“Which is ringleading the stir-up?” Wanda shouted back, murdering the author’s lines.
“It’s that Blanche Bernstein!” Will bellowed what was supposed to be a hiss. He managed to get his shoulder in front of Wanda’s face and mugged for the audience.
“I know how to controlling that one!” Wanda clapped her hands together and contrived to catch Wil1’s nose between them.
“You do? How?” Will did a Jack Benny take and moved upstage so Wanda would have to turn her back to the audience to deliver her next line to him.
“Come here and I’m telling you,” Wanda improvised, outfoxing him. “I’m knowing what the Blanche isn’t. Her innocent daughter coming for visiting and I threaten telling daughter all, you see how quick is Blanche scrapping union lable.”
“Ahh, Madam, but you are diabolically clever!” Will leaned one hand against the backdrop. When it came away covered with paint, he patted Wanda’s cheek blithely.
She looked like an Indian about to go on the warpath. When she realized what he’d done, she set out to get even. “This is why I being boss and they common trollops,” she replied, scooping up a gob of wet paint with which to pat Will on top of the head.
After that the battle lines were drawn. The audience roared as they swapped more gobs of paint with the dialogue. By the time their scene together was over, they looked like a pair of Technicolor nightmares by Andy Warhol.
Somehow, Wanda managed to get herself cleaned up for the climactic scene of the first act. I could smell the turpentine from the back of the auditorium, but she’d managed to get most of the paint off her face at least. And Rusty, who was in the scene with her, had put on panties and a bra to replace the ripped foundation garment.
This was the symbolic scene in which the Madam dances while telling Blanche of her daughter’s imminent turn and how she’ll tell the daughter her mother’s a whore if Blanche doesn’t drop the idea of a union. It was a scene that ended with a bang.
Rusty, as Blanche, stood with her head bowed, defeated, as Wanda danced up behind her and violently leaped to show her exultation at the victory over Blanche. The entrechat was a bad idea. As Wanda came down, the platforms of the stage parted underneath the feet of both girls and they fell between them with a crash. They were still struggling to extricate themselves when the curtain finally fell.
I went backstage between the acts. Internecine warfare prevailed. Snipers were everywhere, and dissident elements threatened to topple the power structure.
Wanda was helping Rusty berate Cass Novak. “If you’re tying up the platforms properly, we not falling through!” she yelled at him.
“You loused up my opening scene with your goddam exercises!” Rusty screamed.
“Of all the vindictive bitches!” Will Leigh growled. “I’ll never get the paint off!”
“Help me get these platforms together before Cleo and I go on,” Phil Anders tugged at Will’s sleeve.
“Rusty stole my bra!” Cleo accused.
“I only borrowed it! I had to wear something!”
“Well give it back! I can’t go onstage without a bra.”
“With your bosom, who’ll know the difference?” Rusty sniped.
“I’ll tear it off you!” Cleo descended on her menacingly.
“TRUCE!” I yelled. “Places for the second act everyone.” I checked to make sure the scrim had been moved forward so Cleo and Phil could play their opening love scene behind it and then I went back out front.
The curtain rose on Phil and Cleo as the kibbutznik and the schoolteacher making love on the desert, a mood the scrim was supposed to create without depending on reality. The Madam stood to one side of the scrim and in front of it, making with the exposition needed to explain the scene and introduce the characters. Being an old pro, Wanda contrived to block the scrim and catch the muted floodlight full in the face.
However, Cleo spotted the maneuver. Furious, she cut the rope holding the scrim in place and it enveloped Wanda like a fishnet. She and Phil continued to make passionate love without benefit of narration as Wanda thrashed about in the folds of the scrim.
In the second scene the desert backdrop was replaced by an interior setting and Phil and Cleo were replaced by Cass as the sailor and Rusty as Blanche. Without the scrim, the audience could clearly see that their supposedly passionate love bout was really a vindictive wrestling match. There was nothing tender in the way Rusty nibbled Cass’s ear. She practically chewed off the lobe. He retaliated by biting her shoulder so hard he drew blood. She got him with a knee in the crotch that all but destroyed his simulated passion. He squeezed her breast like the Florida Chamber of Commerce discovering someone slipped in a California orange in a juice squeezing contest. She all but ripped the skin off the back of his neck with her nails.
Finally the script called for Lolly to enter and find them making love. She was supposed to turn on the lamp and discover them there. Only when she turned the switch, there was a crackling of electricity that bounced all three of them across the stage. Backstage someone had sense enough to drop the curtain ending the second scene in the second act.
The third scene was between Lolly as Leslie Bernstein and Peter Putter as the young junkie. She was supposed to be innocent; he was supposed to seduce her—inarticulately. Only the ringing of the telephone on the end table beside the couch was supposed to keep her from succumbing altogether.
The telephone was one of the props we hadn’t been able to find. At the last minute someone had come up with a small, toy telephone. This was the one being used in the play.
Peter gave one final grunt and Lolly murmured agreement. That was the cue for the telephone to ring and bring their passion to a halt. Only somebody goofed. The phone didn’t ring.
Peter Putter froze. Only his hands, deep in his pockets, moved. The missing sound effect left him hung up in mid-passion and he groped miserably for security.
Lolly had more presence of mind—-or perhaps only more sexual aggression. She grabbed Peter by the shoulders and pulled him down on the couch beside her. The innocence her character called for her to display was thrown to the winds as she tried to cover the flubby urging Peter to continue making love to her.
Peter resisted. His disinclination to cooperate gave him a sudden inspiration. “I thought I heard the phone ring,” he blurted out.
“That’s possible. It has a very soft ring.” Lolly went along. “I’d better answer it. Maybe it’s Mama.”
She picked up the phone. The cradle stuck to the receiver. She tugged to free it. She couldn’t. It was stuck fast.
The audience was having hysterics. Desperately, Lolly tried to bluff her way through. She turned her back to the audience and pretended she was speaking into the mouthpiece of the phone, trying to hide the fact that it still was stuck together by blocking it with her body. Somehow she managed to get her last line out, the speech that was the signal for the curtain to fall on Act Two.
The curtain, unfortunately, was a little slow falling. The audience clearly saw Lolly slam the phone down and glare at Peter. It was then that the phone began ringing insistently. The audience applauded wildly as Peter and Lolly both stared at it in dismay.
“Stop the bombing!” That’s what I felt like screaming when I went backstage after Act Two. It wouldn’t have helped. Nobody would have heard me. They were all too busy throwing grenades at each other.
“You deliberation dropping the scrim on me!” Wanda was accusing Cleo and Phil.
“Serves you right for trying to upstage us!” Cleo shot back.
“I’m bleeding!” Cass Novak grabbed my arm. “See what that bitch did to me?” He shoved his ear under my nose.
“Look, Vance!” Rusty gave him a vicious shove and pushed her bosom at me. “He could give a person cancer of the breast squeezing like that!”