Putting on a stage play, especially a musical, is a lot of work. Talent is required, usually; discipline, always

Here for instance is the Schedule director Bob Heckman set out for the rehearsals held for the most part on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights.

MARCH:

17 – AUDITIONS, ARTS COUNCIL
25 – READ THROUGH, MARYSVILLE AUDITORIUM
27 – MUSIC REHEARSALS, ARTS COUNCIL
29 – MUSIC REHEARSALS, ARTS COUNCIL

APRIL:

1 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
3 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
5 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
8 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
10 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
12 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
15 – REHEARSALS AT ARTS COUNCIL
17 – REHEARSALS AT ARTS COUNCIL
19 – ERHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
22 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM

MAY:

1 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
3 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
6 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM
8 – REHEARSALS AT AUDITORIUM

13 – “HELL WEEK” BEGINS, REHEARSALS EACH DAY UNTIL OPENING NIGHT
14 -- REHEARSALS, AUDITORIUM
15 -- REHEARSALS, AUDITORIUM
16 -- rREHEARSALS, AUDITORIUM
17 – OPENING NIGHT, AUDITORIUM (LOCK PINKIES AND SAY, “BREAK A LEG”)
18 – SECOND NIGHT, AUDITORIUM
19 – MATINEE , AUDITORIUM

22 – BRUSH-UP REHEARSALS, AUDITORIUM
24 – BRUSH-UP REHEARSALS, AUDITORIUM
25 – BRUSH-UP REHEARSALS, AUDITORIUM
31 – FOURTH PERFORMANCE, AUDTIORIUM

JUNE:

1 – FIFTH PERFORMANCE, AUDITORIUM
2 – CLOSING PERFORMANCE, MATINEE

“STRIKE THE SET”


One day of auditions is followed by 21 nights of rehearsals usually lasting two and a half hours. Two nights and an afternoon of grueling, nerve-wracking performances are followed by five more days of rehearsals which in turn is followed by another two nights and an afternoon of performing.

That means the cast has put in a minimum of 64 hours of work to get a two-hour show down pat. This does not include any of the time actors spend at home, work or driving memorizing lines, endlessly spinning them this way, or that: “No, Madame Rose. No!” – NO!. Madame, Rose, NO! – “No. no, Madame Rose.” -- “Madame ROSE, No, no, no!!!!!”

Triple all that expenditure for the singers and dancers. Multiply it three times again for those who must sing AND dance.

Actors also have to spend time working out their “business – i.e., how they move, or not; gesture, or not; interact with the other actors, or not; grimace, or not.

Ever have to laugh on cue? Convincingly? It’s harder than it looks.

Then there’s all that time spent searching out costumes, accessories and those indispensable props, all of which must be correct for the period.

Some of the actors in the show will do all that and then appear on the stage for two or fewer minutes – and have nothing to say while they’re out there.

“Actors have huge egos,” is a common complaint. But it takes huge egos to suffer the trials and toils it demanded to win those few sweet moments under the lights.

As a final exercise, clear your mind and try to think imagine yourself doing this in 90 seconds, or thereabouts: walking to a marked spot on a stage while singing at the top of your voice the right words at the right notes to a to a 13-piece orchestra amongst which is a pianist whose melodic lead you must precisely follow. Having reached your mark you join with a another actor/singer with whom your must sing, precisely timed and harmonized, the same right words to the same right notes, while dancing gracefully together looking into each others eyes and not at the floor to a second mark where you the take off a hat (or flourish a hankie) and execute a bow, hopefully correctly position to face the audience.

All that, and chew gum.

“Gypsy” director Bob Heckman blocked out the second act last night, marking out some script changes as he went. Cut were some costume changes and a few words that some bluenose – or fear of bluenoses in general – apparently dictated.

From his customary post at the foot of the stage, Heckman spent some two hours charting the player’s movements from the opening scene in a desert campground to final reconciliation of mother and daughter after Louise rises to the pinnacle of burlesque: featured performer at Minsky’s.

Minsky’s is – or was – burly-q’s equivalent of vaudeville’s Valhalla, the Palace Theater in New York.

Pay attention to the patter in some of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby “Road” movies and you’ll occasionally hear insider references to “playing the Palace” – the sine qua non of vaudeville stardom.

