I’m not a heroine; I just play heroines. Also psychotics, orphans, hookers, housewives, and—on one memorable occasion—a singing rutabaga. It was never my ambition to utilize my extensive dramatic training by playing a musical vegetable. But as my agent is so fond of pointing out, there are more actors in New York than there are people in most other cities. Translation: beggars can’t be choosers.
This same sentiment explains how I wound up painting my body green and prancing around a stage half-naked the night Golly Gee disappeared.
For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the world of pop idols, Golly Gee was the wet-lipped, surgically improved, D-list pop star who had been chosen to play Virtue, the female lead in Sorcerer!
I, who had studied my craft at Northwestern University, as well as at numerous classes and workshops in New York City, was cast as her understudy. Such is the life of an actor.
However, Sorcerer! was a respectable off-Broadway musical, and I had been “resting” (waiting tables fifty hours a week at Bella Stella in Little Italy) for four months. Although I was only a chorus nymph in Sorcerer!, at least I was working again. Besides, with any luck, Golly Gee would have an accident—not a fatal accident, mind you, just a disabling one—and I’d step into the lead role.
Sorcerer! had no plot, and Virtue had the only good songs. The Sorcerer, played by magician Joe Herlihy, was the centerpiece of the show, which had been conceived and designed around his magic act. Joe was a high-strung guy whose wife’s production company had financed Sorcerer! He was a competent magician, but he couldn’t sing or act, and he was too inexperienced to carry an entire production comfortably on his shoulders. Although his magic act had improved considerably in recent weeks, his performance still varied unpredictably. He was losing weight, and he lived in terror of Golly Gee, who bullied him during rehearsals and upstaged him in performance.
The really worrying thing about working with Joe, though, was that he panicked whenever anything went wrong, and with all of the changes that are made during the development of a new musical, lots of things go wrong. Anytime someone missed a cue or bumped into a misplaced piece of scenery, Joe lost his concentration. So, although I wanted Golly’s part, there were days when I was glad that I wasn’t the girl Joe sawed in half eight shows per week.
We were still ironing out the kinks at the end of our first week of public performances the night that Joe went to pieces. Golly Gee’s nasal singing had already inspired a series of tepid-to-scathing reviews, so she was feeling nasty that night—and Golly wasn’t the sort of person who kept it all bottled up inside. During intermission she accused Joe of nearly immolating her during the flame-throwing routine. Personally, I wouldn’t have blamed him.
Despite Golly’s histrionics, we were getting through the show smoothly for once, and I grew optimistic as I frolicked around the set dressed as an oversexed wood nymph who never felt the cold. Joe’s concentration was better tonight than it usually was, so this was our best performance to date. Waiting in the wings during the final scene now, I heard my cue and gamboled onto the stage.
Amid a bucolic forest setting, I capered and cavorted with elves, hobgoblins, and fairies. I wriggled delightedly when a satyr caressed me, biting back a scream at the touch of his ice-cold hands on my skin as we performed a lift. The satyr grunted as he heaved me overhead. His arms trembled under the strain, and he glared up at me. I had promised to give up Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for the duration of the run; I had lied.
My long green hair fluttered around us as we twirled and then we fell to the floor to gaze at the Sorcerer with rapturous fascination. This was the point in the story when the Sorcerer, feeling kind of bitter about things, threatened to make Virtue vanish forever, which would be a pretty sad thing for the Kingdom (indeed, as one reviewer pointed out, it would then be just like New York City).
All the scantily clad woodland creatures watched while the Sorcerer demonstrated that he was putting Virtue into a perfectly ordinary crystal cage—the sort of thing you might find in any enchanted forest. I had spent enough rehearsal time in that cage to feel a little sorry for Golly Gee, who would pass the next few minutes squeezed into the false bottom like a jellied eel.
My sympathy was limited, though. I was a broke, half-naked understudy in the chorus, and that overpaid, egotistical slice of cheesecake was going to reappear in a puff of smoke—while the Sorcerer was busy fighting the handsome Prince—and give a nasal rendition of the best song in the show while I discreetly exited stage left.
