I was standing backstage with some of the props staff tonight during the first staging rehearsal for Appomattox (for my opinion on the piece, look no further than the title formed by adding the letters "CR" to it. No, go on. Take your time. I'll wait. You're welcome.), which is pretty much how I spent most of the three hours...that, and standing around ONstage pretending to be pregnant (I'm not sure why, but someone in Costumes seems to find a way to make sure that the women who have NEVER had a child are invariably the ones who get the pregnancy bag hung around their necks) and pushing a baby carriage...with, not a baby, as one might, naturally, assume would be in a baby carriage, but a barrel in it. Of gunpowder or rum, it looks like, either of which might have been a higher priority, I suppose, than schlepping the actual BABY out of Richmond, VA (oh, did I mention that the scene we're staging is the flight from...?)...
But I digress.
So, we're standing around backstage pissing and moaning about standing around backstage, when I grumble that the set looks NOTHING like a scene from the Civil War--more like the Love Boat from Hell, actually, with a long gangplank coming down from one side, nasty-looking metal girders at odd angles, bright lights coming directly into our eyes from the sides, and many different levels all over the place for people to trip over--the kind of set, in short, that gives modernist set designers geekgasms and stage managers heart attacks.
"Or from 'Death of Kliinghoffer', maybe, my props friend mused, then added, "You know, we used to have a cocktail in those days called the Klinghoffer, when we (he and his buds on the crew) would hang out at Kimball's...."
"Really?" I said, taking the bait. "What was it?"
He grinned.
"Two shots and a splash."
We're here all week, folks....tip the buffet, eat the waitresses....
RM
