to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. . .
Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en
to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see:
we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste
of your quality; come, a passionate speech.
Good my lord, will you see the players well
bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time: after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live."
-Hamlet, Act 2 Scene II
With these words Maggie, our youngest company member opened the 41st season of the Theater at Monmouth. Its a long-standing tradition here for the youngest to give the season's invocation, and the eldest to close the season after the last performance. But that's still a ways off . . . and a lot had happened last week leading up to Maggie's eloquent recitation and the premiere of Comedy of Errors.The week began with the 4th of July! After a long weekend of technical rehearsals, we all caravaned out to see the fireworks in the nearby town of Winthrop. Though we were somewhat smug/hesitant about this little township's ability to put on a worthy fireworks display, we were all pleasantly surprised when it lasted for over half an hour and was quite magnificent. I guess we city-slickers do not have a monopoly on pyrotechnics.
Afterward we headed back to Betsy's house for a pool party. There were candles and a really cool device that floated on the surface of the pool and made little light designs on the bottom. We all relaxed and listened to music and enjoyed the cool Maine evening.
That Monday (our weekly day off) was graced with a company party at Dave and Donna Shaw's house. D&D are board members of the theater, and just all around really great people. They had posted maps to their place and though the party was to start at 2:30, most of us mosy-ed in around 3:00 or so, as we were making the most of our weekly sleep in (and recovering from the night before).
And when we arrived . . . what a sight. The Shaw's house is perched on a hilltop, overlooking their own private beach that sprawls abundantly for dozens of acres in both directions. They had a kingly spread of h'ors douvers and beverages arrayed upon our arrival, and between the motor boat, the jet skis, the kayaks and swimming, we had all the water entertainment any of us could ask for. We grazed and sipped and slipped and slided all afternoon, and what a gorgeous afternoon it was!
About evening, when all of us were settling down a bit and starting to wonder if we were going to receive dinner as well, we were met with the smell of the grill firing up. Not long after there was a veritable cornucopia of grilled meat (brats, burgers, dogs) and an army of salads (potato salad, egg salad, celery potato salad, noodle salad, mustard potato salad, etc.) and on and on.
We all feasted and feasted and then had more. By eight o'clock we were all stuffed and sun-kissed and exhausted from an incredible day of summer frolicking. Thanks again Dave & Donna!
Tuesday it was back to work--with a vengeance. The northeast was experiencing a heat wave, and that combined with the sun exhaustion everyone was coping with, and a decided lack of fans in Toad Hall made for a fitful night of sleep for just about everybody. At the tech rehearsal Tuesday morning, a company of zombies took the stage to try and funny it up. After nine and a half hours of 'Comedy', we were all more than happy to say goodnight to Tuesday and hope for a better start the next day.
Wednesday proved better and we were starting to get into our stride with the show. Our Comedy of Errors is a high-energy, incredibly fast paced play and chock full of gags. As if that was not enough, my own part as Balthazar (normally a small role, with one speech in the middle) was transformed into the live sound effects guy. So I'm on stage the entire show, with a marvelous cache of gadgets and gizmos with which to accent the comedic moments on stage: cymbals, horns, a slide whistle, a bell, a ratchet, a triangle and a duck call. Its a lot of fun and makes also for a lot of cues.
But the middle of tech week I was trying to go through the show without my scripts (since we had an audience coming to the preview the next night), but I was still freaking out a bit because I had upwards of fifty cues to memorize for all the sound effects. 
The show was shoring up, and we were very ready to put it in front of an audience. Our almost sold-out preview gave us just that chance, and the audience was extremely responsive. (CHING! CHING!)
(BLEET!)And that brings us back to the top of this entry, where Maggie (who's been accepted to Yale and will be heading that way in the fall. Go girl!) read the season-opening invocation and tapped the stage three times with the staff to officially get the season underway. The house was full, and the show was spot-on. (BOING!)
Afterwards there was an elegant reception put on by the theater board, with a host of delicacies (seeing a trend here?) laid out on a banquet table in front of the theater
It was really incredible to look back and think that we had had only four days of rehearsal for Comedy before heading into technical rehearsals. Never in my life have I ever put up a show that fast, especially one as huge and with so many disparate elements as this one. (RATTLE RATTLE RATTLE!)
This week holds the opening of our next show: Is He Dead? by Mark Twain.
Till Then,
(DING!)
Balthazar
*Also check out the glowing review Comedy received in the Lewiston Sun-Journal here.
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