Heart of Glass (16 page)

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Every day was a party, working on this silly, sweet play—we were having a blast. Rehearsing with Dad was marvelous—
he was so generous as an actor, funny, and was always coming up with surprising bits of business that made the play better. I felt that by playing father and daughter we were bonding in a new way, becoming closer through our work. Growing up, I had always been a daddy's girl and was excited for everyone to see us onstage as father and daughter playacting the relationship I'd always dreamed of.

We opened to boffo reviews—the run was extended, and then we were offered a chance to perform it at a summer theater in Denver called the Elitch Gardens. It was in an amusement park, had been operating since 1890, and everyone from George Arliss to Tyrone Power to Robert Redford had played there. The entire cast signed on—it all seemed so glamorous, akin to going on tour.

Right before we departed for our run at the Elitch, a casting person at the Guthrie Theater contacted me. He'd seen me in
Dear Ruth
, and they were looking for a replacement for the part of the boy Cherubino in Beaumarchais's play
The Marriage of Figaro
. It's a trouser role, meaning that it is performed by an actress in male clothing. The woman playing the part now, Caitlin Clarke, could only do the first two weeks of the run, then had a TV commitment in L.A.

The Marriage of Figaro
was directed by the renowned Romanian director Andrei Serban, known for his unusual postmodern and avant-garde interpretations of Shakespeare and Chekhov. Serban had become an overnight sensation at nineteen when he directed a Kabuki-style
Julius Caesar
as a student in Bucharest, causing an uproar. Not able to get
a job in his native country as an enfant terrible, he came to America, where he was regarded as the hot theater genius of the moment and directed to great acclaim all over the country. With my heart in my throat, I croaked that of course I'd love to audition.

I hadn't been able to see the production as it was running on the same schedule as
Dear Ruth
. I studied the sides, agonized about what to wear—finally deciding on straw-colored linen overalls and a white, sleeveless blouse that were easy to move in and slightly tomboyish.

I arrived at the Guthrie feeling horribly nervous, hands shaking and my knees quivering as if they'd give out at any moment. I milled around in the lounge outside the greenroom with a few other women clearly there for the audition. Although I noticed that I was the least girlie actress there, with more crossover boyish appeal, I still had to pee every thirty seconds from fear, and my face was flushed. I tried to calm down by remembering the times I'd been here as a kid, waiting for my dad to get out of rehearsal, or killing time while he was performing in a matinee. I had dreamed of working at this theater, where Daddy had launched his career.

A pale guy in a black turtleneck with a bowl haircut entered the lounge and called my name.

“Hello, Wendy, I saw you in the show—are you ready?”
Well, no,
I thought even though I was grateful for his kind words,
but here goes
. I smiled and nodded, shaking his hand.

We went backstage through a door I remembered using
many times when I was eight or nine, and I smelled that marvelous backstage cocktail of sawdust, paint, and old, burned coffee. The turtlenecked man led me through the darkness as we carefully made our way around coils of electrical cord, large, standing lighting instruments, ladders, and, for some reason, a grocery cart.

“Andrei is sitting in the audience, waiting for you.” He made an “over there” gesture with his arm, like a headwaiter. I took a deep breath and walked out onto the set, which was blindingly bright because the floor was coated with Mylar and the back walls were mirrored.

The great man was blond and quite handsome, as I had heard. He was slumped in his seat, his hair long and stringy past his shoulders. He was wearing a heavy, white wool sweater, looking a bit like a vacationing Irish fisherman. The sweater seemed odd, as it had to be at least ninety-five degrees outside that day, but I took it as a sign that he might be a little out of touch with his surroundings.

“Yes?” He looked at me as if to say,
Who are you?
A doughy, young woman in a short, tight plaid skirt with flaming-­red hennaed hair handed him my résumé. She backed away from him as if she were a servant and he were the king of Siam.

“Hello, Mr. Serban. My name is Wendy Lawless.”

He gave my résumé, which was pretty flimsy, a once-over. Then he looked up at me. “Begin.”

