Then and Now (9 page)

All of us in the cast knew it was a one-of-a-kind show, and while we didn't have big discussions about the show's political resonance, we were all quite aware of it. The creators were trying to make a statement without losing sight of the entertainment value, and all of their ideas were floating around Bernstein's score. This show felt entirely different and new. It was exciting to be around the day-to-day process, and my lack of formal musical training didn't faze Lenny in the least. One day in the midst of the constant craziness that is part of rehearsing a big musical, he asked me: “Can you trill?” I said, “No, but I can fake it.” He laughed. “Go ahead and try. Everybody fakes it anyway.”

Our Candide was Robert Rounseville, who was perfectly cast. He was difficult, but not intentionally so. He was just kind of absentminded. I was often barefoot in the show, and he'd be kneeling down next to me onstage, and sometimes he would kneel right on my toes. Let me tell you—when somebody puts all their weight on your toes it hurts like hell. I'd say, “Bob, please be careful.” And then he'd do it again—he didn't mean to, he was just in another world. I think he had a little drinking problem, too, but he sang like an angel.

The “Governor,” William Olvis, had a beautiful baritone voice, although he was a little nuts, but the capper was Irra Petina who played “The Old Lady.” She was the embodiment of every bad joke you've ever heard about an opera diva. She was absolutely paranoid—convinced I was trying to steal every moment from her. If I came up with a piece of business, she would repeat it right after
me. When we all lined up for our final bows, she always, and I mean always, put her hand in front of my face. I had my little ivory fan with me, and when I gently whacked her hand she always looked surprised, as if she had no idea what she had done. A few days before we opened on Broadway, Tyrone Guthrie called a rehearsal and gave us all notes. We were sitting in a circle on the stage. Irra happened to be next to me, and Dr. Guthrie spoke to me first. He said, “Barbara, what you're doing is fine—it just needs to be bigger. You need to make bigger gestures.” Then he said to Irra: “The opposite is true for you. I need for you to tone it down.” Irra looked at Tyrone Guthrie and immediately replied: “Well, if Barbara would do it bigger, then my performance wouldn't look so big.”

The stage manager had it even worse with Irra. When he went to her dressing room to give her a performance note she smacked him! What a piece of work she was. When I look back on her behavior now, it seems laughable, but at the time I found her to be a complete pain in the ass.

Most of the cast, with the exception of the character actors and Max Adrian, our “Dr. Pangloss,” were all opera singers. It was very intimidating, not only for me but also for Max. He was upset because he had told Bernstein the absolute limits of his vocal range and then Lenny had written beyond it in the “Gavotte.” As a result, Max was struggling with the number and was a bit miffed, but he also happened to be an island of common sense. My favorite gem of his: “When in rehearsal never stand if you can sit, and never sit if you can lie down.” Oh, what a nice man Max was.

We began rehearsals and I'd continually find myself looking around the room at Leonard Bernstein, Lillian Hellman, Tyrone Guthrie, Irene Sharaff, Richard Wilbur, and—who?
Me? Barbara Cook?
That's not false modesty. It's really how I felt then.

As rehearsals progressed, every time we got to the place where I should be singing “Glitter,” they skipped over it, to save my voice, I suppose. They may have been trying to save my voice, but it was also not helping me at all. My fear grew. The company had all heard of this difficult aria written for Cunegonde and certainly were aware of the fact that I was not an opera singer. Barbara Cook, Miss Musical Comedy of 1956, was going to sing this showpiece, so they were all very curious about the aria.

Again and again at rehearsal we would skip over the song until finally, knowing that I would eventually have to sing it in front of the entire company, I hatched a plan with one of the rehearsal pianists. I explained the situation to him and suggested that one day, as the cast straggled back from lunch, I would be singing the aria, pretending to have come back early so I could rehearse with the pianist. The plan worked. When the cast listened, they were excited for me. I had made it through! I wanted and needed my fellow cast members' approval, and when the song went over, I gained a little bit of confidence.

