Friday was opening.
Or it wasn’t.
Depends on who you ask.
For our purposes, it was opening, and so we treated it as such. I decided to walk to the theatre rather than take the subway, since it was a nice day and I wanted to kind of clear my head in anticipation of what was to come. When I arrived at the theatre, the receptionist told me that she had a package for me. It turned out to be another gift basket (from my niece and her husband) and something that floored me even more than the first basket. I took it upstairs and sat there, kind of overwhelmed with what was going on.
The two baskets. (Not to be confused with The Three Rocks.)
(Good & Plenty and Starbucks cups not included ... )
I looked over my script, then went into the theatre, where we ran over the scene changes (which had been a little confusing for me the night before) and Scene 6 (which is never a bad idea), then went back to the dressing room to get ready. That “getting ready” turned out to be looking at our phones, chatting, going over the script, and running a couple of scenes just to give us a running start.
Around 7:00, there was a knock on the door, and, since I’m closer to the door, I opened it perfunctorily, expecting it to be Beth, giving us our half-hour call. Instead, it was a staffer from the theatre, bearing a long box for me. I kind of recovered from the confusion of who it was (I still feel bad about how I didn’t-quite-ignore-her-but-didn’t-quite-acknowledge-her) and took the box. I opened it and discovered it was from the liquor store down the block (calling it a “liquor store” minimizes it; it’s on the corner of 59th and Park Avenue in New York, so it’s ritzy) and contained a bottle of very good Irish whiskey. Unfortunately, there was no card. I took everything out of the damn box and all there was was the bottle and some packing paper. I called the store, figuring they might be able to tell me who’d sent it, but I got into an endless loop of waiting for a customer service rep. (I was glad to be told, though, that my call was very important to them.) Finally, after about ten minutes, I gave up and decided that, since it was only about a half-a-block away, I’d just walk over to the store and ask them. I put all my cold weather wear back on and walked over to the store—only to discover they’d closed at 7:00.
Thanks to the miracle of social media, though, I was able to post a photo of the bottle and thank my anonymous well-wisher. (“Dear Dave: I wish you’d fall down a well. Signed, a well-wisher*”) It turned out to be from my cousin Arthur, who was none-too-pleased that the note he’d dictated hadn’t made it into the box.
Thanks, cuz!
That mystery solved, there was nothing to do but wait for our 8:30 curtain. Eventually, after more waiting (see above for details of what that involved), we got the places call, gave each other a good-luck fist bump, and went down the hall to our respective doors. I stood backstage and waited, getting misty-eyed while I had two thoughts: thanking my parents and hoping to not fuck up the scene changes.
The lights went down, I entered, and the show was on.
It went all right. The crowd was disposed to like us, so things went well. They didn’t laugh as much as the first night, but were appreciative and even when we knew things had gone slightly off the rails (which has happened at each performance), they didn’t know. (Audiences never know and always know when something is slightly off.)
The 59E59 facility is a little odd in that there’s a theatre on the first floor, then a bar on the second, then two theatres next door to each other on the third (fortunately, sound doesn’t seem to bleed between theatres). Theatre management is very strict about who gets to go up to the third floor and when, so most post-show meetings seem to take place at the second-floor bar—except for stragglers waiting for the third-floor bathrooms or who have managed to evade the staff.
With that in mind, we changed and went down to the second floor where we greeted people (Pidge had brought her friend Chris, whom she’s known since undergrad school. I was grateful that he’d come to see the show) before heading to the after-party at a reasonably nearby and appropriately Irish pub.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a room set aside specifically for us, so despite the presence of friends and family (and our invaluable executive producers, William and Ruth Isenberg), it was loud and unwieldy. We had a champagne toast as best we could, I got a good whiskey from the bar, and talked with Gino, Brendan, Pidge, Chris, and some others. I decided to bail early, though, because A) it was just too confused, and B) I knew that if I talked too much, there was the chance I could blow out my voice, and we had two shows the next day. Pidge and I took the subway home, I watched some television, and then went to bed.
(*Joke copyright the late Frank Muir of “My Word.”)
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