As much as it’s nice to get good reviews in the media (which we have gotten in spades), the real catch is a good reaction from the audience.  Which is why I am delighted to share with you a conversation I had while leaving the theater last night after our third of five (sold out!) shows.

I’m talking with some old college roommates when a woman comes over and stops me.
“It was hysterical!  I loved it!” she gushes.  I thank her politely (I’m rather shy after shows) and begin to move on when she continues.
“It was really terrific.  BUT…and I think you know this…”

We all stop.  What could this woman’s criticism be.  As someone who was involved with the writing, directing, and acting in the show, I can think of any number of things that could be the problem.  In fact, every night, my mind becomes a shopping list of tiny things that could be fixed until only the post-show drinks with the cast can silence the voice in my head screaming “THE STAGE RIGHT CURTAIN SHOULD HAVE HAD THREE CLIPS, NOT TWO!  IT LOOKED UNEVEN!”  So what is the horrible, glaring error that this woman wants to impart to me.

“It was really terrific.  BUT…and I think you know this…YOU could really use a tan.”

Apparently my incredibly whiteness becomes a distraction when it gets put under stage lights.
We then have a charming conversation about how pale I am in which she honestly inquires whether or not I had purposely gotten paler for the role.  The entire time I was hoping that this woman will turn out to secretly be a big time theater critic and that sometime this week there’ll be a review in like the New York Times with the headline, “Zipperface is Hysterical.  Guy Who Plays Priest Should Go to Beach”

Oh, well.  I’m very white, I know.  Just ask our choreographer.  She had to teach me to dance.

Anyway, speaking of reviews, over at the NYTheatre blog we’ve been one of the two most read reviews in the whole festival for the past couple of days.  We were number one yesterday!
Sure hope that guy spellchecked…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under Jon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.