The Importance of Being Ernie: (17 page)
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Quintero wanted me to enter my scene with great urgency; the glacial ice was only blocks away from the Antrobus home and about to swallow it up.
The first time I performed my scene, I gave myself an imaginary prior circumstance (an actor’s device). I envisioned a pack of feral dogs chasing me to the Antrobuses’ front door, hoping this might energize me with a sense of panic. I made my entrance in the scene and barely got two words of dialogue out of my mouth before Quintero held up his hand.
“Hold on, Barry. I want you to make your entrance again, with more urgency this time.”
I nodded and went offstage. This time I pictured a gang of thugs, cold and hungry, roughing me up. I imagined escaping from them and running to the Antrobus house to take refuge ... and then I burst onto the stage to begin the scene. I got through my first speech about the massive glaciers, and then Quintero stopped me again.
“Stop, please. Barry, I need to really feel how dire your situation is. It’s not quite there yet. Do it over.”
I nodded obediently, but I could feel a knot in my stomach tightening. The director wanted something from me, and I was not delivering.
I did the entrance a couple more times, trying to add more prior circumstances. I combined the angry thugs with the feral dogs, and threw in a charging herd of wooly mammoths, too. Still, Quintero wasn’t satisfied.
Quintero came up onto the set and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I thought he was going to escort me to the nearest exit. Instead, he smiled, mischief in his eyes.
“I want you to try something, Barry,” Quintero said, giggling. “Run.”
“Uh ... run? Right here?” I asked.
“Yes. Run. Go ... Now!” Quintero replied.
I looked out at the entire company of actors who were sitting in the audience watching. I felt like running ... right out the door. I started to jog around the stage.
“Faster!” Quintero barked.
I ran faster.
“Jump over those chairs!” Quintero said. “Don’t stop tell I tell you.”
I jumped and ran around the stage as Quintero went back into the audience to watch the action.
Quintero watched me leap chairs and tear around the stage for a few more minutes and then he yelled, “Okay, Barry, now make your entrance!”
I went right into the scene, huffing and puffing, trying to catch my breath as I spoke of the advancing ice and the people suffering. Instinctively, I flopped down exhausted on a sofa next to Sabrina (Ashley’s character) and started to flirt with her! Our world was supposedly freezing over, but I still had time for carnal thoughts about the sexy maid. It was an odd moment, but human and amusing. All kinds of interesting behavior evolved out of that simple but brilliant direction.
When the scene finished and I made my exit, Quintero led the cast in applause. Lesson learned.
We had four more weeks of rehearsals in New York and two weeks of out-of-town performances in Birmingham, Alabama. Despite Quintero’s directorial skill and Wilder’s brilliant words, the play was a chaotic mess. The warring acting styles of the stars certainly contributed to the difficulties. More than that,
Skin
is a damn hard piece of theater to mount. Previous productions, with stellar casts that included Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead, and Montgomery Clift, all failed to master the play’s challenging structure, which unfolds like an evening of one-acts, each one being set in a different epoch. We were in a constant struggle to bring the creative elements together, performances and the written word. Occasionally the play gelled, but nobody seemed to know why or how to recreate the magic.
Skin
is a damn hard piece of theater to mount. Previous productions, with stellar casts that included Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead, and Montgomery Clift, all failed to master the play’s challenging structure, which unfolds like an evening of one-acts, each one being set in a different epoch. We were in a constant struggle to bring the creative elements together, performances and the written word. Occasionally the play gelled, but nobody seemed to know why or how to recreate the magic.
As for my work in the play, I was having a ball playing to live audiences for the first time. Quintero certainly had other bigger problems to focus on, but he took time to critique my work every night. He liked everything I was doing except for the last sentence in my final speech. In that particular passage, I recited the many different ways that information is disseminated: from word of mouth, to newspapers, radios, and TV, all of man’s amazing inventions. I was excited as hell in my delivery, and Quintero approved. When it came to the final line, “What hath God wrought?” the director wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to hear wonder and awe in my voice, and I wasn’t getting it.
