suggests I’ve been spelling the name wrong. Most people seem to go with “Ratzkywatzky.” P’raps I’ll change it for publication.

Hildegarde “Hildy” Idlewild: “Hildy” comes from His Girl Friday, it was Rosalind Russel’s character. However, in the original stage version, The Front Page, Hildy was a man, but still called Hildy. In fact, the feminine nature of the name was part inspiration for Howard Hawks in remaking the film as a romantic comedy. Idlewild is, of course, the former name of JFK Airport in Brooklyn. The other major airport in New York is LaGuardia, after the former mayor. So, since Hildy is a mayor, and calling her “Mayor Kennedy” would have been kinda weird …

Lt. Elty: Oddly, the cast members I spoke to didn’t get the half-visual pun. See, the abbreviation for “Lieutenant” is “Lt” so … The idea came from Fred Hembeck confusion about a “Sgt. Rock” story of his youth.

Officer Secondcop: Okay, this pun everyone got. The inspiration was Bill Murray, who often complained, when he first started on “SNL” that he only ever got to play “the second cop” in sketches.

(I forget if I mentioned this: I was worried about depicting such goofy cops, and having them be “the bad guys” as much as this play has bad guys. I don’t think they are though, they’re doing their job, and Sarge IS scamming the town … they just don’t see that he has a higher calling to do it)

Sully: Like I could give a Boston Irishman any other name. I got the idea for Sully five years ago when I wanted to do “Make Way for Ducklings.” He was going to be a Boston cabbie who narrated the story. I couldn’t get the rights (just as well, I’d have had to add too much), so Sully went back in the files. I was surprised to see, reading old entries, that I gave him a full name, Eamon Sullivan. But I’m not surprised that I never used it.

Penelope: Just a name I like for girl next door types. The first idea I ever had for a children’s play -- the THREE BILLY GOATS gruff I plotted out but never wrote in 1993 -- had a teenage girl goat named Penelope, as a love interest for the youngest goat. Yep … goat love.

Farmer Donald McCauld: On tonight’s “Vague Wordplay Theatre” see Noah distort the name “Old McDonald” for his own nefarious purposes.

Cow Cow: Giving her a traditional name like Bessie seemed like gilding the lily … if I’m using the cliché correctly.

Madame Melange: Oddly, it took me a while to arrive at this pretty basic French culinary word joke. I think I had toyed with making her Italian, since I’d done a lot with French before. But somehow I feel more comfortable mocking the French. Gently and with love, of course.


Thoughts …

David added a fun recurring gag that every time the characters would run offstage (which was often), they would first bend their lead leg at the knee and hold it for a second, before dashing off, ala any number of Hannah Barbara cartoons (we think Snagglepuss in particular). This was especially funny when Farmer McCauld tells Cow Cow “I can’t do that leg thing” when they take off to pursue Billy and Penelope. I’d love to add this to the script for future productions and publications, but could that possibly come across in print?

My favorite line flub of all time came when an actor couldn’t remember the words to the following lyric: “If you know the words, please sing along.”

The costumes were fantastic. I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me that Lt. Elty’s police uniform was actually a pilot’s getup. The cow costume was especially great (and not actually as hot as Bob Smith’s review implied, thank god). I was quite pleased that our designer went for a 40s look, since that kinda diffused the obvious Iraq allusions. Minor point: I kinda wish we’d been less authentic on the shoes, so the poor actresses didn’t have to do chase scenes in heels.

As for the Iraq thing: I got some interesting responses. I know one actor told me he first read the script and said “Whoah! Iraq!” Our family friend Chris Rohmann, an occasional theatre critic and teacher/director at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School (and director of the excellent production of MIDSUMMER that just closed at Hampshire Shakespeare Company -- who had, before Chris arrived, produced a lot of Shakespeare that … well, I wouldn’t call it excellent) saw the show, loved it, and told me how surprised I was that I put such obvious Iraq allusions in a children’s play.

Personally, I don’t think it’s blatantly Iraq. If you dropped STONE SOUP in a time machine and sent it back 35 years ago, people would think it’s about Vietnam. In fact, the idea that these returning soldiers are being treated with suspicion sounds a lot more like Vietnam to me than Iraq. Seriously, is there any American citizen right now who wouldn’t happily make a sandwich for a serviceman or woman coming back from Iraq? I would … though I’d probably try to steer the conversation towards baseball.

If someone read this play, without knowing me and my background, they might think I supported the war (I didn’t, though I was on the fence at first). My soldiers are highly sympathetic and then there’s the scene where Hildy tells Sarge that she was opposed to the war and he says …

SARGE
You want to know who really hated the war? Us. The ones who had to fight it. I hated that war every minute of every day. But I learned a lot from it. I learned that there's nothing more important than the people closest to you. And when I see this town, full of people afraid to let themselves get close to anyone ... I worry. So if this little soup thing we're doing can bring people together ... I dunno.

You could read that as a wise soldier telling a stupid liberal to shut up.

It’s not, though. It’s a non-partisan statement that all war, justified or not, sucks, and community is good.

See, I’m not being liberal or conservative here. I’m being simplistic.

