Broadway Tails (22 page)

We began rehearsals in late September 2005, which gave us two weeks to work with the actors and the rats in the studio. We set up the animals in the theater to get used to their surroundings, and then every day we would walk through Times Square with rats in cat cages, always drawing stares. We began the technical rehearsals in mid-October, with previews starting at the end of the month. The crew at the Marquis was great at building a booth offstage where we could bring the birds and transfer them to the show cages. It was completely sealed off so that if one of them escaped, they could be contained in the room. The first previews went great for the animals.

Between Michael Ball being so comfortable onstage in the role and the rats being so good, it worked very well. Beatrice the white rat was the star. Charlotte, the naked rat, though best at the behavior, was relegated to being the understudy by the director. The birds and the rat appeared at the end of the second act, when Michael Ball’s villainous character is packing to leave town. At that point he sings a comedic song to his furry and feathered friends. The last note of his song is sung to the rat. Beatrice was housed onstage in a glass terrarium with a hinged lid. At the appointed time, Michael would go over, lift the lid, take Beatrice out, extend his arms, do the behavior, drop her back into the terrarium, drop her treat in and close the lid.

At the fourth public performance, Michael accidentally closed the lid on the end of Beatrice’s tail. This was the first time in thirty years that one of my animals had been hurt onstage, and it was deeply upsetting. When
we got Beatrice offstage, there was a lot of blood and she was obviously in pain and distress. We rushed her to the emergency veterinary clinic. Fortunately, nature gave rats tails that break off easily if a predator gets them. She had lost the very tip of her tail, and needed only a few stitches.

Charlotte took over in true “the rat must go on” tradition, and did great the next day. It took a week for Beatrice’s tail to heal and for her to regain her confidence, but she made it for opening night. That was nothing compared to our leading lady, Maria Friedman. During the technical rehearsals she felt a lump on her breast—it was breast cancer. The show had been produced for her in London by her sister, Sonia, the score had been written for her voice, and the show had been directed around her. She was brilliant in the role. She had surgery while her understudy learned and covered the role. Maria battled back and also made it back for opening night. This is the stuff of Broadway legends.

The show was not well received by the New York critics. I got a lot of good publicity as “The Rat Man,” while having two shows running on Broadway at the same time. They overlapped by six weeks before
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
closed. CBS
Evening News
even did a piece on me. They came and photographed the rats, the dogs in
Chitty
, my work with the Humane Society, and my family life at home.

Our agreement with the producers was that we got a reduced fee until the show had been running for a year.
The Woman in White
closed after three months and 109 performances. At the end of the run, the canaries went back to Dominic. We gave the cockatiels to a friend who was homebound. The mice, having a fairly short life span, lived with us for the rest of their days. Rob kept the rats. Our star rat, Beatrice, lasted the longest. Being a star on Broadway gave her something to live for.

September 2005 was a busy month. At the Hilton Theater we had eight dogs working in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. We had a room full of rats, mice, and birds at
The Woman in White
. Our plate was full with some really difficult tasks. Little did I know a bloodbath was waiting just around the corner.

In October I got a call from Melinda Burke, who was the general manager of an off-Broadway theater called the Atlantic Theater Company. They were looking to do the American premiere of a new play,
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
, by the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It was currently playing in London. Three of McDonagh’s previous plays,
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West
, and
The Pillowman
, had all played on Broadway and received Tony Award nominations for best play. The theater company wanted to get this play up and move it to Broadway almost immediately.

“What kind of animal do you need?” I asked. Melinda said, “A black cat.” A shiver ran up my spine. I was currently dealing with rats, and I hadn’t trained a cat for a show in more than twenty years. I asked what the play was about. She said it was about an Irish terrorist who finds out his cat is dead and murders all the people involved.

“Is it a drama?” I asked. “Oh no,” she said. “It’s a comedy.” A comedy, she continued, where four people get killed and chopped up onstage. At that point I was thinking this was some sort of practical joke or something. She went on to say that the cat comes out in the last two minutes of the play and just eats some food. “But you should know we do kill two cats onstage during the play.” Before I could even get the words out of my mouth, she said, “But they’re fake, and it’s done in good taste.”