I read with the red-haired girl—a scene between Cherubino and the Countess, with whom he is in love. My
scene partner read in a flat voice, which is always difficult for an actor—you have to work harder when you aren't getting anything back, you almost have to play both parts, in your head anyway. We finished the scene. He looked back down at my résumé. There was a silence, then he spoke.

“Do you know how to roller-skate?”

Not the question I was expecting. “Um, no, Mr. Serban. I can ice-skate . . . a bit.” I wasn't going to tell him that I hadn't ice-skated since I was a ten-year-old taking lessons at Rockefeller Center.

“No problem—we can get you a teacher.” He signaled the redhead, and she dashed off up the stairs and out of the theater.

So I was hired, but only after negotiating for myself with the most terrifying man, the managing director, Don Schoenbaum. Dad had told me stories about actors coming in to discuss their contracts, and some lowly assistant would be feeding him grapes as he lay on a chaise. Dad told me to be tough and hold out for more money.

“And I always ask for my own parking place,” he said proudly.

That seemed a little cocky, but I'd see what I could get. Because they were putting me into the show the day after I got back from the
Dear Ruth
tour, and I had to learn to roller-skate for the part—Dad thought I was worth a hundred bucks over the offer they'd make.

When Mr. Schoenbaum called me into his office, he was sitting behind a massive dark-wood desk. I slipped into a
small chair across from him that I noticed was quite low to the ground. I had to strain to see him on the other side of the desk, like a little old lady peering over her car dashboard.

“Hello, Miss Lawless—here is the contract we are offering you.” Using his index finger, he slid the contract across the desk. I saw that I was being offered $350 a week, which sounded fantastic. But I felt I had to try to ask for more because Dad had told me to.

“I was hoping for four hundred, Mr. Schoenbaum. I do have to learn to roller-skate, after all, and will have very little time to rehearse before opening.” I attempted to flash a winning smile.

He fixed a withering gaze upon me. “We feel, Miss Lawless, that this is an adequate sum for an actress of
your
talents.”

I signed the contract immediately.

Negotiations complete, I was sent to my costume fitting. The costume shop had been another haunt of mine as a kid. My sister and I would often while away time here, playing with ribbons, buttons, or the little Clytemnestra and Electra dolls that had been made for the design presentation for Dr. Guthrie's landmark production of
The House of Atreus
, and that we got to keep—our very own Greek-tragedy Barbies.

When I walked into the large, well-lit room with padded tables for cutting fabrics, ironing boards, sewing machines, and racks of clothes, it smelled like hot glue and freshly starched and pressed shirts.

“Ah! There you are!” A deep, bellowing voice welcomed
me—it was Jack Edwards, the Guthrie's costume shop director. An enormous man, he was like a huge bear standing on its hind legs. He had a Friar Tuck hairdo and a long white beard and mustache. He was wearing a muslin smock that hung from his huge frame over soft brown leggings and wild, oversized metal jewelry all over his body, looking like a New Age monk. His hands, decorated with many rings, curled up in the air when he saw me. He ushered me into a little changing room, where we were joined by Annette Garceau, a darkly ravishing French costumer with brown ringlets about her creamy-skinned face, her beauty mark fluttering on her cheek as she smiled at me.

“Yoo probablee don't remembeh mee,” she said in her fabulously accented English. “I haven't zeen you seence you were leettle. But yoo look dee zame! Just like your fahzer.”

She kissed me on both cheeks.

“Of course I remember you. I'm so happy to be here.”

Annette had been the resident siren of the original 1963 company—all of the men, and some of the women, had lusted after her.

“First, Miss Lawless, we must try this on.” Jack held up a hanger with a funny little flesh-colored vest with a zipper up the middle dangling from it.

I had to wear a chest suppressor under my costumes.

When I joked that I was flat-chested and there was no need, he looked at me solemnly. “There can be no movement beneath the clothes.”

Luckily, popping it on, I found I was exactly the same
size as the actress I was replacing, so no adjustments needed to be made.

“Wonderful!” Jack was pleased.

“How eez your mohzer?” Annette inquired as I tried on a champagne-colored satin footman's coat that was decked out in lace and fake jewels. Standing behind me, she placed a matching tricorne on my head and looked in the mirror in front of us.

“We're not really in touch at the moment.” That familiar queasy feeling when my mother was mentioned rose up in my gut.