Act two opens in the southwestern desert where Rose has exchanged June and her “newsboys” and “farmboys” (plus cow), for Louise and her all-girl Toreadorables” (plus bull).

One look at the willing, but woefully wanting, “Toreadorables” is enough to know the act is an irredeemable stinker.

“Coming along, coming along,” Rose says, unenthusiastically..

The “Toreadorables” bit elides into “Together, Wherever We Go,” a song inexplicably cut from the Rosiland Russell movie version. In it Rose, Herbie and Louise pledge loyalty forever. As done by Jayne White, Tim Van Zant and Carmen Smith, it may well prove to be one of the most memorable songs of the show. There is good chemistry between the three and the tune’s a natural.

The scene then shifts to a burlesque theater in some generic Bumluck, USA where Herbie has unwittingly booked the Louise and the newly-revised Hollywood Blondes.

When Rose finds out where they’ve landed, she sees the moving finger’s message on the wall – the act is washed up. Then and there she grudgingly resolves herself to calling it quits with showbiz, dissolving the act, marrying Herbie – she even pops the question herself – and settling down with him and Louise to live happily, if dully ever after. Maybe hand the front end of the cow/bull over the mantelpiece for sentimental reasons.

After three ladies of the extended runway give her a crash course in the unsubtle art of stripping for a theater full of cigar-smoking drunks and traveling salesmen, Louise busies herself picking up extra cash by making costumes and feeding straight lines to the stand-up comics.

The very moment the Hollywood Blondes are to disperse and Herbie and Rose are to marry, a Fate presents a chance. The headliner stripper has been collared for soliciting for prostitution and there’s no one to take over the spot. Rose can’t resist. Not a moment to lose, she hustles Louise into action. Better to walk out a star, she argues.

So it is still uncertain Louise, mistakenly re-dubbed “Gypsy Rose Lee,” makes her stripper debut with a honky-tonk spin put on the children’s’ aft “Let Me Entertain You.” Double entendre in B flat..

Exit Herbie, who finally realizes Rose will never reform..

A quick transposition on stage (this is where Heckman cut some costume changes) and Louise arrives at the top: Minsky’s.

Rose, now a third wheel in the scheme of Louise’s celebrity lifestyle, comes around, embittered. They have words. Now the highest paid stripper in the business, Louise shows her independence. There’s a rift, and Rose vents her rage and frustration in the signature “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”

A final reconciliation is worked out and the mother and daughter team fade to black, as they say in another medium, with the curtain closing behind them.

Curiously, some pretty mild expletives were bowdlerized from act two at Wednesday’s rehearsal.

Struck were “damn” and “God damn,” with an assistant director warning “Tessie the Texas Twirler” (Gail Carter) never to utter the word those words, which had been in her lines.

Oddly enough, the assistant director -- who also read the part of a burlesque house stage manager that night -- allowed himself to say lines that included the words “Hell” and “ass.” The qualitative difference between these four so-called curse words was hard to distinguish.

Some people don’t like off-color words, and it’s probably easier to knuckle to the prudes that argue about such things. But the moral logic (if that isn’t an oxymoron) of allowing one to swear but not the other is mystifying.

The irony of all this is inescapable, of course. The play is, after all about an young girl’s progress from vaudeville tomboy to high-priced burlesque stripper.

Elsewhere, this was the first night for Dan Soares, who will conduct the 13-piece orchestra planned for the show. It was nifty to see him wielding a short baton, directing the singers through their paces.

An official roster of the "Gypsy" cast is not yet available. As a result, some names mentioned here have been spelled phonetically. Corrections would be appreciated. Pending installation of an automated comment system, corrections and comments may be e-mailed to the 'Gypsy' Journal weblog administrator at tnad@juno.com.

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“Gypsy” director Bob Heckman, a man of unusual energy, “blocked out” act one last night. He said he'll do the same for act two tomorrow.

For those not familiar with famed strip-tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir, act one begins in a 1920s vaudeville theater where “Uncle Jocko” is running a talent show for children – “Uncle Jocko’s Kids.”

Rose Novick is there trying to get her two girls, June and Louise, seen, appreciated and, hopefully, hired for something -- anything – that might put them on the road to stardom on the celebrated Orpheum Circuit.

