Lalo, who had been fortifying himself throughout the night with a bottle of Bacardi 151, had worked up a lather of self-pity. It was with raw feeling that he delivered the Dramatic Pivot Point, when Georg Von Trapp is “requested,” via telegram, to join the Nazi Navy: “To refuse them would be fatal for all of us. And joining them would be unthinkable,” goes the line.
“Refuse these is to be fate for uz… to join the… unzirgismol,” Lalo moaned, dropping the telegram to the floor, plashing large tears to the stage as Peppy vigorously stroked his chest to comfort him.
He was in such an ecstasy of grief by the time the Von Trapps performed at the Salzburg Folk Festival that before singing “Edelweiss,” Lalo struck a few aggressive gypsy chords and emitted a wild flamenco cry like a murderous orgasm. Several of the mothers in the audience felt a dizzying larceny in their hearts as they crossed their legs. A few imagined a mirrored-ceiling’s eye-view of their fingernails plunging into Lalo’s naked buttocks. Several of the men liked it too.
The show ended, and the audience clapped, breaking up the dream-time and returning all participants to Fairfax, CA.
As Chantal and Roland held hands and advanced downstage for their curtain call, the applause explosively quadrupled in volume. The whistles and whooooh shot like poisoned blow darts through Liza, making her wonder: Why can’t I stand here in a prom dress, covered with blood, and burn this place down with my mind?
Her throat filled with the Drano-sensation of repressed sobbing. As she watched Chantal Baumgarten casually hijack every life dream she possessed, Liza got the overwhelming impression that the Gods that ran this Popsicle stand of a fucked-up universe just might be trying to tell her something. A message.
And that message was: “Ha ha ha ha ha. Psych.”
The parents collected their children quickly afterward, not wanting to let them steep in the weird, electric aftermath of such a depraved opening night—everyone was light-drunk and giddy with the ancient powers of stage energy. A few of the kids, bewildered by the audience response, felt like they were in trouble for something they didn’t understand; others felt a vague, blurry sense of having been morally tarnished by their affiliation with something they now understood to be somewhat raunchy. Kids are naturally prudish, and a few of them cried that night. Their mothers would have long discussions with them the next morning about how “The Show Must Go On,” all the while having whispered phone conversations with other mothers discussing what, if anything, should be done.
The Baumgartens gave Roland a ride to the bus station in their black Mercedes. Liza watched, waving goodbye as they drove away, their laughing, beautiful heads elegantly framed by the chrome windows of the shiny black diplomat car, the luxury of which seemed to transport Roland to another, better world as surely as a spaceship.
As the taillights glided away, Liza caught her own reflection in the window of a parked Dodge Omni. Under the streetlights, she realized she looked ridiculously trashy; in her quest to look more glamorous, she had inadvertently made herself into a kind of underage sex clown. She shuddered with self-loathing.
Peppy and Neville were extremely hopeful. They went out drinking with Neville’s friends after the show while Ned, Ike, and Noreen cleaned the theatre and replaced all the props.
The next day’s afternoon paper yielded their first and only review (page eight of the Weekend section of the Marin Gazette, no photo):
‘SOUND’ OF TITTERS AT ‘NORMAL’ THEATRE Cabaret Review by Pat Morgenstern
In a production that might be obscene if it were not so clearly inept, the recently opened Normal Family Dinner Theatre has unintentionally shown Fairfax what Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘Sound of Music’ would look like if it were performed by criminally insane prison inmates under the direction of the Marquis de Sade.
(That was a pull-quote that Neville would put at the top of his résumé for years to come.)
In the words of Susan Sontag, “Camp taste… relishes awkward intensities of character, finds success in certain passionate failures.” This failure might be considered a little too passionate, by some, but it is unquestionably entertaining, if for all the wrong reasons.
“ ‘Unquestionably Entertaining’ is what we’ll put on the posters,” said Peppy.
Director Neville Vanderlee (who also plays a screamingly funny Mother Abbess) seems to be exploiting the inexperience of his ‘actors’ to facilitate his own twisted prank. Maria, played by Peppy Normal, would be more appropriate covered with boiled eggs in a John Waters movie. One of the Von Trapp children looks as if she should be soliciting tourists in Times Square. Lalo Buarque’s Captain Von Trapp seems to have fallen prey to the alcoholism that has tarnished many a naval career—method acting? I doubt it.
“Who the hell is this ‘Pat Morgenstern'? I’m gonna cut his ears off!” shouted Peppy.” ‘Screamingly Funny’ is what we’ll put on the posters,” glowed Neville.
The sole redeeming element of the show was the charming “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” number, played by the poised and luminous Chantal Baumgarten (no stranger to the Marin stage—she was a favorite Clara in Marin Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker') and the wildly talented Roland Spring, whose name we will surely see in lights someday… just as soon as he gets out of this tawdry production.
On night number two, as everyone nervously prepared themselves for some unforeseen doom (there had been phone calls; a “meeting” was scheduled for that Monday with a group of parents—an ugly crackdown was anticipated), the cast was amazed and delighted to see that fifteen minutes before the box office opened, there was a thick queue so long it wrapped around the corner, composed primarily of gay men and college students, all carbonating with glee and anticipation. Several of the men were dressed like Peppy.
“It’s a smash hit!” exclaimed Peppy, unable to believe her eyes.
“You did this,” Neville lied, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
Liza had an entirely different makeup scheme the second night—she put her hair into two tight braids, eschewed eye makeup entirely, and wore sensible shoes; she looked the part. Neville was disappointed. “No, no! Go back into the dressing room and do that fabulous Francesco Scavullo disco nightmare thing you did last night!” Liza sadly complied.
Neville quickly located all of the possible innuendi in the script and instructed his actors, as they prepared, to “punch ‘em up.” That night, lines that weren’t supposed to be funny had a new sleazy tinge to them:
Nun #1: “Maria is missing from the abbey again.”
Nun #2: “Have you checked the barn? You know how much she loves the animals.”
The Peppys in the audience made barnyard noises, baaaahing and oinking enthusiastically.
When Neville, as Herr Zeller the Nazi, came onstage with a codpiece twice as large as it had been the previous night, shaped like a giant erect fang, the parents in the audience who had any doubt whether or not to shut down the production were firmly convinced.
Lalo was furious to be, what he considered in his Latin mind, the laughingstock of the area homosexuals. After the intermission, he refused to come out of his dressing room.
Ned was dispatched to plead with him; he could hear Lalo angrily mumbling to himself as he knocked on the door.
When Lalo finally kicked the door open, Ned was hit by a rolling cumulus cloud of pot smoke; the smell of toasted skunk wafted into the audience and alarmed several parents who were intimately familiar with the aroma.
Lalo was stripped to the waist and had painted large, black, Uncle Fester—like circles around his eyes with a stick of greasepaint. He was staring hauntedly at himself in the dressing-room mirror and mashing a black, Manson Family X in the middle of his forehead. Ned was frightened.