At last night's performance of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde for theatre Q at the Dragon Theatre in Palo Alto, George Quick (that's me) went on for the ailing Scott Ludwig who plays Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas). Poor Scott called around 2 in the afternoon saying he was just too ill to even stand up, let alone perform in a play. I called Dale Albright (Dale IS theatre Q) and we flipped a coin (as he says) and decided that I should go on in the role (knowing the blocking, etc. as I do, it seemed to be the most seamless way to go). Rob and I were at the beach when all of this came down so on the way home from the beach, we stopped at RiteAid and I bought some hair dye (no sense having a gray haired Bosie) and then at home I dyed my hair and ran through the script. Drove down to Palo Alto and got there around 6:15; Dressed my hardback copy of the script to look like the rest of the books in the production (there are many books covered in plain paper in this production); wrote out the one letter prop so that I could use it the right way and still have the words; and, read my lines during the speed through with the cast before the show. I wore my black suit with the vest that Scott wears and had to wear my glasses throughout so I could see the text.
People tell me it went fairly well. The audience was kind, the other actors were kind and I think I was mostly in the right place at the right time. My memory of the entire thing is like a memory of a dream, very surreal and in strange kind of time lapse. "The Show Must Go On" was certainly what we did last night. It was quite a night. Hopefully, Scott will be feeling well enough to go on tonight, but if he doesn't... I'm ready to go through it all again tonight.
The photo here is one of John Aney, who plays Oscar Wilde in the play. The pose looks like it might be when he found out I was going on!
a kqed blog review of the show by Ben Marks who saw a preview before opening
