Understudies

“And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.” (1 Thessalonians 5:14)

“⁹Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: ¹⁰If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. … ¹²Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, 12)

I’m going to guess that this will be the first piece of Lenten-season writing to feature the musical comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”.

After all, it’s a show based on a movie of the same name, which itself is a remake of a previous movie — all of which are about con artists. The characters in this show are people who actively work to swindle people out of their money — in order to make their own living! Name a teaching of Jesus, and these con artists probably violate it.

But I’m not writing about these characters. Rather, I’m thinking of the young people who brought them to life last weekend, at Maynard High School, during their spring musical show. I’m thinking about the sense of community that they developed, and displayed … and about how they carried their light into the world in a way that transcended merely Showing An Audience A Good Time.

Tech week is the stretch of five or six days during which anyone involved with putting on a stage production immerses themselves into it, to the probable detriment of family time, proper amounts of sleep, the doing of homework, all that important stuff. And some time during Maynard High School’s “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” tech week, it was revealed that the young actor who was to portray one of the show’s three major roles (the one John Lithgow originally played on Broadway, so, arguably the lead role) … had come down with the flu. Not the stomach variety, which for lots of reasons was okay; but instead, the kind that gets into the inner ear and provides hours of fun with dizziness and nausea.

Not helpful when you’re within 48 hours of opening night. And especially disappointing when you’re a senior and it’s your final high school show.

And, since this was a high school production, and not actually on Broadway, there were really no such things as understudies — cast members whose whose job it is to prepare for their roles but also for one or two more major roles, so that they could step in, in case of an emergency (and disappoint audience members who had paid lots of money to come see This Specific Famous Actor play the role).

What to do?

There wasn’t much that I could do, apart from offering good hopeful thoughts and praying real hard for a Lenten miracle by opening night Friday. I was a mere pit orchestra member. But in that role, I could observe. And man!… was there stuff to observe.

I arrived at the school’s auditorium late on Friday afternoon — to discover that for the previous hour and a half, or two, the stage director, music director (whom I believe you are familiar with), and three other student cast members had been hard at work. The kids were helping each other to flash-learn as much choreography, song content, and dialogue as possible — just in case our stricken actor, Will, was unable to perform. We were informed that he was going to try his best.

So, at the very least, a whole lot of people — cast, crew, pit, professional helpers — were going to have their attention divided between doing their thing, whatever it was, and keeping an eye on Will to see if he was about to tip over.

He made it about halfway through the first act before the dizziness apparently got to him. At which point, the backup plan went into effect:

Midway through Act I, cast member Austin came onstage dressed as the lead role, script in hand, and ably covered the part… until, to my utter surprise from my pit orchestra perch, flu-ridden Will reappeared and sang the Act 1 finale. A triumphant return? A miracle recovery?

Short-lived, as it turned out. So, throughout Act II, cast member Kendall stepped onstage and performed the lead role, script sometimes in her hand and sometimes not! And she executed the songs’ choreography and lip-synced their lyrics, while Will sang them from the safety of an offstage chair.

Afterward, I said, I was pleased that music director Kevin had gotten me onboard to play in the pit, in the first place — because as great a story as this may be to read … trust me, it was remarkable to see it unfold live.

The next night (show #2 of 3), Will was entirely indisposed. So Kendall covered his part … while the show’s assistant stage director Evelyn (a recent Maynard High School alum) covered Kendall’s part.

And at the Sunday afternoon matinee, while Will performed most of the role, there was one short stretch of Act I during which Kendall returned to the lead role. By that time, my pit colleagues and I had moved past our initial mouth-agape astonishment at the merry-go-round of “show-must-go-on” role-swapping, and now were in the territory of “oh, okay, so that’s how they’re going to make it work this this time.”

Did I mention that none of these adaptable, flexible, willing student understudies were seniors? Kendall was a junior; Austin was a freshman, are you kidding me?

Before each performance, the stage director (herself also a fairly recent Maynard High School alum) made an announcement that alerted the audience to the various role-playing opportunities.

This achieved two things: first, it kept the audience from being distracted from the story or confused about who they were seeing on stage, so they could probably enjoy the show.

Second, and more importantly, it allowed the audience to root extra-hard for everybody involved — flu-affected Will, last-minute helpers Kendall and Austin — and in my lifetime of experience in school and community musical theater, I have never felt an energy quite like the energy that was in that room. It was being passed back and forth from stage to seats and back.

Kendall and Austin and Evelyn — and everyone else in the cast and crew who were sending good vibes in Will’s and Kendall’s and Austin’s and Evelyn’s direction — were putting on a whale of a show, regardless.

The audiences (including the one Friday night, which had been expected to be much smaller than usual because of a sudden athletic playoff game being held down the hall but somehow wasn’t, and, y’know, priorities) responded with an enthusiasm that can only happen when stuff that could have been going off the rails clearly was not.

And the cast onstage, to my eye, was clearly feeding off that returned energy.

“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” may not exactly be “South Pacific” or “West Side Story”. It did not win a Pulitzer, and its single Tony award went to the other lead actor, not John Lithgow. Some of its songs are catchy enough to hum afterward; most are not really.

It’s a fluffy story, without a feel-good, heartwarming, uplifting moral at the end. It’s about a set of characters who, as the director’s pre-show talk notes, are for the very most part not good people. Famously, it is NOT for children; and some of its jokes and characters’ actions have NOT aged well even since its premiere twenty years ago, never mind since the original Steve Martin/Michael Caine movie was made in the late 1980s.

But it has risen to the level, perhaps temporarily but still undeniably, of being one of my favorite musicals — because of the people who carried it off. And who, in doing so, carried their light into the world.

And who entertained their audiences well enough that their audiences reflected that light straight back at ’em.

And the light ricocheted around the room; and I would not be surprised if at least some of those people — cast, crew, audience — were still glowing a little bit, all this time later.

Everybody had everybody else’s back.

‘Twould be nice if that were a much more widespread thing, in our world, at the moment.

Nice to know, though, that it can happen somewhere … even in a relatively small way, in a relatively small venue … and comforting to think that maybe some kind of cliched but still-meaningful “pay it forward” effect can be achieved.

May it be so.

-Rob Hammerton