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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Vol 55, no. 3 (Summer 2006), p. 18

Mousetrapped
By Ginger Andrews

II wanted to direct a play: what could be better for a turkey-stuffed Thanksgiving audience than that old chestnut, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap? Warren Krebs, TWN’s artistic director, agreed.

Accordingly, I held auditions and enlisted the help of old friends and some new faces. Eric Schultz would act and do the set. Libby Oldham took a part, and Grace Noyes was a wonderfully supportive codirector. Frederick J. “Fritz” Warren had a magnificent stage presence, although he didn’t learn lines easily, sometimes just exclaiming: “Potroast!”—a leftover from his role in Arsenic and Old Lace—instead. Newcomer Sean Mearns brought an authentic accent and a friend, Min Adinolphi, to stage manage.

The first clue that all was not going to go smoothly was when Fritz, forbidden to drive after a DUI conviction, wiped out on his bicycle after a post-rehearsal celebration at the Chicken Box and cracked two ribs. Like a true veteran (theatrical and Army) he strapped up and carried on, albeit a bit stiffly.

November can range from balmy to blizzard; that fall was cold. So naturally a week before our opening, the furnace blew up. Bennett Hall, full of half-constructed set, was an icebox. A new furnace was ordered—from Canada. Would they drain the pipes, eliminating the bathroom facilities? How about Porta-Potties on the front lawn? Eventually we had the 220 service for the AC rewired and borrowed space heaters to “take the chill off.” This was a euphemism.

Dress rehearsal was conducted with full overcoats, hats, scarves and gloves. Their noses running, the actors could barely get their lines out through chattering teeth.  The small heaters were inadequate to warm the draughty vastness of Bennett Hall, and the lights, so hot in summer, didn’t help.

I purchased a large roll of heavy plastic. Grabbing a couple of passing workmen to help set up the big ladder, I tried to reduce the volume of area to be heated. The staples kept pulling out, so the result looked like a giant, ragged oxygen tent, turning backstage into a kind of Siberian outback, but it helped.

Opening night was a great success. We had finally stopped trying to open on Thanksgiving Day, a necessity when our time in-hall was limited to school vacation. Stress over, we could just have fun running it.

An hour before curtain on the second weekend, I was sweeping the stage when Fritz came in. He got as far as the lighting booth, stopped; said, “Ginger you’ve got to take me to the hospital,” and fell flat. Regaining consciousness a short time later, he told the EMTs he was having trouble breathing.

Jim Patrick, of the Nantucket Short Play Festival, had come to usher. Instead, he found himself pressed into service as an actor. The cast struggled to adapt, and I went off to the hospital with Fritz.

His broken rib had punctured a lung, from which the doctor removed two liters of blood. That accounted for the difficulty in breathing. “Either it will close up on its own or not,” the doctor said.  It was of course blowing a gale northeast and no weather for a Medivac flight. Fritz recovered then, but died in his sleep a few months later.

Having punted through Friday night, we regrouped and rehearsed a new major. Two days later, he dropped out. We set out on the third and final weekend with Major number 3, cue cards up his sleeves.
At the matinée one of the actresses in the backstage ladies room, clad in pantyhose and a sweater set and nothing else, was startled when a man walked in without knocking. “Plumbing” he muttered, flushing the toilet and turning the taps. Apparently unaware that a play was going on, he reached the “front door” of Monkswell Manor before thinking better of making his debut.

Some parts of doing The Mousetrap were tremendous fun—the nightly ritual of singing “Three Blind Mice”; the endless boxes of clementines; the camaraderie.  But somehow I never felt the urge to direct a play again.

 

GINGER ANDREWS As a small child, Ginger saw her first play at Straight Wharf Theatre, courtesy of her neighbor, Margaret Fawcett Barnes. She disgraced herself by crying and had to be removed, but some years later she saw her second play, also at Straight Wharf, and was entranced, not only by the play, but by a mysterious door that led backstage. Once through, she was hooked.