By: Pam J. Hersh
What you see is what you get – WYSIWYG, in the texting vernacular.
That’s a good thing, right?
Not so fast, WYSIWYG.
McCarter Theatre Productions, particularly world premieres, subscribe to the principle of: What you get may be far better than what you saw last week.
I became aware of this fact when I attended a preview showing of Ken Ludwig’s “The Gods of Comedy,” preceded by an “Inside Story” tutorial from a McCarter staffer. In addition to providing an academic lesson about classic comedy, the instructor told the attendees that we all were players, albeit off-stage players, in the production.
Audience reactions during the show, she said, are valued and often the basis for changes in the script, set, sound, costumes and lighting. I decided to explore how change – often the bête noir for many of us in our daily lives – actually is the life blood for a playwright intent upon staging the best possible representation of his or her work.
One audience member napping might lead to a complete rewrite of a scene, I learned. Even though I never dozed off during “The Gods of Comedy,” which kept me laughing and wide awake, I did frown once, because I was unable to hear an apparently hilarious line. Perhaps my facial expression had the effect of improving the show’s audio for subsequent performances.
Two of McCarter’s production change agents are McCarter’s Resident Producer Debbie Bisno and Literary Manager Anna Morton.
Their names generally are absent from the press releases, but their presence is crucial to a successful staging of every production at the theater in Princeton. They told me that hundreds of changes occurred in the script and the staging during the week of dress rehearsals and previews prior to the official opening night.
Bisno, who came to McCarter in 2016 with experience in Broadway and off-Broadway productions, told me that the costumes I saw on stage were not the same ones that appeared on stage few days later.
“The costumes worn by the Gods in the scene where they assumed the identity of college students failed to look authentic. The outfits were too fancy and not campus casual,” Bisno said.
Another important change was the book-in-trash-can antic – a key element of play’s plot.
“The book that has to fall into the waste paper basket – and stay there – kept flipping out of the trash receptacle and thus forced the actor to ad-lib during a major plot point,” she said.
They called in the doctor – the set designer – who cured the problem with a very simple procedure. She removed the stuffing inside the trashcan that was put there initially to allow the book to peek out of the can. So the play sacrificed the peeking to enable the book to stay where it belonged.
Debbie and Anna agreed on how important it is to have the playwright in person on set during dress rehearsals and previews to respond immediately to the need for changes. They noted that internationally renowned Ken Ludwig is a comedic genius with his timing, use of language – and flexibility.
“In previews, Ken would take notes throughout the show, receive feedback from a variety of sources (McCarter staff, actors, audience members), would go home and turn the feedback into script changes. He had no ego problem with the opinions of others, because everyone is pulling on the same rope. Ultimately, however, in theater, the playwright has the final say. This is different from film where the producer and director have the final say, rather than the writer,” she said.
Morton’s job is not only to catalog all scripts that come to McCarter, but also to become best friends with the scripts that McCarter chooses to produce and to build a rapport with the playwrights of those scripts. She is particularly familiar with the talents of Ludwig, because before she became McCarter’s Literary Manager, she worked with Ludwig as his assistant when she was a McCarter intern.
Ludwig has brought his works to the McCarter Stage several times before. “The Gods of Comedy” is the fourth premiere of Ludwig’s at McCarter following “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery,” “A Comedy of Tenors” and his adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”
“Ken is very collaborative. Every word, every line is scrutinized, and he listens carefully to what everyone says. At some point, the playwright has got to stop making changes. We run out of time, and we have to open the show,” Morton said. “But Ken was still taking notes during the Friday night prior to the official opening on Saturday, because he had an incentive to never let up on the perfecting process. This McCarter production is a joint production with San Diego’s The Old Globe, which will serve as the host to “The Gods of Comedy” production after it closes at McCarter.”
Like a true Princetonian, I relish expressing my opinion, and it is gratifying to learn that during preview weeks at McCarter, someone actually listens to those opinions. For those Princeton theater aficionados who want to see how Ken Ludwig was influenced by the feedback he got from McCarter audiences after the show opened, they can head to San Diego for The Old Globe’s production (May 11 – June 16, 2019).
“The Gods of Comedy” will continue to run at McCarter Theatre Center through March 31. For more information, visit www.mccarter.org.