Now I was seeing red. How could any violence to an animal be funny or in good taste? My whole tone changed. I told her I was a representative of the Humane Society of New York and could not be part of something that depicts violence to animals. Again Melinda apologized and asked that before I turned it down, would I please read the play. She said I would probably change my mind. I had no desire to read it, except to find out what they were doing and form some sort of protest. I agreed, and she overnighted the script. The next day when it arrived, I read it and I was intrigued. The violence was over the top—based in reality, but exaggerated by the playwright to show the worst in man’s nature—and the dead cats were obviously puppets. The dialogue was hysterical.

A mad IRA terrorist leaves his beloved cat with his dad. When a neighbor brings a dead cat from the road to the dad, they both worry that the terrorist will come back and find out. Ultimately the terrorist does return and is going to kill them both when three members of a rival gang come along and capture him. His girlfriend helps him escape and kill his rivals. In the final scene, the dad and the neighbor are chopping up the bodies while the terrorist mourns the loss of his cat. The girlfriend finds out the terrorist mistakenly killed her cat. She kills him and leaves. As the dad and neighbor remain, they look up and at that moment the terrorist’s cat walks in through a hole in the wall and starts to eat. All the violence was for nothing. The two remaining men put a gun to the cat’s head to kill him, but realize there’s been enough bloodshed for one day as the final curtain comes down. When I read the final twist I was hooked. If we could reassure the audience no cats were harmed, it could be a smash hit.

I had heard wonderful things about the Atlantic Theater. Their track record of fostering new theater was admirable, but mostly they were good guys. Off-Broadway pays less than half of what Broadway pays, and you either have to be rich or very poor to work there. After I read the play, I wanted to be part of this theatrical event.

I actually had a great black cat. His name was Mr. Ed. I was doing a production of
Annie
in upstate New York in the summer of 1995. The theater had put me up in an inn attached to a dairy farm. One morning, as I was walking the Sandy dogs, this big black cat came strolling right up to us. He rubbed on my legs, purred, rubbed on the dogs, and just said hello. Neither the dogs nor I could believe this bold cat would just stroll up to us. Each morning he would come out to say hello and follow us for our walk. I enjoyed his company, so the day before I left, I asked the innkeeper’s wife if the cat belonged to anyone. She told me that the dairy attracted cats from all over the county. They were a nuisance, and they tried to get rid of them. I didn’t want to think about the methods they might use. I called Dorothy and told her about this cat. I said, “He’s not afraid of dogs, he’s friendly with people, and he’s really not afraid of anything. Maybe we could use him in show business.” She said it was up to me, but she didn’t want another cat in the house. We already had two. He could be a barn cat.

The next day I threw the cat in the back of the van and drove home. Knowing he would be living in the barn, I tried to think of a funny name for him. I came up with Mr. Ed. That way, when people heard us calling him, instead of a horse coming out of the barn, they’d see this cat. When I got home, I showed him to Dorothy. She was pretty impressed with him, and when I told her his name she made me promise not to name any more animals.

The first night we made a nice bed for him in our tack room with pillow, litter box, and food. The barn was about 200 feet from our house. All night long he howled and cried. It kept us awake, but I thought he’d adjust. The next day we let him out, and he spent the day investigating the yard. He came to the back door and tried to come in. We kept pushing him back, pushing him back. The second night, the same thing, meowing all night long. The third night, I thought maybe he didn’t like being locked up all night, so I left the tack-room door open. Within fifteen minutes he was outside our back door, meowing bloody murder. At about 3:00
A.M.
, I got up and said, “All right, you win. Come sleep in the kitchen.”

In another fifteen minutes, he was at our bedroom door. Dorothy said, “No way—he’s a barn cat, not an indoor cat.” But, at that point, even the dogs sleeping in the bedroom had had enough. I opened the door; Mr. Ed
jumped up on the bed, kneaded a spot between us, and went to sleep. He was never asked to sleep outside again, except when he tried to sneak out and do some hunting.

As it turned out, Mr. Ed was so outgoing, he ultimately did have a great photo career. He posed for jigsaw puzzles and advertisements. He was a photo standby for Salem, the cat from the television series
Sabrina, The Teenage Witch
. But his crowning achievement was in the year 2000, when he appeared on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
. People have said for years that there’s a curse to being featured on the cover, and they wanted to jinx the curse. That cover was shown on
Today
and other network shows. Mr. Ed was clearly a star, but to us he was just one great cat. Not only could he handle the dogs and the other cats, but he loved people.

