A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Euclid 77th Street Theater, Directed by Will Rhys

There must have been some evil grant behind this production. The script came from a college production somewhere, and, no doubt in a college context, it would have been swell. But clearly the desire to have an endless string of student matinees was the primary reason for harnessing us into this. Since it was, after all, an epic, we had to double a fair amount. I was spared some of this since my basic costume as the King of England was rather fancy, but I still had to charge around the stage with my coat and waistcoat off in giddily tall platform shoes up and down narrow and irregular stairs trailing huge patches of cloth. I'm not sure why all this spectacle failed to work, but it surely did.

I remember that we had a small cannon--an actual cannon for use during one of the battle scenes--I think we were storming the Bastille or something. In any case, a real cannon is lit and then after a time goes off on its own. This was our situation. And we were all charging around trying to look ferocious with an untimeable explosion, complete with an impressive array of sparks and noise in the unknowable future. And, of course, sometimes, the foolish thing wouldn't go off at all.

I think I put on ten pounds during the run, trying to eat my way out of the depressing mess that this bona fide turkey represented.