To help me discover what was missing, Quintero would cite personal experiences to illuminate the feeling. That was his favorite directorial method with actors. He told me how it felt coming to New York City from rural Panama and seeing the blazing, electric power of Times Square: “What hath God wrought?” Another night he spoke to me about a newsreel that showed a fiery atom bomb exploding and its subsequent devastation: “What hath God wrought?” All his examples were evocative, and each night I’d try to make them my own.
After the show, Quintero would grin and say, “You were quite good tonight, except for the last line about ... ” That was the routine that followed practically every preview performance. I wanted to please him, but no matter what I tried, the line reading was not quite right. It was driving me nuts.
After two weeks of shows in Birmingham, we boarded a plane to take us to Washington, D.C., and I was still grappling with the dreaded line. As I looked out the window of the flying aircraft, gazing at the patchwork of farmland and twisting rivers far below, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Quintero.
“We’re flying at thirty thousand feet at five hundred miles per hour. Birds can’t even keep up!” the director said, shaking his head. “Imagine that? ... What hath God wrought?” His eyes twinkled, passing along yet another note about my troubled line.
It was an “ah-ha!” kind of moment for me. Something clicked, and from then on I nailed the line in most every performance. Quintero would grin and nod afterward. What a gentle and persistent soul he was.
We began our final week of previews in Washington, D.C., before the gala opening at the Kennedy Center. The play was still a hodge-podge theatrical event, wildly out of sync in the acting department.
Not only was the play on unsteady ground, our inspired leader, Quintero, was about to fall off the wagon. He had a notorious history of alcoholism and started work on
Skin
sober and clear headed. As stress of the production mounted, you could see his hands quivering from the nervous tremors.
Skin
sober and clear headed. As stress of the production mounted, you could see his hands quivering from the nervous tremors.
It’s probably not fair to point fingers at anyone and say they were the cause of his fall. Nonetheless, Liz Ashley’s liberties with the play’s text were driving poor Quintero crazy. Every night in previews, she’d eat up more and more scenery, strutting around in a skimpy maid’s outfit that was straight out of a cheap porno flick. Her hammy performance, complete with ad libs and winks to the audience, was shifting the focus of the play onto her character rather than the plight of the Antrobus family. Quintero tried hard to rein her in, hoping to get some balance in the show, but Ashley was beyond direction. She was doing a solo act, and the other actors were just props in her burlesque performance.
Opening night finally arrived, and we had one of our better nights. The show actually came together in some weird way. Call it luck, opening-night energy, whatever, but the play had drive and purpose, and the audience loved it.
The major newspapers gave
Skin
decent reviews and heaped praise upon Ashley for her over-the-top performance. Perhaps she realized that the only way for our disjointed production to succeed was to go bonkers onstage every night.
Skin
decent reviews and heaped praise upon Ashley for her over-the-top performance. Perhaps she realized that the only way for our disjointed production to succeed was to go bonkers onstage every night.
Of course, that’s not the way Quintero saw it. He truly felt that her performance was distorting the play. The more Quintero begged her to tone it down, the more Ashley ad-libbed, particularly now that the critics had validated her instincts.
Quintero couldn’t take it anymore. He sold his interest in the show and formally announced he would be leaving. His work as director was done, and now the play belonged to the players. It was like having your father tell you he’s moving away and that your crazy Aunt Liz will be in charge now. We gulped and prepared for a wild ride.
From then on, every actor was looking out for himself. If you saw the play on Friday and again on Saturday, you’d see a different performance. Luckily, our run in Washington didn’t depend on media reviews or sold-out shows to survive. There was big money behind the play. It was the Kennedy Center’s celebration of our country’s two hundredth birthday. Nobody wanted to see the first gala show disappear in a week or two. That would have looked utterly unpatriotic.
We marched forward for another six weeks of performances. No matter what dramas were occurring onstage or backstage, I was having a blast.
Working at the Kennedy Center had other perks, too. One of my favorite things to do was watch the great ballet dancers Margo Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev perform at the opera house. After performing my big scene in act one, I had about forty-five minutes to kill until I came on again in the second act as a drunken conventioneer (I did two other smaller roles in addition to the Messenger Boy).
