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Sweet Sixteen
by
Harry Buschman
Boys who live in the city have a reputation for knowing everything. Maybe
it's got something to do with being closed in with competition on all sides.
Trying to stay on top -- survival of the fittest, and all that. Anyway, most
city
boys want to be 'great' somethings? It's not enough for them to be something
-- they've got to be 'great' somethings. Or nothing.
I wanted to be a great actor, a great architect and a great writer. It didn't
matter in what order I achieved these goals, as they turned up I would accept
each of them in turn. Bring 'em on!
Of course I had credentials. I worked a part time job as a mailman every
Christmas, I ushered weekends at the Crystal Gardens movie house on Nostrand
Avenue, and my great academic achievement ... a "B" in English at Samuel J.
Tilden
high school.
What a resume!
With these raggedy feathers in my cap I felt I had every right to criticize
John Gielgud, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway -- again, in no
particular order, and to anyone who would listen. I would pontificate in a broad
Brooklyn accent in a voice that only recently had slipped from alto to baritone.
If
anyone had been listening they would have denounced me for a smart-assed
sixteen year old with more brass than brains. There are few more irritating
sights
in this world than a teenager who knows everything.
When my sophomore, (from the Greek 'sophomoric') term began I couldn't wait
to sign up for the school play. The English Department decided to give a
streamlined version of Romeo and Juliet in the spring of that year. Jules
Catchick,
our English teacher had whittled the play down to run a little over an hour,
including only the ball scene, the garden scene, the marriage, and the final
scene in the tomb. that is about the limit of the average Brooklynite's
attention span.
We had sets left over from a previous Julius Caesar and with a touch-up here
and there they would be just fine, Mr. Catchick said. After all, Rome and
Verona are not all that far apart.
It was a terrible letdown to me when I was told two seniors were chosen to
play the leads --Shirley Finkel would be Juliet and Ritchie Richmond, Romeo. I
was picked to run the lighting and to help repaint the sets. Mr. Catchick,
sensing my disappointment, finally conceded to let me stand-in for Digger Nelson
as Friar Laurence in the wedding scene. Small consolation indeed! Digger
Nelson, the designated Friar, was a jock on the baseball team and there was no
chance of him ever being sick enough not to play Friar Laurence.
Sophomores don't have much clout. My advice, given generously to the leads
and to the company as a whole, was ignored. Mr. Catchick eventually told me to
keep my mouth shut ... that he would handle this, and if I didn't keep it shut
he would get somebody else to be a stand-in for Digger. He didn't threaten to
replace me as a set painter and lighting director, however -- he had no one
else to turn to.
Wednesday afternoon rehearsals went on for three months. You can teach a
turkey to play Romeo in three months. It might have some trouble with the prose
style, but it would be no more of a problem than Ritchie Richmond had. He was
obviously miscast, and no audience would ever be convinced that Juliet could go
belly up with a clown like Ritchie.
On the other hand, Shirley Finkel was five years older than Juliet was
supposed to be and she insisted on wearing her green prom gown in the wedding
scene.
Juliet was a mere slip of a girl, teetering on the brink of sexual discovery
you might say. Shirley had been over the brink at least four times that I know
of, (once with Ritchie and very close to once with me). She brought a
bitchiness to the role that I don't think would have pleased William
Shakespeare.
On the outside chance that Digger would break a leg on the ball field I
practiced the marriage scene daily before the mirror in my parent's bedroom. The
scene was almost entirely in pantomime. Friar Laurence's costume was a large
burlap potato sack with a hood left over from one of Macbeth's witches of two
years ago. I thought I would have been a great Friar Laurence as I rehearsed my
only line in deep sepulchral tones over and over again:
"So smile the heavens upon this holy act, Thatafter hours with sorrow chide us not!"
I had no idea what the words meant ... I think I do now, but it was
miraculous to hear how smoothly they rolled off the tongue, even though I had to
talk
through a horse-hair beard that was clipped to my ears. Like all true thespians
I was confidant and comfortable in my part. It wasn't a big one, but it was
one that highlighted me ... the two lovers would kneel before me; Ritchie in
his wrinkled leotard and Shirley in her knee length green party dress ... if
only Digger would break a leg!
The big night finally arrived and when the curtain rose on my freshly painted
Roman Forum set, no one would have guessed that Julius Caesar had been killed
there only last year. It seemed to be expressly designed for a house party at
the Capulets. The first scene went well, it was completely in pantomime, and
if you discount the clumsiness of Ritchie as Romeo, who couldn't help bumping
into things, everyone was where they should have been. The music was supplied
by Mrs. Pryor at the school piano.
