Opening Night

September 13, Late Night.

God, I love Chicago. Hard to come in from the laughing streets, but in I am.

Mark P wrote in an email to be sure not to sweat the things I can’t do anything about, and he hit the nail on the head. That’s just what I had been doing. I went to the opening tonight with an anxious heart, but it turned out that everything was well, and more well still now that I am back in my room to think about it. The problems with the production stem largely from directorial overconfidence: too many of the director’s ideas worked out without regard to–or actually in conflict with– what the script demands. The worst is the near-catastrophic miscasting of the character David, which was done not for lack of options but because the director wanted to prove a point. One character out of four can sink a show, though it didn’t quite this one. Tonight I realized that all would be well. The actors were trying, at least, to speak clearly, and that was the worst thing left about which something could be done. S still has whole pages where he just says what he memorized without really thinking what he’s saying, and so it comes out as jibberish, but I don’t think now that matters as much as I thought it did. The production is a success. The play is certainly one, and I wasn’t sure until I saw it tonight. The production isn’t a BIG success, and won’t be, for the reasons cited, but it is a root and a leaf and a bit of life for my play, and I am content. To Michael and Tim and Julie who did so well, my gratitude, expressed tonight and felt in the hours to come. I will miss them. I feel that I live here and will see them night after night, but tomorrow I know that is not so. Onward, then. In some ways this is better than a giddy momentary success: it is a part of a career.