MOUNT VERNON — I’ve written here before about losses to the regional theater community, such as when the great Dan Turner passed away. ‘
Anyone who knows much about me will be aware of my involvement over the years in theater throughout the area. Thus, I must take my final backward glance for that dark year, 2020, by looking at three major figures the central/north-central Ohio theater community lost in December.
To start with, I have to go back to my formative years as an actor. People sometimes ask how I learned to act and be an effective speaker, and I tell them that you start with a gift and then nurture it by trial and error.
One thing I didn’t much do was take formal acting classes. I had a handful of lessons in college, but the key production that made me a real actor was at the Mansfield campus of the Ohio State University in the spring of 1990, when director Cass Foster announced the production of a new work by author Susan Zeder entitled “The Death and Life of Sherlock Holmes.”
I auditioned the first night, hoping to get a decent part in the show, but did not attend the second night of tryouts. My friend Dave Price came up to me the following day and said I should have been there.
“This guy walked in out of nowhere, a community member,” Dave said, “And, I’m telling you, he WAS Sherlock Holmes.”
When the cast list was posted, I was shocked to find that I had been cast as Dr. Watson, Holmes’ sidekick. I couldn’t wait to meet my Sherlock. At the first readthrough, I was introduced to Ray Gerrell, then recently retired as a high school drama teacher in Mansfield. He was over 30 years my senior, but the casting was spot-on, because we clicked perfectly. Ray’s wry wit and my eager energy brought Holmes and Watson to life.
As we rehearsed, I began to watch Ray closely and ask him questions about how he did certain things on stage. A natural teacher, he was glad to explain, give me tips, and to challenge me. I learned a lot of my craft as an actor from Ray, and we remained friends all these subsequent years. He was a true master.
It was also at OSU-Mansfield that I first worked with Mike Barnett. Born in Mount Gilead, and brother to Ken Barnett, a familiar face on Knox County stages, Mike loved every aspect of theater. I encountered him onstage, backstage, or sometimes even building the stage. I’ll never forget the production of “All the Way Home,” where we played two of the fathers in an extended family suffering through a tragic loss. During one long, still scene, you could hear the snuffles from crying people in the audience.
Another great, but very different memory of Mike, came from a show —I’m struggling to remember which show it was — where Mike played a character named Uncle George. The character is a bit addled to begin with, but part of the action of this farce was for this poor fellow to get knocked over, hit in the head, and beaned with a door.
At one point in the show, a door is quickly opened, knocking Uncle George in the face with a terrific bang. Mike executed the physical comedy perfectly, making the bang with his hand just a split second after the opening door would hide the movement.
Even watching it from the front row, you couldn’t tell that he wasn’t actually being beaned in the forehead with great force. And then the woozy way he stumbled out from behind the door made the audience howl with laughter. Mike brought a lot of smiles and laughs and tears to audiences in his time on stage.
Last, but most personal of all, was the loss of Char Hutchison. I wrote a historical drama about the infamous Ceely Rose murders, and we debuted the show at Malabar Farm State Park in 2003. Char was a great supporter of the whole project, done as a co-production with the Malabar Farm Foundation, and without her support as president of the Playhouse board of trustees, it might never have happened.
She was so excited about the project, she auditioned for the role of Ceely’s mother, Rebecca, and made it clear that she would be formidable in the demanding role.
In the play, as in real life, Rebecca survived the initial poisoning of the family by troubled daughter Ceely, and made the risky decision to try and protect her daughter from the law. That ultimately cost Rebecca her life when Ceely poisoned her a second time. For the part of Ceely, I had cast an intense actress named Candy Boyd.
Candy and Char felt their roles deeply and were very committed to bringing these historical figures to life. There was one rehearsal where we had to stop after the scene where Ceely finally kills her mother because both actresses were overcome with emotion and couldn’t continue until they pulled themselves together. It was a stunningly real moment, and it brought tears to my eyes, too.
One of my favorite moments in the play every night was when Rebecca, left alone for a moment while Ceely fetched bread and buttermilk, prayed for the strength to save what remained of her family. This simple but moving moment took place with Rebecca sitting at a plain kitchen table, center stage. Char would often have to wipe a tear from her eye during performance, so real was her emotion.
Directly above Char on the back wall of the barn where we performed was a hex sign that we had created for the production. I hasten to point that out, because it has come to my attention that a legend is building up that the hex sign was original to the barn. It is not. It came about for a very practical reason: the part of the barn where our stage was erected was underneath a window that had a large, ugly, very modern looking exhaust fan in it. I decided that it was a visual distraction, and it had to go.
I designed the sign with specific elements in mind: it was a rosette pattern to reflect the Roses, pink hearts were there to show Ceely’s obsessive love, green for the fields and trees of Pleasant Valley, and a black and orange border for Halloween, the time of year when we did the show.
I gave my design drawing to Char’s husband, Bob Hutchison, a retired architect with keen draughtsmanship, who laid it out perfectly on a huge wooden sign built by my tech director, Dan Feiertag. Bob and I painted the sign, and Dan hung it over the window fan and lit it dramatically. Char as Rebecca, praying under that looming hex, is a memory burned in my mind forever.
There were lighter moments, too. I was mightily impressed by Char’s unbreakable professionalism the night — during a performance — when the stage lights and ruckus woke up a bat that nested high in the barn. It came swooping down in front of the lights, and passed close enough to Char’s face that she could have reached out and petted it as it flew past.
This, of course, drew a gasp from the audience. But Char never flinched, carrying on calmly with her lines and drawing the audience back into the play while the bat found its way outside.
There was also an uncanny moment when Char and Candy were rehearsing the final confrontation between mother and daughter. As they performed the scene, a lightbulb just behind them started pulsing slowly on and off. I was startled at first, but the actresses were so powerfully bringing those roles to life, I forgot about the light. After Rebecca died and the scene ended, I looked back at the light.
It had gone out completely.
I decided not to point this out to my two emotionally drained actresses. They had enough to deal with just playing these parts, they didn’t need to know that perhaps they were being watched by the ghosts of the people they were playing! It was only after the production was over that I told Char and Candy about the light, and they were both grateful I didn’t tell them at the time.
“I would have made a bee line right out of that barn,” Char laughed.
Char reprised the role, giving Rebecca depth and diginity, until the years took away her ability to remember the lines. She broken-heartedly resigned from the role and passed it on to Jacqueline Allen, who played it in subsequent years, just as Ceely was later played by Rhiannon Evans and Jennifer Casner.
Char and her husband Bob were always thick as thieves (this, despite staunchly supporting opposing political parties their entire lives, a lesson to us all). When Bob passed away earlier this year, I knew it wouldn’t be long before Char followed him. And so it was.
Let us hope that 2020 will be the darkest year we’ll have to weather, with its pandemic and political extremes. Let us remember with love those whom we lost, and let us look forward to making new memories this coming year, treasuring all our loved ones in the process.
Happy New Year!