When Jenna was born, he gravitated to her. As she became a toddler, he would be in her room. She loved him because he was the only stuffed animal that moved. As a preschooler, she dressed him up in doll clothes. He sat there with a humiliated scowl, but he would never leave. Besides being a great model, he was also a great pet.

He loved food. So this show would be a snap for him. In mid-October I set up a meeting with the producers, the director, the playwright, and Mr. Ed. I was told that in the London production, the cat kept escaping and running outside. The cat in the London production was shy, but came out just long enough to eat. They showed me a mock-up of the set in the rehearsal room. Mr. Ed would enter through a chute that led through a small opening, which closed behind him, to a shelf about five feet off the stage. Then he would have to eat and stay calm during the scene, including when the actors held a gun to his head and then petted him. One of the actors would grab him and exit during the final blackout. I told them all about Mr. Ed and said that given the short amount of rehearsal time, a pro like him would make it happen. We even tried the shelf, and Mr. Ed walked around it, surveying the room. A great sense of relief came over them because he wasn’t frightened.

When an $8 million Broadway show says that they don’t have a budget for the animals, it’s a joke. But this was off-Broadway, and there was very little money. They have apprentices working backstage and people who donate
their time to make shows happen. I explained that they would need to hire one of my handlers and pay at least what the actors were making. Kirsten, one of my trainers from
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, agreed to do the job at the reduced rate, and then go to Broadway with it. She was interested to see how we would train a cat. I would take a reduced weekly fee. It was understood that if the show moved to Broadway, I would go with it and our rates would increase. Mr. Ed would live at the theater, and Kirsten would go in every day to care for him, saving transportation costs. Rehearsals were going to begin in January 2006, with the first performance in February. I wanted to be in a week before opening to get Mr. Ed used to the backstage area—and to the idea that the stage was his new home and the shelf his dinner spot. It was an exciting project after the commercial failure of
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
.

I had six weeks to get Mr. Ed ready. I had built a mock shelf in my downstairs office to begin feeding Mr. Ed. During that time we prepped and opened
The Woman in White
, and we also closed and had to dismantle
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. Then I could focus on
Inishmore
.

The Atlantic Theater is in an old church. The upstairs was turned into the wardrobe and actors’ area, and the stage level had two workrooms behind the stage. One was an office, and the other was walled in half, so Ed could have one side and the maintenance of the dismembered bodies took the other side. Our side had a large window that overlooked a courtyard, so Ed could watch birds and squirrels.

When we began our two session days, we would bring Ed onstage at lunchtime, when the work had stopped, and put him on the shelf. He needed to see nothing in the space would harm him, and we fed him there. Then we did the same at night when it was quiet. Basically, Ed thought it was the largest kitchen he had ever seen. During the performance, Ed would mostly be handled by a great actor named Peter Gerety. Peter and I had worked together fifteen years earlier for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park. Peter appeared in
Two Gentlemen of Verona
, the only Shakespeare play that has a role written in it for a dog. Peter worked with my first Toto, Bugsy. They did a comedic scene that brought the house down every show. When I saw him at rehearsals for
Inishmore
, we hugged, and he told me that he still had Bugsy’s picture on his refrigerator. Peter loved
cats, and he fell in love with Ed. Who wouldn’t? He was the perfect cat, and he could act. After three days of Peter coming to our dressing room and playing, which was the highlight of his day, we put Ed on. Between Ed’s demeanor and Peter’s love for animals, it worked flawlessly. It was a huge weight lifted off the shoulders of our producers, director, and writer. Ed’s entrance was the pivotal moment in resolving this mass murder play about mistaken cat identity. Things were great even up to dress rehearsal.

Our first preview came and the theater was packed. I watched from the front as the play took us on an emotional roller-coaster ride. When Ed entered, the audience screamed, gasped, and laughed—it was unlike any reaction I had ever seen in the theater. The laughter went on for over a minute. It was truly a cathartic moment, when all the tension that had been built up was released. I saw Ed react, which I had expected him to do, but then I watched with worry as he became more and more concerned. He had a fearful look on his face. I realized the release of the audience’s tension must have sent a shock wave onstage.