Through Rose’s determination, chutzah and other assorted charms, gets the act with the favored daughter, June featured. The opening scene also introduces “Herbie,” played by Tim Van Zant, a feature writer for the Dixon, Calif. Tribune newspaper. The names of the two junior misses playing June and Louise have not yet been learned.

The action breaks, time passes and the scene shifts to “Grandpa’s” house in a Seattle where Rose grew up safe, but foiled from realizing her dreams of theater stardom when her mother ran off --- presumably with a traveling salesman, or some such.Rose was left in the of her father, a dull, railroad time-server with no imagination whatsoever.

All Rose needs to escape once again is a small grubstake -- $88 – to bankroll a new act sets and costumes for little June and her Newsboys.

But not even 88 cents is what the father is willing to part with. Playing the old man is Al Durbin, a realtor who has created a curmudgeonly Edgar Buchanan-like voice ideally suited to the portrayal.

When the old man goes to bed – right on schedule, just like the railroad -- Rose steals his solid gold retirement plaque to pawn for a road stake, and she and the girls are off once again in search of an act, a lucky break and a light to guide them all to stardom – if not for Rose, at least for June. Or, in a pinch, even for Louise.

The scene shifts again to the Weber Vaudeville Theater in some unnamed berg. Once again Rose is ragging on the owner-manager to put her act on the bill. While badgering, Rose runs into Herbie. In the intervening months he has remade himself into a candy huckster selling chocolate bars for theater concession stands.

Call it fate, kismet, chemistry, or love in the eleventh hour, Rose and Herbie forge a link. Forever, no matter how it turns out.

The next few scenes and songs trace Rose, the girls and the ever faithful Herbie through a series of events distilled from the legends and folklore of theatrical life in the twilight years of vaudeville: tight budgets, opening nights, weeks of layoffs, rough knocks, moments of heart-breaking camaraderie, Chinese food in bedbug hotels, dashed hopes, ingenuity when hard times demand it and dreams unquenchable.

With Herbie as manager, the act enjoys some success. The scene shifts to New York where Herbie has wangled an audition with a Broadway impresario. The impresario likes June’s potential as a star, all right, but the problem is he doesn't want the beastly stage mother Rose around.. As a gesture he offers Rose and the rest of the act a week at the Variety Theater down in Greenwich Village.

Louise, always modest about her own talents, encourages her mother to let June go and the rest of them leave showbiz for regular life. Rose refuses. For her, the theatrical code is quite clear: it’s all for one and all for one, that is to say, for Rose Novick and her quest for stardom through her kids.

The little troupe walks out and heads back to the boonies, still looking for that lucky ticket to stardom. It soon becomes evident that the act has gone bust along with vaudeville. In the middle of nowhere – someplace out where the states are square – tensions come to a head. On a lonely railway platform Rose learns June has eloped with one of the boys in pursuit of their own careers. The other boys want out, too.

"Let 'em go," says Rose. The ingrates!

Although the hour may be dark, the never-say-die Rose sees a new dawn breaking -- only this time the sun rises over Louise and an act made up of girls – Hollywood girls -- and a cow, if they can just work it in somehow.

Having blocked out that act and heard the actors sing their songs, Heckman dismissed the cast for the night.

Retired showman Bob Heckman appears to be in his sixties. He could be older, but it’s hard to believe that possible, considering the amount of stamina he displays as he stands there at the foot of the stage, cueing and correcting the actors.

It is astounding in an unsettling way the amount and caliber of the loose talent that seems to be rattling around Yuba and Sutter counties.

The older June and Louise (Carmen Smith) casually execute tap dance riffs in between songs. Even on what was the first night of dance-and-sing rehearsals, they and the boys’ chorus line already have taken on a rough, but recognizable shape.

After working for hours with young people like this, does Heckman go home, dog-tired, and fall asleep dreaming of lumps of clay under a sculptor’s hands?

It's April Fool's Day and the Ponderosa Theater Company is nearly two weeks into rehearsals for "Gypsy." (Should it have an exclamation mark, as "Oklahoma!" did?)

The fourth evening of rehearsals is scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight at the high school auditorium, a biggish, balconied theater which must seat on the order of 900 to 1,000 people. The business end of the stage has a vast 40-foot proscenium, scarlet plush curtains, a sound system and mounted lights, making it as close to a professional stage as the little town of Marysville, Calif. (Pop. 11,600, Elev. 63 feet) is likely to get.

