The Alchemist (2001)

I blame myself.

When the decision was made to produce Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, I was thinking that I would direct it. My wife's grandfather was an English professor at O.U. and one of his pets joys was the works of Jonson. After a shaky start I was growing to appreciate the old man, and his sense of humor (grandfather Calvin G., not Ben Jonson) and he was trying to make inroads to my affection by engaging me in conversation about classic works of drama. He had given me an one hundred year-old copy of this particular play and in reading it, I found the play utterly hilarious.

Me. I did. I had an idea of how to create a modern-dress version and that it would work. However, events came together in such a way that my wife and I were to expect our first child within a month of the opening. I was pretending to be the artistic director of a theater company, so I did what I thought anyone would do, I handed to project off to someone else.

When our child was stillborn, I lost all interest in everything, including and especially this project. I think I attended auditions, but maybe not, I have no memory of that. I attended production meetings, I approved of the design, loved the cast (it had a great cast) though I was not pleased with the length. It was going to be three acts, but so was Hamlet, two years earlier, you can do three acts if they are swift and exciting and compel people to see how it all turns out.

Attending the first dress rehearsal, I gave some basic notes to the director. There wasn't much I could do at that point. There was a lot of schtick which substituted for wit -- a bit about choosing a name for an apothecary's shop, which is funny out loud, became this elaborate gag that involved making rebuses which took away from the humor. However, the bit where they constructed a bong out of scientific tools was outright hilarious.


My one significant note involved volume. Everyone was yelling every single line. Every line had an exclamation point. I told the director to bring it down, it's unbearable. That was it, my signal contribution to Bad Epitaph's production of The Alchemist.

Thes note, however, was never shared with any single member of the company. Quite the opposite, in fact. On opening night the director gave the company this stunning, astonishing, jaw-dropping directive:

"Go twice as big as you have ever gone in your life."

The main character of Subtle was played by Nick Koesters. Our director told Nick Koesters to go twice as big as he had ever gone in his life. But it wasn't just Nick, Allen Branstein was given this note, too. "Twice as big."

As my man Bob Golthwait used to say, "Who gave the gun to the baby?"

Now, I am not going to suggest that opening night of Bad Epitaph Theater Company's production of The Alchemist was a howling, over-the-top crackfest. Heavens, no. Instead I will quote the critics:

"A disappointing torment of incoherent yelling." - James Damico

"It had audiences dropping like flies." - Keith Joseph

"I left after two hours." - Roy Berko

However, there was this generous observation from Linda Eisenstein in the Plain Dealer:

"Throughout the evening you can watch the alchemy of the comedy come and go as the revved up players slam about, chewing scenery, then suddenly snap into focus with an exquisitely choreographed bit of business."

I know she's referring to the bong.

If I were to isolate one major error in this production, it would be its length. The verse plays I have directed have succeeded or failed depending upon how much dedication I made to cutting the script, making sensible internal cuts to the verse line, and lots of them. The cast included some of my favorite people I have ever gotten to work with, the design was kooky and inspired, and many of the gags were truly hysterical. But in the desperate attempt to finish the piece in something close to three hours, they were going terribly fast, which contributed to be being terribly loud, and pushing very, very hard. Regardless of whatever else had been going on in my life prior to March 20, I should have cut the script myself.

To promote the show, we got airtime on the WKYC Channel 3 morning show. Most of these TV promotions feature the actors in the background, with the host and producer of whatever program is being featured chatting in the foreground, you barely hear the actors at all. We decided, therefore, to present some of the most visual scenes.

I blame myself.

UPDATE: Sending that video around the Facebook, several company members had the opportunity to comment upon how much worse the stage combat looks with a camera right in Nick's face.

Director Larry Nehring:

"If you show the faces in slapstick combat it looks serious. I remember wanting to grab the cameraman and pull him back to the audience POV. It's hard to answer a stupid question when your soul is yelling, 'stop saying its not funny when you aren't seeing it right!'"

Yes, it looks pretty ugly close-up. However, we did tell them that this scene was going to feature "stage combat" -- the host leads off the segment warning that a fight is about the happen. Then he suddenly gets the vapors and demands to know just what the hell is going on. That was awkward.

So, did it look more funny from the "audience point-of-view"? So glad you asked. Harris was in town for our son's memorial service, and he was on hand to record all of the recording. We dredge up odd bits of video, you decide: 

The Wayward Angel (2000)

"Old Stone Church"
(Late 20th Century)

The First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, known for almost two centuries as the Old Stone Church sits at 91 Public Square the corner of Rockwell and Ontario. Constructed from 1831 to 1833, Old Stone has a long, illustrious history, and a complicated relationship with the theater.

There goes the neighborhood.

