Pore Jud is Daid
Pore Jud is daid, or so I’ve been singing every night in the deepest baritone a first tenor can muster. Jud is, of course, very much alive when he makes that assertion at the end of Act 1 of Oklahoma! That’s what passes for irony in a Rogers and Hammerstein show.
My acting career is daid, too, or so I have to keep reminding people since my recurring presence on the stage tends to give folks the wrong impression. I retired from acting a decade ago. Honest. But every once in a while I’ll get a call from a friend and the next thing I know I’m on stage wearing a coconut bra and grass skirt.
The past few times the call has come from Jerry Elison, the man who started my acting career 28 years ago when he cast him as the lead in a production of Tom Sawyer at Orem Jr. High School. I’d just moved to Utah from Virginia, so he didn’t have the slightest idea who I was, but he took a chance on me and changed my life forever.
Since then, I’ve done almost three dozen productions for him. He first lured out of retirement six years ago when his Luther Billis dropped out of South Pacific three weeks into rehearsals. Four years ago he needed a Jeff Douglas for his Brigadoon. This time, I’m Jud. And I’m dead. At least I am by the end of Act 2, a fact that has fascinated my daughters to no end.
Emma: Are you going to die today, Dad?
Me: No, I think we’re only running Act 1.
Emma: (Disappointed.) Awww…
Me: But we’re running Act 2 on Saturday, so you’ll be able to see me die then.
Emma: Yipee!
They’ve taken to saying “Yipee!” (along with other sundry Western exclamations like “Yeehaw!” and “Yow!”) because they’re in the show with me. That was the real enticement to come out of retirement this time around. I’m not particularly adept at playing the heavy, but the chance for the three of us to be in a play together was too good to pass up. So, for the past few months we’ve been trekking off to rehearsals almost every night. The girls would bring activity books or something to read between their scenes, and we’d spend the evening hanging out, surrounded by music, dancing, and some very talented people.
That’s one of the reasons postings have been few and far between for the past few months, but we opened on Monday so things things are starting to quiet down. If you’re in the area, we run for another week and a half at the Scera Shell (here are the details), after which we move the whole thing (windmill and all) down to BYU for a week of performances in the deJong Concert Hall during Education Week.
Your enticement to come? Well, I hear the villain’s not especially good, but there are two really cute kids in the chorus.
Comments
Jenny
Aw, Phoooey! Don’t listen to Grettir—this baloney is a classic example of the “Low Self-Esteem Gene” that seems to have beset nearly every member of our immediate family.
He does a fabulous job. He doesn’t play Jud as the usual bulky simpleton with nothing but lust and the body of a linebacker to give him credibility. He portrays Jud as a complex, mixed-up someone you truly feel sorry for—I mean, he’s a crazed, obsessed stalker, but a sad one, not a nasty one. When Laurie rejected him at the Box-Lunch Social, I just about cried! True, he’s my brother; but in my empirical opinion, he’s fantastic.
Pore Jud just hasn’t had a chance in life. I’ll bet that he was raised by a drunken father (his sickly mother died in childbirth), and lived in a lice-infested “Home for Troubled Boys” where he was pummeled daily until he was old enough to get a job. That poor little feller just needed some love…[*sob*]. Just a little love, and his empty life could have been a life of meaning. A life where he was still a crazed, obsessive stalker, but one with a higher-paying job and snappy clothes, darn it!
jenny
Oh yeah—the girls ARE incredibly cute! Emma carefully follows every direction and blocking cue, smoothing her dress and behaving in a very ladylike manner. She’s happy when she’s supposed to be happy, shocked when she’s supposed to be shocked, scared when she’s supposed to be scared and giggly-thrilled when she’s supposed to be giggly-thrilled.
And Zoe’s frenetic, determined jump-roping through some of the most dramatic scenes was absolutely entrancing. She thumped noisily through everything from the horrified, gasping silence of the town folk to the heart-breaking tension as Curly sells his only saddle. She kept me entertained for about 10 minutes straight. I was just about to begin counting the number of times she knocked off her bonnet as she tried to set a new “Junior Jump-Rope Speed and Enthusiasm World Record” when the scene ended and off she ran into the dimming stage lights.
emily
Personally, I’m just sad that I can’t see the play. I haven’t gotten to go to a Grettir play since I was little. *sigh*…
Jodi
I’m sadder, Emily. I’ve never seen Grettir at all, in a play or otherwise! Pore me.
brent
Does Judd get to wear a grass skirt and a coconut-bra? If so I will almost certainly have to make the 4 hour flight to catch this staging of Oklahoma.