To bring matters up to date, initial auditions were held at the Arts Council building, Sunday, March 17 -- St. Patrick's Day. Since the play is to open May 17 and run through June 2, May Day, Law Day and the national red-lettered holiday Memorial Day can be added to the list of holidays the cast will be working through.

About two dozen thespian hopefuls answered the casting call. Several were experienced actors, singers and dancers. Some were returnees who'd been away from the roar of the the grease paint and the smell of the crowd for years and years and years and years. At least one vocalist, possibly two, were already recording stars. That is, they had produced one or more of their own CDs. Others may have lacked a CD, but were veteran perfomers before live audiences. Of course, there were some rank beginners, adults, as well as children.

Among the dancers who turned out was a lanky 14-year-old named Brenden Teetsell Upon arrival, he donned huge dancing shoes (size 13, would be an educated guess) with taps the size of mayonnaise jar lids attached. Brandon's shoes brought to mind Krusty the Klown's floppy red footwear, and suggested that either the young man knew exactly what he was doing, or was outrageously confident. Both proved to be true.

Brandishing a 1950s stand-up microphone as a prop, Brenden did a good singing-and-cavorting rock-a-billy impression of Elvis Presley, or perhaps it was Carl Perkins. It was hard to decide. In any event, he did it well and got a part.

A determined band of young ladies auditioned for the star roles of June and Louise, both the child and adult editions of each character. The primary obstacle for them and all the girl dancers was executing the signature "split" Baby June does in the opening scene of the movie "Gypsy." At the end of the day it came down to one hard fact director Bob Heckman told them: no split, no part.
---

The following Monday but one, the whole cast of about 30 actors assembled at the high school auditorium for a complete read-through, sing-through of the play. It was a rather impressive multitude, considering how summer stock, little theater groups, high school and college drama clubs seldom undertake productions of that size. And more players were expected.

"I don't have all the boys cast yet," director Bob Heckman told the cast.

An oddly-mismatched pair of young male dancers -- possibly an older-brother, younger-brother combination -- showed up. They performed something that looked more like "river dancing" than tap or soft shoe. Nonetheless, they did it skillfully and with a kind of bored energy that, if harnessed and brightened up, would undoubtedly contribute significantly to the final show.

Everyone sang who was supposed to. From the outset it was clear Jayne White, who won the leading role of "Rose," was born to belt. A blonde singer with roots in gospel and experience in country-western, White had obviously been preparing long and hard for this particular part. She already knew most of her lines and songs by heart. Heckman claimed at one of the rehearsals that the show's success would hinge on how well the kids in the chorus lines perform.

"These youngsters are the glue that will hold this show together," Heckman said -- or words to that effect.

Maybe so, but I'm putting my money -- win place and show -- on Jayne to carry the show.
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A couple of nights later, a singers-only rehearsal was held at the Arts Council building. Those with speaking lines only were excused, but some attended, anyway.

Jules "Julie" Styne and Steven Sondheim collaborated on the music and lyrics for "Gypsy," a big-budget Hollywood production released to theaters in 1962. Too bad Styne didn't stick with his long-time partner Sammy Cahn ("High Hopes," "Kiss me Once," etc.), but what are you going to do. Still, Sondheim was young in 1962 and some of the songs he plinked and penned songs for "Gypsy: have become classics -- "You'll Never Get Away from Me," "Small World," and others. Not all, but some. In later years Sondheim started coming up anything but roses with clunker musicals like "Sweeney Todd," a show with a captivating premise squandered on a bunch of unhummable, unmemorable tunes.

Sondheim must have a soft spot for Greek theater, for his plays offer characters and situations reprised from the ancient classics. One example from "Gypsy" would be the three strippers, who are merely the Three Fates in skimpy costumes. And, perhaps in tribute to the ancient masters, Sondheim gave this off-beat trio the show-stopper: "You Gotta Getta Gimmick."

Two of the three women playing these parts arrived at the initial audition together. The third woman appeared seemingly out of nowhere. These three should become lifetime buddies before the show closes. No one who's seen the movie can forget the Butterfly Lady and the misses Mazeppa and Electra (note the sly reference to Greek tragedy). If these three women put their hearts into their new interpretations of the timeless truths of burlesque, there's a good chance audiences here will remember them forever.