I wonder if Susan will get any letters about it.

Oh, and I should say that I may have spoken too ill of the theatre. From everything I’ve seen so far, PVST is really settling in to its new home and has figured out how to produce show every bit as good as the best we did in the old tent. I will always remember the Mt. Holyoke years more fondly, because, hey, that’s where I grew up. But AFTER PLAY was great, and I expect BEAU JEST to be good, too (I saw a runthrough of BLITHE SPIRIT too, and it looked like a good production of a play that I don’t especially like). I do kinda wish they weren’t doing so many revivals – seven out of eight of the plays they’re doing this year were performed by the theatre (quite recently, the last time we did these shows were 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995 (2), 1997, and 1999 … hey, those are the last six odd-numbered years in the 20th century … weird, man) and the other one was done by our sister theater, New Century in 1994, with the same actress. True, after 35 years, you kinda run low on shows you haven’t done, but I do think we could dip back a little earlier -- they haven’t done DON’T DRINK THE WATER, PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE, CALIFORNIA SUITE, etc. in over 20 years. Are they too dated? They can’t be more dated than BLITHE SPIRIT, can they?

But, hey, they don’t do these shows for me. They do them for an audience, and the audiences are loving what they see, so I should shut up.


Anyway, STONE SOUP …

I love everything David did directing the show with very few exceptions. There was one bit, where, after the love song, Sully and Brooklyn get chased off by the cops and they run past Sarge and Hildy who get “spun around” by the chase … except that they’re supposed to be “back in town” while the chase is happening somewhere between town square and the cooking school. Yeah, the three couples were singing together, but through a stage convention, they were all “in different places.”

Oh, and the bit where Brooklyn lights the fire. The script calls for her to push on “a fire” set up on a dolly. Unrealistic, but easier, and it would allow the soup to go on and off stage. As it was, there was this whole sound cue where Brooklyn pours lighter fluid on the fire (yet, we had no prop for the can of fluid, so she had to mime), lights a match, and roaring fire starts … slow and not very funny.

Otherwise David is a genius!

It was probably wise to use confetti as the seasoning that gets thrown at Sully. I had thought we could use sand, hence my insistence that Sully have goggles. Still, getting whacked with fistfuls of sand isn’t much fun, even with goggles. … But it would have been funnier.

An odd thing about that bit -- the kids, the first time they got the confetti were placing it very gently in Sully’s snail shell (I know, this makes no sense if you haven’t read or seen the play … look at the pictures from Monday for some explanation). They knew Sully had to collect it for the plot to go forward. But, of course, they’re characters thought they were just throwing salt at slug, so of course they should have thrown it at him. Understandable that they didn’t realize stage convention would allow the shell to be “full of seasonings” even if none of the confetti actually landed in it, but I find it odd that they’d put plot consideration ahead of their characters’ immediate goal. Shows impressive forward thinking, I’d say.

The moustaches on all the cooking students, boys and girls alike, weren’t visible from the audience, but they were cute.

Cow Cow’s entrance, scored by “Bad to the Bone” is probably my all-time favorite.

There were a couple of places where I wish I could have written more dialogue to transition into songs … I never like what actors improvise. (yes, that’s me being a jerk again) This was particularly a concern at the top of the second act. Actually, the line when Elty locks up the three soldiers was clever: “Get in there you miscreants of the American military system,” but I worry that it’s offensive.

My mistake: Sully never introduces himself. Woulda been easy enough to stick in a “Sully the cab driver at your service” somewhere. As it is, we don’t learn his name till Brooklyn calls him by it at the cooking school, about halfway through the play.

The dance the kids did for “It’s Not Food Unless It’s French” is really good. Isaac, our choreographer is awesome.

Dammit, I didn’t get my Special Thanks in on time for them to make the program. Here they are:

Fred Hembeck, for the Elty idea.

Alison Green Will and Dan Golub, for doing an early reading at my house

Ross Garmil, for coming up with the name “Stone’s Throw” for town.

I might like to try to create an animated version of this some day. A lot of the gags would work better if they could be done at cartoon speeds.

My favorite SOS, perhaps of all time, would be the girl who said, “And I made a salad.” Loud, clear, enthusiastic. Talk about making the most out of nothing.

David put together a “Best Of” CD from the past four years. Four songs from each play. I think this is the list:

BREMEN
Pirates Without a Ship
Fur and Feathers
The Bremen Town Musicians
Perfect Harmony

(good choices)

PIED PIPER
Rats
Piper’s Song
Everything’s Great
Home is Where the Story Starts

(also good … I probably prefer “We’re Hamelin” to either “Rats” or “Piper’s Song” myself, but they’re all great)

EMPEROR
I Want to be a Vet
More Than This
We Don’t Want to be Models Anymore
Happy Ever After, After All

(this is the best choice, for variety, but I miss “Another Town”)

SOUP
Here We Are
Stone Soup
It’s Not Food Unless It’s French
You Gotta Believe

(woulda been my picks, too)

Pretty nice selection, for 10 bucks.


Okay, more than enough said about STONE SOUP.

Tomorrow … I start saying too much about BEAUTY AND THE BEAST!