DRAMATIC LICENSE, by Ken Ludwig, The Drury, Directed by Dennis Zacek

This delightful piece of fluff of a murder mystery was a first outing for the author of the hit musical Lend Me a Tenor. Here Cassie is vamping it up in a very un-Hickory Hideout sort of way. Needless to say we had a ball. Set in the Connecticut mansion of the American Actor William Gillette
who created Sherlock Holmes for the stage, the play forced the actor to live his role.

Dennis Zacek (whose Victory Gardens Theater on Chicago's North Side won the Tony in 2001as best regional theatre) was in to direct--a lovely, generous, practical, inciteful fellow. Since this was a world premiere, there was a bit of risk, but we could tell at the first read-through that it was going to work, which it surely did, drawing large appreciative houses.

The author Ken Ludwig was on hand from time to time, and it was I think this production that convinced him to at least consider abandoning his career in law to devote himself to playwriting. A couple of years later, I got a package from him on my dramaturg's desk. It was a play with music set in Cleveland in a seedy hotel that had a terrific part in it for Cliff Bemis, and one that would have suited me to a tee. We could have cast it that afternoon and had fun with it. It had, as I recall three sets and would have needed a bit of rewriting, but I begged Will to put it on the bill for the following season For whatever reason, it didn't make the cut. That play, after a few rewrites, became the hit play, Lend Me a Tenor. So close and yet...

My strangest recollection of this show, though, involved having to tie a black bow tie onstage. The task itself was not a difficult one, but one night it became unforgettable. At one point I had to throw a whiskey glass into a crash box that was under the sofa table up center. It had about a foot square opening through which I had to propel the little missile, and inevitably, I was acting one night and the foolish thing caught the edge of the table, shattered, and a shard flew up and cut the side of my hand open. It started bleeding immediately. I remember it didn't hurt at the time, but I was fascinated by the amount of blood pouring out of my hand and became preoccupied with keeping the blood from spraying all over my shirt. I remember thinking I didn't have another one to change into for the final scene, and bloodstains wouldn't do. Fortunately, I was in a tux and had a hanky handy, so I wrapped my hand in the hanky, blood oozing out through the cotton, and then realized that I had to tie my tie to cue the next entrance. If you've never tried to tie a bow tie with one functioning hand aided by a ball of soggy cotton, you haven't lived. I managed somehow both to tie the tie and not break up. I shoved my hand into my pocket and went on with the scene. This was, after all a murder mystery, so the blood was a delicious (and literal) red herring, if only a poetic one. A number of people asked me at the Club later that night, how we did the blood effect... I loved their reactions as I showed them my ostentatiously bandaged hand. The joys of live theater...