A fired actor, a broken leg, and a pregnant cat

Sea­son 45, 1992-93 was full of chal­lenges and land­marks. Just “lit­tle” things like a fired actor, a bro­ken leg and a preg­nant cat…

It all began in the fall with my pro­duc­tion of “I Do! I Do!” by Tom Jones and Har­vey Schmidt. Bev Sperry was my music director.

She and I cast Barb Bentz (a vet­eran of 69 shows at Work­shop) and another actor, who shall remain name­less, to play the roles in this two-person show.

By the time we were halfway into rehearsal it became clear that the actor play­ing Michael had seri­ous emo­tional prob­lems. I’m not sure about Barb, but Bev and I had become gen­uinely fear­ful of this man. I ended up fir­ing him.

In spite of con­tact­ing every male I knew who could sing, there was no one avail­able to step in, so I ended up play­ing the role. Valerie

Ger­sten­berger, who was my cos­tumer, Loraine Ritchey, who was han­dling pub­lic­ity, and Caron Kel­ley, who was pro­duc­tion man­ager, jumped in to take over the direct­ing duties so I could con­cen­trate on the role.

The Jour­nal critic wrote, “Work­shop Play­ers’ ‘I Do! I Do!’ is clev­erly mounted, hand­somely dressed and delight­fully per­formed by Bar­bara Bentz and Dave Cot­ton.” The critic went on to point out, and right­fully so, that the singing range was a stretch for me. It was. But Bentz is a won­der­ful singer and actress and the audi­ences were kind to me.

The show played well and we had to add an extra per­for­mance. I said then and I will for­ever say thank you to Bev, Val, Caron, Loraine and espe­cially Barb for get­ting me and the show up to speed quickly.

Caron Kel­ley assem­bled a great trio of actresses to bring Ivan Menchell’s “The Ceme­tery Club,” to life on our stage in Novem­ber. Pam Pick­worth, Pat Lind­ley and Kathy Whit­more played the three wid­ows who met monthly to have tea and remem­ber their departed spouses.

The stage was divided diag­o­nally by a wrought iron fence of the “ceme­tery” which occu­pied half the stage. We made real­is­tic look­ing head­stones that had to be cov­ered with ivy every night because it was “trimmed” dur­ing the per­for­mance by one of the actresses. The

other half of the stage was a liv­ing room. In spite of the odd com­bi­na­tion of death and com­edy the show was a delight.

In the Win­ter, Bill Reis­ing directed George M Cohan’s “Seven Keys to Bald­pate.” Casey Wol­nowski anchored the cast as the lead, William Magee, an author who is look­ing to spend a quiet week­end writing.

In her review, The Journal’s Vic­to­ria Nash noted, “Wol­nowski brings charm, expe­ri­ence and com­fort to every role he plays…” Nash went on to lav­ish praise on a rel­a­tive new­comer not­ing that “he flits about the stage as if he was born there…” She was writ­ing of John Baum­gart­ner whom she pre­dicted, cor­rectly, would soon be work­ing his magic in Cal­i­for­nia. Baum­gart­ner had to step into his role late in the rehearsal process. He sent me this anecdote.

“I was called in at the last minute because an actor broke his leg. (Per­haps he took the advice ‘break a leg’ too lit­er­ally?) It was a silly romp about a moun­tain top cabin with only one key, but nonethe­less seven peo­ple show up, one by one, to com­pli­cate mat­ters, each think­ing they have the only key. I’ll never for­get when the fourth per­son with a key arrived, around 30 min­utes in, and an elderly woman in the audi­ence delight­edly mur­mured aloud, ‘My good­ness, another key?’ The woman next to her, just a cou­ple feet from where I was stand­ing on stage, pre­sented the front of the pro­gram to her and whis­pered very loudly, ‘Honey, there’ll be seven.’ I bit my tongue and went on.

“I had had my wis­dom teeth taken out just a week before, and had a TWA ticket to Vienna, Aus­tria, for the week after the play closed, so it was quite a slen­der win­dow that allowed me to par­tic­i­pate. I’m very glad I did, mouth infec­tion and all!”

Baum­gart­ner, now a film maker in Hol­ly­wood, included in his pro­gram bio that he was an active mem­ber of the LCCC Gay and Les­bian group. I believe that makes him the first openly gay actor to work at Workshop.

Our spring show was “I Remem­ber Mama,” by Richard Rodgers, Mar­tin Charnin and Thomas Mee­han. This full-scale musi­cal was the 67th and final direct­ing gig for our founder, Valerie Jenk­ins Ger­sten­berger. I have enough mate­r­ial on that show (includ­ing the story of the preg­nant cat) for a sep­a­rate essay so I will save that for my next column.

Dur­ing the sum­mer of 1992 our air con­di­tion­ing was installed. At the close of the 92-93 sea­son Caron Kel­ley took advan­tage of this and intro­duced our first sum­mer show, Willy Russell’s “Shirley Valen­tine,” star­ring Loraine Ritchey. This one-woman show was a tour de force for Ritchey. She was superb. The Journal’s Vic­to­ria Nash said, “Ritchey didn’t play Shirley Valen­tine. She BECAME Shirley Valen­tine.” And Nash called Kel­ley “One of the area’s more cre­ative and pro­gres­sive young directors.”

In spite of the chal­lenges it was a ter­rific sea­son that strength­ened and added to our Work­shop fam­ily. My thanks to John Baum­gart­ner for his input to this column.

Posted by Dave Cotton on Apr 12 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.