The Sorcerer covered the crystal cage with a shimmering gold cloth. I and another nymph spun the covered cage around on its wheels three times while the Sorcerer muttered spells and incantations beneath the swelling music.
I heard a faint noise come from beneath the gold cloth as we brought the spinning cage to a stop. It was a brief, shrill squeal, muted by the orchestra. I entertained my favorite fantasy, the one in which Golly’s expensively augmented breasts could no longer fit inside the false floor of the cage and she had to leave the show. I would take over her role, and my agent would get every reviewer, producer, and director on the East Coast to come see the show. I might even let my parents come to New York to see Sorcerer! once I was playing someone who wore clothes.
Lost in this pleasant fantasy, I was almost disappointed when the Sorcerer lifted the golden curtain to reveal that Virtue had disappeared. Golly was safely hidden, and I was still an obscure dryad. Someone wheeled the empty cage offstage. The rest of the scene passed quickly, and soon it was time for Virtue to reappear in a glorious cloud of smoke and sing the ballad that would make the Sorcerer and the Prince both see the error of their ways and be nice to each other.
There was a small explosion. Smoke billowed. The music throbbed.
And Golly missed her cue.
For once, I was glad to be nothing more than a chorus nymph. The most dramatic moment in the show had just bombed, the audience stopped suspending their disbelief, and Joe was staring blankly into the smoke, wondering what to do.
Luckily the conductor was on his toes. He had the orchestra repeat the last eight bars before the smoke cleared completely. The cue echoed, faded, and died—and still no Golly.
We all looked at one another. This was one of those moments that all actors enjoy telling war stories about but which none of us actually wants to experience. This was considerably worse than losing a prop or flubbing a line. What the hell should we do now?
Joe looked around the stage with glazed eyes. His face shone with sweat. He appeared to be hyperventilating. He was obviously finished for the night. In fact, somebody had better get him offstage right away.
Then I remembered that squeal. I’d been so busy wishing evil things upon Golly, it hadn’t occurred to me she might be in trouble. Injured, stuck, unconscious… She was still in the crystal cage, of course, trapped beneath the false bottom. We had to get her out of there. Then we could figure out how to finish the show.
In sheer desperation, I hopped up and down, pointed into the wings, and cried, “Look! There goes my lady! She has escaped the Sorcerer’s spell! Let us go… you know… hear what she has to say!” I cheered wildly.
The other actors looked at me as if I’d gone mad.
I elbowed the satyr and whispered, “Come on, cheer! And help Joe offstage before he passes out.”
“Huh? Oh, right.”
The other actors followed suit, cheering and waving as they hustled Joe offstage while the orchestra tried to cover the moment with some transition music.
I ran over to the crystal cage and started trying to tear it apart with my bare hands. Everyone stared at me. “Help me get her out of here!” I urged my fellow forest creatures. “She’s still inside. She must be stuck.”
“You don’t get it, do you? You don’t get it!” Joe cried, still hyperventilating. He started to laugh hysterically.
“Pull yourself together,” I said sharply to him. “Has anybody got a hammer back here?”
“No!” cried Joe’s wife Matilda, rushing into the fray. “You can’t destroy that cage. Not on our budget!”
“Who’s the Equity deputy on this set?” one of the nymphs demanded. “There must be a rule about this kind of thing.”
“Man, you just don’t get it!” Joe shrieked.
“Darling, say your mantra,” Matilda instructed him soothingly, patting his sweaty face.
“I can’t remember my mantra! Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!”
I got a hammer from one of the techies. “Stand back,” I ordered the milling cast and crew.
“No!” cried Matilda, abandoning Joe. “I’m warning you—this will come out of your paycheck!”
“I wouldn’t say that to her while she’s got a hammer in her hand,” advised a satyr.
I panted as I smashed the glass and pried open the bottom of the cage. “You want to leave a union member in here to suffocate? I’m sure Equity will be—”
“She’s not in there! Don’t you get it?” Joe cried, his voice raspy.
I gave a mighty heave and fell back a few steps as the secret compartment was revealed. There was a moment of astonished silence as we all stared at its vacant interior.
“Joe’s right,” I said at last. “Golly’s vanished.”