Reverend Samuel C. Aiken gave a sermon in 1836 condemning the theater as houses of sin. In 1883 a theatre called The Park opened next door. Three months later a gas explosion destroyed that theater, and burned down the Old Stone Church along with it. The church was rebuilt, but so was the theatre, which was renamed The Lyceum, opening in 1895.

By the end of the 20th century the Old Stone was by far the oldest building remaining on Public Square. For over a hundred years the building had lacked a spire, since its second one was destroyed after another fire in 1884. It wasn't until 1998 that a replica spire was erected, and the Berea sandstone of the building which had been blackened over the years was cleaned. Suddenly, this rather stern looking church was given a vibrant new appearance.
Around that time I had just turned thirty, and my friends and I were making theater in and around downtown under the name Bad Epitaph Theater Company. We presented contemporary version of Hamlet and Lysistrata, and in late 1999 staged the first Cleveland-area production The Santaland Diaries for our first "holiday play."

For any theater company, the holiday production is key. For some reason, people who never see theater the rest of the year will come out for a pageant of some kind, and every local company competes for Christmastime cash. Some theaters depend upon their Solstice cash-cow to pay for the rest of their programming. We found something which fit with what we felt at the time was our urbane, Gen-X point of view in David Sedaris's tribute to horrible part-time work.

The plan was to remount this production in 2000, and to make a lot of money. However, it was also decided to present a second holiday show, The Wayward Angel. This one-act was written in the early 1960s as a television script for a local station, though we never could discover which one. Some said it was for PBS, but there was no PBS in those days. The playwright, Thomas P. Cullinan, wrote for KYW-TV (now WKYC, our NBC affiliate) and it may have originally been broadcast there. The show was tapped for national distribution, but there were copyright issues regarding music performed or played during the broadcast, and the recording was shelved, probably taped over, and most likely lost to history.

I didn't see why, when we already had a corner on the hippest new holiday show available, that we had to present two Christmas shows, and besides, The Wayward Angel, the story of a near-fallen angel who tries to get right with the Lord by crashing the Messiah's birth, only to crash-land off the coast of Celtic Ireland and unintentionally plant the seeds of Christianity on the Emerald Isle ... well, it made me a little sick.

But Thomas W. Cullinan, the playwright's son, was one of our artistic collaborators. And there was a great part for Nick. However, I insisted that if we were to present a Christmas pageant, then as Charlie Brown said, "We're going to do this play, and we're going to do it right." It would be free and open to the public, soliciting donations to cover the costs of production and anything left over we would donate to some worthy cause.

Since the days of Reverend Aiken the Old Stone Church has embraced the arts and has strong artistic programming. In the late 20th Century the director of the Faith & Arts Series was David Gooding, formerly of the Cleveland Play House, and a connection to members of our artistic team. By mid-year we had already checked out the space and determined that while the 700-seat sanctuary would not be appropriate, the fellowship hall on the lower level would be ideal.

Nick Koesters, Face-down on the floor. Again.

And a modest Christmas pageant it was. With the curtains of its little stage closed, the room appeared the familiar, utilitarian church hall; tile floors, big round tables with table cloths. Poinsettias on each table. Arabica donated coffee and a large tray of brownies and carrot cake for each evening's performance, which were offered to patrons for free. A half-hour before the performance, musicians played a charming selection of Celtic tunes before the curtains parted to reveal a startlingly complete box-set of a hut carved into the stage. The performance itself lasted about 45 minutes.

Now. The Old Stone Church is located across Public Square from Tower City, which in those days was still being frequented by suburban shoppers in significant numbers. But how many would cross the square after dark to explore a forbidding looking stone church in downtown Cleveland, or park their car on the street to come and join us?

"It's a wisely observed, elegiac little piece, leavened by Cullinan's unforced statement and wry humor." - James Damico, The Free Times

"It's a small story, and a brief drama. But it will also leave the viewer humbled and thankful in this busy season of rampant consumerism." - Tony Brown, The Plain Dealer

Nick was singled out for his surprising quietness.

The room sat over one hundred, we were full most nights, and in the final days before Christmas, it was standing room only. Admission was the request that everyone bring at least one non-perishable food item for the Old Stone Church Food Pantry, but we received in excess of 2,000 food items. People were also very generous with their cash, as we covered our costs and had $1,000 left over to provide to the Food Pantry.

Mimi Rodriguez

Closing night, the house was packed. One audience member came up to us to explain how they had just been over at Tower City, and all they wanted was some peaceful and enjoyable Christmas entertainment and that this was perfect. There were grandparents and lots of children. My wife attended, she was very pregnant with our first child. It was the night before Christmas Eve.
It was all very sweet and sentimental, far from the arch and bitter amusements that had been my source of creativity since childhood. I could imagine a future in this emotional place, embracing family and hope, though circumstances made it necessary for me to wait a while longer.

Sources:
Showtime in Cleveland (John Vacha)
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Old Stone Church website
Wikipedia