Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
As I go to Toronto to see a bunch of shows, I remember that day in 1972 when my buddy Larry Fineberg called to say he had written a play that was being performed in this Canadian city. He desperately wanted me to see it and, to sweeten the pot, he said, “You know, Sugar is trying out here, too.” At the time I was living in Boston, where Sugar — the musical version of Some Like It Hot, with a book by Peter Stone ( 1776) and songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill (Funny Girl) — wasn’t scheduled to come en route to Broadway. And anyway, Larry had been my good friend for years, so I just had to say yes.
My wife and I were dead broke: We were putting her through college on my meager schoolteacher’s salary, and a baby was coming in May. But how could I disappoint Larry (and lose the chance to see Sugar)? “I can only fly up on Saturday, February 12,” I told him, “so I’ll see Sugar in the afternoon and your show at night.” What I didn’t tell him was I chose that date because it was the closing performance and maybe that Saturday morning there’d be a terrible snowstorm that would ground every plane, allowing me to call Larry and say, “I wanted to come but they’re just not flying.” Then I’d immediately call and arrange for a refund from the airline.
Saturday, February 12 was a bright, beautiful, snow-free morn. So I flew to Toronto, where I was warmly greeted by Larry. We went to Sugar, which was excruciating — though I’ll always remember that former pop star Johnny Desmond, playing Spats Palazzo, blew kisses to everyone during his curtain call and mouthed to the audience, “I love you.” Then we went to Larry’s play, which I didn’t like, causing a rift between us that lasted seven years. At the end of the night, as I went to my too-expensive hotel room, I wasn’t singing Sally’s line from Follies: “I’m so glad I came ”
And I sure wasn’t singing it the next day, when the snow began to fall in Toronto. A blizzard had already visited Buffalo and areas below, a day late for my purposes. Now all planes were grounded. I pay-phoned Greyhound, found that the buses were still running, hung up, and miraculously got my dime back. That turned out to be important, for when I got to Greyhound, I found that the company hadn’t yet begun accepting credit cards and a ticket was $29.40 — exactly what I had, to the penny.
A torturous 16-hour bus ride stopped in every tank town in New York and Massachusetts. I had no money to buy even a candy bar and only had with me one book: Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which is a marvelous work but not right for a long, long bus ride. I made it home on Monday morning; on Wednesday, I learned that Johnny Desmond had been canned from Sugar and that producer David Merrick felt the show needed more work, so he was bringing it to Boston.
Harrowing as it was, that theater trip wasn’t the most dangerous I’d endured. On February 2, 1967, a surprise snowstorm hit Providence while I was seeng the Trinity Square Repertory Company’s production of Ah, Wilderness with a young Peter Gerety as Richard and Pamela Payton-Wright as Muriel. Driving even the 40 miles back to Boston in a blinding blizzard was hazardous, especially when I got to a point in the highway where easily a half-foot of unplowed snow blocked the road ahead of me. The ride took nearly three hours. As I sat white-knuckled on the wheel, I kept thinking, “I hope I survive this, but if I don’t, it would be fitting for me to die on the way home from seeing a play. Neither snow, nor rain, nor…whatever the rest of that saying is.”
Nearly four years later, on New Year’s Eve 1970, my wife and I were at her family’s house in Baltimore. That’s a hop, skip, and jump from Washington, where Ari — the musical version of Exodus — was trying out. An 18-inch snowstorm was expected that night, but given that it hadn’t yet started at 6pm, I blithely quoted to Lilli the line from Barefoot in the Park about weathermen: “They’re wrong as often as they’re right.” She reminded me that we were invited to a New Year’s Eve party right there in Baltimore, but that didn’t deter me from shooing her into the car and driving to D.C. We arrived just before showtime, and still nary a flake had fallen. But when we went out at intermission, we saw that the weathermen were right, not wrong: There was already a foot of snow on the ground. Ari was so God-awful that I didn’t fight Lilli when she wanted to return to Baltimore without seeing Act II. (I count this incident as the first step to our divorce six years later.)
Give my girlfriend Linda credit, though. She could have broken up with me — and no one would have criticized her for it — when we were in Memphis, having just finished our pilgrimage to Graceland. I wanted to see what the Orpheum Theatre looked like so we drove by on a Saturday around 3:30pm, just as happy theatergoers were coming out of Noises Off to smoke. “Must be the end of the second act,” I mused aloud, to which Linda said, “Go ahead. Go in. I’ll stay here and read.” (She absolutely hates farce of any kind, even a great one like Noises Off.) God love her, she waited out there while I saw the rest of the show.
Okay, you’ve heard about my theatergoing adventures by air, car, and bus, but how about rail? Here’s one from Sunday, December 2, 1984, when I was to go to StageWest in Springfield, Massachusetts to see a production of Peter Pan — not the musical but the play, which would have incidental music by my buddy Martin Erskine. I got a ticket for an early morning train and, lazybones that I am, I got up with j-u-s-t enough time to get to Penn Station and board the Amtrak before it left the station. I didn’t allow time for breakfast because I planned to eat on the train — but, soon after I boarded, I heard the announcement that the club car was out of service and that no food would be available for the entire trip.
Good Lord, was I starving for those three-and-a-half hours until I reached Springfield! The moment I got off the train, I planned to throw myself into any McDonald’s or Burger King — places I usually avoid, but this was no time to be choosy. Alas, the Springfield train station turned out to be a small, unassuming place with just a vending machine to which I ran, hoping to get a Granola bar or seven. But there was an out-of-order sign on it. My stomach rumbled in loud protest.
I went out into the street, shocked at how cold a December day it was. I’m a native New Englander so I know all about frigid weather, but this was definitely a late January-early February type of day, not a pre-Christmas one. I bundled up and walked the main street looking for some place to eat. Every restaurant either had a “Closed” sign in its window or — more often, I’m sorry to say — a “For Rent” sign.
Then, in the distance, I spotted an enormous mall that looked as beautiful as the tallest building in Emerald City. I ran toward it — partly because I was starving, partly because I had to get out of this seemingly sub-zero weather. Finally, I reached the door, entered, saw a line of adults with their kids, and immediately joined it. I didn’t care if this were a McDonald’s, a Burger King, or even a Jack in the Box; I was going to eat the first thing I could. But while I was decompressing from the cold, I noticed that many of the adults and some of the children were looking at me very skeptically. Only then did I notice that I wasn’t in a food court restaurant at all but in a line to visit Santa Claus — and I didn’t have a kid with me.
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
