aunt Muriel. Richard Abbott was too much leading-man material for her. His appearance at that very first casting call reduced Muriel to psychosexual babble and dithering; my devastated aunt said later that she could tell my mom and Richard were “
At thirteen, I detected little of my aunt Muriel’s consternation at encountering (for the first time) what leading-man material was like; nor did I recognize that my mom and Richard Abbott were “
Grandpa Harry was charming and entirely welcoming to the graceful young man, who was brand-new to the faculty at Favorite River Academy. “We’re always lookin’ for new actin’ talent,” Grandpa said warmly to Richard. “Did you say it was
“Teaching
“You mean by ‘disadvantages,’ I would guess, that the boys have to play the women’s roles,” Grandpa Harry said slyly. (Richard Abbott, upon first meeting the mill manager Harry Marshall, could not have known about the lumberman’s success as an onstage cross-dresser.)
“Most boys haven’t the vaguest idea how to be a woman—it’s a mortal distraction from the play,” Richard said.
“Ah,” Grandpa Harry said. “Then how will you manage it?”
“I’m thinking of asking the younger faculty wives to audition for roles,” Richard Abbott replied, “and the older faculty daughters, maybe.”
“Ah,” Grandpa Harry said again. “There might be
“I’m considering open auditions,” Richard Abbott said. “But I hope the older women won’t be intimidating to the boys at an all-boys’ school.”
“Ah, well—there’s always that,” Grandpa Harry said with a knowing smile. As an older woman, he’d been
What I noticed on that fall Friday night—casting calls were always on Friday nights—was how the dynamic between our theater’s dictatorial director and our variously talented (and untalented) would-be cast was changed by Richard Abbott’s knowledge of the theater, as much as by Richard’s gifts as an actor. The stern director of the First Sister Players had never been challenged as a
Our heretofore-unchallenged director, Nils Borkman—the aforementioned Norwegian who was also Grandpa Harry’s business partner and, as such, a forester and logger
It further contributed to the Norwegian’s ever-blackening pessimism that the unsophisticated theatergoers in First Sister, Vermont, were unschooled in serious drama. A steady diet of Agatha Christie was expected (even nauseatingly welcome) in our culturally deprived town. Nils Borkman visibly suffered through the ceaseless adaptations of lowbrow potboilers like
At one rehearsal, Harry had whimsically said—as Miss Marple herself might have—“My word, but who would
To which my mom, ever the prompter, had remarked, “Daddy, that line isn’t even in the script.”
“I know, Mary—I was just foolin’ around,” Grandpa said.
My mother, Mary Marshall—Mary
Nils Borkman directed Agatha Christie’s “crowd-pleasers,” as he mockingly referred to them, as if he were doomed to be watching
Agatha Christie was Borkman’s curse, which the Norwegian bore less than stoically—he
“Something serious to coincide with that time of year when the
On that Friday casting call, when Richard Abbott would change many futures, Nils announced that
“Which three?” the young and talented Richard Abbott asked.
“The
“I take it you mean
By Borkman’s uncharacteristic speechlessness, we all saw that, indeed,
“In that case,” Richard Abbott ventured, after the telltale silence, “who among us can possibly play the doomed Hedvig—that poor child?” There were no fourteen-year-old girls at the Friday night casting call—no one at all suitable for the innocent, duck-loving (and daddy-loving) Hedvig.
“We’ve had . . .
“And then there’s Gregers,” Richard Abbott interjected. “That miserable moralizer. I could play Gregers, but only as a meddlesome fool—a self-righteous and self-pitying clown!”
Nils Borkman often referred to his fellow Norwegians who were suicidal as “fjord-jumpers.” Apparently, the abundance of fjords in Norway provided many opportunities for convenient and unmessy suicides. (Nils must have noticed, to his further gloom, that there were no fjords in Vermont—a landlocked state.) Nils now looked at Richard Abbott in such a scary way—it was as if our depressed director wanted this upstart newcomer to find the nearest fjord.
“But Gregers is an
“If