“Ah . . .
tragique
. I always wondehred what would become of her.”

Annette was referring to the scandal that broke at the theater when my mother and Pop announced at a lavish cocktail party in front of everyone at the Guthrie and half of Minneapolis society that they were in love. This public declaration of their affair was followed by two quickie divorces and our hurried departure from town. It was more than fifteen years ago now but apparently was still local gossip. I briefly imagined Mother in her condo in Connecticut, ears burning, knowing she was being talked about.

So, I did
Dear Ruth
at night, and during the day I was locked in a dungeon-like room beneath the Guthrie with a short, sixteen-year-old boy clad in black spandex, with feathered dirty-blond hair, named Mike, whom they'd found at the local roller rink. The first thing he taught me was how to fall down. He pushed me so many times onto my butt, I
started to look like an abused child. He was a good teacher but somewhat angry and impatient—maybe because he was super short for his age.

“Get up!” he hollered like an angry disco munchkin as I lay splayed on the floor.

Soon he had me doing all the tricks I needed to learn for the show—I could jump, walk on my tiptoes, skate backward, and shoot the duck—crouching all the way down and extending one leg in front of you while you roll forward. Mike was very pleased with himself and pronounced his job complete.

I needed to learn to roller-skate because the entire production was on wheels. Skateboards, wheeled ladders, a bicycle, a large rolling laundry hamper, and a grocery cart had all been incorporated into the show. When I asked the stage manager why, he told me that Andrei had seen a shopping cart in the lobby of an apartment building and was suddenly struck with this concept of a
Figaro
on wheels. I was to learn my lines and work with a director—not Serban, as he was leaving town—on my blocking and characterization. I would leave for two weeks to do
Dear Ruth
on tour—hopefully retaining everything I'd learned. Then I'd have only one technical rehearsal with the entire cast the day before going on.

When I wasn't rehearsing or acquiring more black-and-blue marks, I'd go over to Mary Sue's for tea or dinner, and sometimes play with her little boys, Larkin and Andrew. They were quite rambunctious and loud; just watching them
run around Mary Sue's ankles and jump off the furniture made me tired. But I couldn't take my eyes off them; they were like little fires. I wondered if I would ever get married and have kids. I couldn't picture it in my future, somehow. I was still sorting out my own childhood, or lack thereof, trying to make sense of what had happened.

I sometimes went to the Uptown movie theater with our
Dear Ruth
stage manager, Brian. I had developed a little crush on him, attracted to his eccentric manner and hilarious banter. We seemed completely in tune, finishing each other's sentences, and I was the only one in the cast who got his Monty Python references. Even though he needed to lose fifty pounds or so, was a terrible dresser, and wore his bob-length hair thick across his forehead like a girl—he was quite handsome. After seeing
Harold and Maude
together at the Uptown, we felt inspired by Maude's loony and larcenous activities—stealing cars and abducting a forlorn city tree to replant it in the forest—to run out and steal some blinking sawhorse construction signs and stash them in his cramped bachelor flat. Another time, we saw
Lawrence of Arabia
and dressed up in bedsheets at his place, striding around in our best bedouin fashion and calling each other Orance, the name Peter O'Toole's character is given by the Arabs in the film. Brian was desperately in need of a ­makeover—and I was desperately in need of a boyfriend—but I could just never get that close to him. He used his humor, and perhaps his girth, as a shield, and I strongly suspected that he was gay or simply asexual. After a few romantic stabs in the dark,
mostly made up of playful hints that I was a bit sweet on him, I gave up my boyfriendly aspirations and just enjoyed his friendship.

Dear Ruth
closed at the Cricket, but none of us felt sad, as we were off to Denver to do it all over again. We rehearsed in the Elitch for a few days before opening, adjusting to the enormity of the space. A classic proscenium theater with seats that went straight back for what seemed like a mile, the Elitch was made entirely of wood, so the acoustics were wild; it almost had an echo. The actors had to work harder to project their voices, beef up their eye makeup so people could see them from the last row, and wait for their laughs to surf all the way to the back wall before continuing with their next lines. Definitely an adjustment after the intimate, little Cricket.