I’d sneak over to the opera house through an underground tunnel and stand in the wings to observe the artists at work. It’s one thing to watch a performer from the audience and a totally different experience to see them backstage. You’re privy to all kinds of behind-the-scenes technical glitches or moments of personal trouble. Occasionally, you see a performer looking fabulous onstage and moments later rush into the wings and barf up their lunch.
Nureyev was a defector from the communist Soviet Union and is considered by many to be the greatest ballet dancer of the twentieth century. He also had a reputation for slapping stagehands whenever he felt he was giving a dull, pedestrian performance. These unprovoked assaults gave him an adrenaline rush that would pump up his pirouettes. Nice for Nureyev, not so good for the stagehand. I kept this fact in mind every time the mercurial Russian was backstage. He frequently gave me the stink eye, and my presence must have been quite the mystery to him.
I’d appear backstage at the opera house at the same time every day, watch the great dancer at work for fifteen minutes, and then disappear back to my theater. Perhaps Nureyev thought I was a KGB agent plotting to whisk him back to mother Russia. He rarely took his eye off me, and I never took my eye off him.
After Nureyev’s show closed, I told Railsback about my tense silent relationship with the dancer. He figured that Nureyev probably recognized me from
My Three Sons.
That theory seemed pretty far fetched. Years later, though, I read an interview with Nureyev. He said that he learned to speak English by watching American TV shows, one of his favorites being
MTS.
Weird.
My Three Sons.
That theory seemed pretty far fetched. Years later, though, I read an interview with Nureyev. He said that he learned to speak English by watching American TV shows, one of his favorites being
MTS.
Weird.
The Skin of Our Teeth
was nearing the end of its run at the Kennedy Center, and the show’s future was in doubt. We were hoping to go straight to Broadway. Unfortunately, our mixed D.C. reviews didn’t warrant it. The producers made a bold decision: we would go to Boston and hope to get more reviews that would be good enough to carry us into New York. Fine by me, I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, either.
was nearing the end of its run at the Kennedy Center, and the show’s future was in doubt. We were hoping to go straight to Broadway. Unfortunately, our mixed D.C. reviews didn’t warrant it. The producers made a bold decision: we would go to Boston and hope to get more reviews that would be good enough to carry us into New York. Fine by me, I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, either.
I decided I needed a break from the company, so I booked a sleeper berth on a train rather than travel with the rest of the actors by plane. This led to one of the wildest, most erotic nights of my life.
I’d always loved trains, having crossed the country twice in the 1960s with my mom and brother on the Santa Fe Super Chief. I arrived early in the evening at the D.C. train station ready to roll. Unfortunately, the train wasn’t; its air-conditioning system was broken and workers were trying to fix it.
The August temperature was over 100 degrees, hot and humid. As a courtesy to the stranded passengers, the railroad was offering free sodas at the bar, which is where I met two girls, Carey and Sara. They were Midwest farm girls about my age, unpretentious and attractive in their faded blue jeans and Ohio State T-shirts. They told me that they’d been hitchhiking across the country until their paths crossed with a man named Peter, who happened to be the president of the railroad. The girls were traveling on board the train as his guests.
The railroad president; this could be interesting, I thought. I mopped my sweaty brow and asked, “Where is Peter now?”
“Oh, he’s under the train fixing the air-conditioner,” Carey said. She twirled the end of her straight brown hair playfully and smiled.
“He’s fixing it ... himself?” I said. I got the vibe that Peter must be a real character.
“He’s crazy about trains,” Sara added.
At the other end of the crowded club car, I heard a man’s voice with a nasal Bostonian accent call out, “The compressor’s broke and I couldn’t fix it. Darn it!” A tall man in his forties, wearing a dark pinstripe suit, was carving his way through a herd of thirsty passengers.
“Peter! Over here!” Carey called out.
As he got closer, I got a better look at the railroad president. I had imagined I’d meet a trim, silver-haired, square-jawed man of distinction. Not so with Peter. He was big and dumpy like Baby Huey, round and wide at the waist, narrow at the shoulders. His jowly cheeks swallowed up his oversized pouting lips. Peter slapped impatiently at the dirt still clinging to the knees of his suit pants.
“Are you okay, Peter?” Carey asked gingerly.
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