We went to Boston for our out-of-town tryouts, and I have a distinct memory of Lillian from that time, and of her extraordinary wardrobe. She was such a lady, and possessed great style; when we boarded the train for Boston she arrived with a dozen hatboxes and two huge wardrobe trunks.

We arrived in Boston and I was a wreck, but even so, we all had a hilarious moment on the night of the first preview. It was some sort of benefit and Guthrie went out to address the audience before we started: “The lighting may not all be focused. . . . Some of the actors don't have all of their costumes, and the scenery that is here may not work as it should—so just keep your peckers up.” He was so British and of course that phrase does not mean quite the same
there as it does here in the U.S. We were listening to him behind the curtain and we screamed with laughter. The fact that we were in “proper” Boston made it even funnier!

But that light moment didn't last. The night of that first preview, and at each succeeding performance, I'd hear the first few notes from the oboe at the start of “Glitter and Be Gay” and I would just freeze, frightened to death. I could only plant my feet, clasp my hands together, and pray I could get through the song one more time. The emotional fear was much more draining than any physical exertion—I couldn't work past the feeling that I was going to fall off the cliff. I was so miserable that I was seriously contemplating trying to leave the show—leaving a Leonard Bernstein musical when all I had wanted for most of my life was to be in Broadway musicals. I was one scared and confused young woman, and the creators knew I wasn't delivering properly. I was not having any fun, not acting it at all. I was still on the page, not on the stage. I didn't know what the hell to do, and it got to the point where I hated the idea of going to the theater, hated facing the terror that awaited me every night. An emotional impasse had developed, a barrier between me and the music. I was singing it but not feeling it at all.

And then . . . On matinee days I would have an early dinner by myself so I wouldn't have to talk, after which I would go back to my room to have a brief nap before the evening performance. On one of those afternoons I happened to pick up a copy of
Pageant
magazine so I could read while I ate, and inside I found an article about experiments with self-hypnosis that were being conducted at Duke University. As I read the article I began to wonder if self-hypnosis could help me with “Glitter and Be Gay.” I decided that instead of napping in my room between shows, I would spend that
time attempting to hypnotize myself. I relaxed, and, just as the magazine suggested, began to ease myself into a hypnotic state. I immediately knew that it was working. I felt very sure that I was in a suggestible state, so I told myself that when I “woke” I would feel a great surge of energy, and that I would be excited to arrive at the theater. I told myself “The moment you touch the stage door you will feel terrific energy and a great desire to sing the aria. With every application of makeup you will be filled with energy and a desire to be onstage singing ‘Glitter and Be Gay.'
” I was convinced this was going to work and that I would finally enjoy my potentially show-stopping moment.

And I did! And oh, how I enjoyed it. After the performance, the “brass” came rushing backstage to congratulate me. I had made the breakthrough! Maybe it was pure desperation that made it work, but it worked. Even though I had used the self-hypnosis in order to gain the extra energy, I never again needed it to help me sing that devilish aria. I tried to utilize the hypnosis for other areas of my life, but it never worked quite as well as it did that first time.

Thomas Pyle, who played multiple roles in the show, used to stand in the wings every night to time my applause. It was, well . . . spectacular! Sometimes it would last two or even three minutes. One night he swears it was four minutes—an eon in a show! I don't believe that it lasted four minutes, but I think the response was enormous for a combination of reasons: it's a great piece, I sang it well, and it was completely unexpected from this musical-comedy singer Barbara Cook. People felt “in” on this discovery, and audiences love the thrill of discovery. By now of course, I had come to love the song and my big moment.

Because
Candide
was such a demanding score, my doctor suggested I have complete vocal rest from the end of the Saturday-
night show until the next performance on Monday evening. In theory I'd be resting my voice for a full forty-eight hours, but of course I'd forget to keep silent, and so I put a tiny Band-Aid over the corner of my mouth as a reminder not to speak! It worked.