Then came the garden scene. Mr. Catchick had previously volunteered to read
the famous Queen Mab speech to kick it off. He did it well enough, but he read
it from a school book copy of the play while sitting on the piano bench next
to Mrs. Pryor. He read it hastily as though he wanted to get the whole thing
over with as quickly as possible. Whipping us into shape for the performance had
taken a lot out of Mr. Catchick. He read it the way a hostage might read a
statement for the press. Then Romeo walked on to recite those immortal lines:
"But soft!
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
Ritchie's accent let him down, he was no Edmund Keene. A born and bred
Brooklynite cannot speak without sounding like one -- his interpretation went
more
like this:
"Butts off
what like true yonder winderbrakes?
It's a yeast, an Juliet's da sun."
The message must have gotten through - but bearing in mind the audience never
heard the words before, it probably sounded just great to them. Juliet was
better in view of the breathtaking cleavage she displayed while bending over the
balcony -- indeed, a few cat calls could be heard from her fellow senior
admirers in the back of the auditorium. The curtain went down on the balcony
scene
quicker than it should have, in fact it almost got Ritchie in his beret as he
backed away from Juliet.
As I snapped off the lights, Mr. Catchick, terror stricken, ran up and told
me Digger Nelson had diarrhea and couldn't possibly go on as Friar Laurence --
my golden moment! I quickly got into my burlap robe, put on my witches hat,
adjusted the horsehair beard and stood in the wings with Ritchie and Shirley.
"What happened to Digger?" Ritchie asked nervously. "What are you doing
here?"
"Digger's got the runs," I replied.
Shirley started to fidget. "We never done it with you before," ... she
started ... "Jesus," I thought, "Who does she think she is, Eleanora Duse?
Then Ritchie chimed in "You screw it up you'll be sorry hotshot." A threat to
my physical being from a seventeen year old dressed in a leotard and wearing
a wooden sword ... I laughed it off and sneered at him. "Just don't flub your
lines, Ritchie."
In this uncooperative state the curtain rose on the marriage scene. Mr.
Catchick was now operating the lights and he got the color mix all wrong. The
stage
was bathed in green, a vivid maritime green, which made it seem as though the
happy couple were being married under water. The green light seemed to
confuse Ritchie. He lurched and stumbled like a drunken Peter Pan until Shirley
took
matters in hand and led him to the altar.
Her knee length prom dress was now a Kelly green, sharp and bitter, and she
held a bouquet of green flowers ... even the dimples in her knees were green.
It was not a pretty sight. They got through their lines as woodenly as Punch
and Judy. Mr. Catchick had burned the words into their subconscious with a
branding iron -- they would remember them to their dying day.
I then raised the chalice from which they would drink their troth. In doing
so my beard covered the communion goblet, like a towel on a waiter's arm.
Shirley took the chalice and drank, then passed it to Ritchie along with my
beard.
Feeling it pulled from my ears I improvised, as I am sure many great
Elizabethan actors have had to do when things go wrong:
"Thou shouldst not drink from my beard my son,Drink thy plight from the holy chalice!"
I retrieved the beard and hooked it back over my ears. I was certain the
unsophisticated audience of mothers and fathers were convinced that Mr.
Shakespeare, back in 1597, had written those lines into the play. Shirley and
Ritchie
staggered blindly off the stage leaving me alone -- a groan from the lighting
panel told me Mr. Catchick had caught on to the problem and did not fully
appreciate my quickness of mind. "Too damn bad," I thought, "We're on the firing
line out here, you're not ---- now back off and let me stand down front and
deliver those final lines."
So I did that; you remember them, right?
"So smile the heavens
upon this holy act,
That after hours with sorrow chide us not!"
I bellowed them out loud and clear, with enough volume for the sleepyheads in
the back row to hear. I was alone, Shirley and Ritchie had scuttled off the
stage, Mr. Catchick was glaring at me and the only one who stood on the firing
line with me was Mr. William Shakespeare.
The final scene in the tomb; well let's face it ... even in good hands it can
go haywire. In the inexperienced hands of the English Drama Club of Samuel J.
Tilden High School, it went very badly. Ritchie couldn't seem to find where
Juliet lay stretched out on her bier, and by the time he found her, Shirley was
so jittery she lost her timing and rose from the bier while she was supposed
to be dead, even before Romeo had taken the poison.
But finally they were both dead. Thank God! The play was over, the curtain
was down and there was nothing further we could do to humiliate the bard of
Avon. We took our bows. Shirley got the biggest hand -- you could almost see her
navel when she bowed.
When I came out for my bow all I saw was the backs of the audience filing out
of the auditorium. Only my mother and father were applauding.
My mother, all feverish and energized by her first exposure to Elizabethan
drama met me at the stage door. On the way home she had only two questions:
"Tell me," she said, "What's a "Holey yack?" and "What's a chider's knot?" It
occurred to me that Ritchie wasn't the only actor with a Brooklyn accent that
night.
©Harry Buschman 1997
(1980)
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