The response to “Glitter and Be Gay” was thrilling, but, even with the big ovation, it was clear that the show had problems. The audience was often confused by what was happening onstage. Dr. Guthrie was a highly respected director, one whom Sir Peter Hall later termed “A towering figure, a brilliant and at times great director.” Indeed, when it came to classical theater, I concurred; one of the best and funniest plays I've ever seen was his production of
Troilus and Cressida
(there was a five-minute comic section about heel-clicking and saluting that I will never forget!). But—and it's a big “but”—even with all of that talent, I think he was probably not the right person to direct
Candide
.

Lillian and the producers seemed to feel the same way, because when we came back to New York, Lillian herself took over rehearsals for a couple of days. I can't imagine what the meetings were like that led to her assuming the role of director, but I will say that our creative team were complete professionals—we never heard even one word of dissension among them.

My take on being directed by Tony Guthrie was that while he cared very much about production values and the overall concept, he was not particularly interested in helping the cast with whatever acting problems they might have been facing. I think he expected you to have all of those issues solved, because he had other, more important, matters to consider. I learned this firsthand when we were still out of town and I asked him for help with a new scene.

“Have you read it, my dear?”

“Dr. Guthrie—the scene has been in the show for a week now, so, yes, I've read it. I just don't fully understand it.”

“Well, read it again, dahling.”

As a result I worked out my approach to “Glitter and Be Gay” myself. When I was a teenager in Atlanta I had somehow acquired a 78 rpm recording of Orson Welles and Fay Bainter performing
Macbeth
, and I used to perform the “Out, damn spot” speech just for myself. Nobody was at home and I'd emote up a storm. “Out, I say! . . . Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” It wasn't until some time after
Candide
closed that I realized I had based the “Glitter and Be Gay” dialogue on Fay Bainter. It was real, yet highly emotive.

I have two distinct memories of opening night in New York, December 1, 1956, at the Martin Beck Theatre. The first is that the overture stopped the show—people loved it, and to this day it's one of the most frequently played pieces by symphony orchestras around the world. In 1975, when I did my first big concert at Carnegie Hall, it occurred to me that, for sure, someone was going to ask me to sing “Glitter and Be Gay.” Well, there's no way I was going to do that. But what I did do was pull out my kazoo and perform the beginning of the overture—on that kazoo!

My second big memory from opening night was Lenny coming backstage to wish me luck. He was just about to leave when he added, “Oh yes, Maria Callas is out front.” If there was anything I didn't need to hear, it was those seven words. I said, “Oh my God, I could have done without knowing that.” Lenny laughed and said, “Don't be ridiculous. She'd kill for your E-flats.” Callas did not come backstage, and I'm sorry to say that, much as I would have liked to meet her, I never did. I would love to know what she thought about the show, and me, and “Glitter and Be Gay.”

Oddly enough, for such a high-profile show, there was no big opening-night party. I went to the Plaza to have a little supper with my husband, Bob Kobin, and his wife, Joan. The reviews came out and, like the show itself, they were all over the place. We did receive some terrific reviews—John Chapman called it “the greatest addition to musical literature since
Rosenkavalier
”—but a great many critics called it confusing and overly ambitious. Walter Kerr in the
Herald Tribune
was the most damning of all. His opening paragraph ran as follows: “Three of the most talented people our theater possesses—Lillian Hellman, Leonard Bernstein and Tyrone Guthrie—have joined hands to transform Voltaire's
Candide
into a really spectacular disaster.”

I never got to see our production from out front, so I couldn't objectively judge exactly what didn't work and why. I do know that audiences would leave the theater wondering what they had just seen. Was it a musical comedy? Not really. Was it an opera? No. It was unique, and in this case “unique” did not sell tickets.

The show lasted only seventy-three performances, closing on February 2, 1957, although later that spring the show was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Everyone blamed Lillian's book, and certainly there were major faults with it, but it's also just a problematic show. I've never seen a production of
Candide
that I thought worked. I think some of the problem lies in the fact that you just don't care about these people and their exotic misadventures.