"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" on tour...
The morning dawns bright, windy and warm in Waukegan....which is really just a suburb of Chicago....which is called, after all, the windy city. No one really wants to get on the bus. Sarah says that this weather makes her want to frolic. I ask her if there are specific motions/gestures/actions involved in frolicking and if she could describe them. She says there would definitely be galloping and probably arm flailing as well. I ask her if she would mind demonstrating but she feels that a parking lot is not conducive to frolicking. A meadow would be more appropriate. I remind her that it is is still March and that the buttercups and daisies she is envisioning haven't bloomed yet, at least not in Illinois.
Several hours later, we are not quite so happy about the warm weather. The A/C on the bus doesn't seem to be working quite as it should. We begin to feel, and look, like hostages on a Cambodian transport, soaked with sweat, not speaking to conserve energy. The situation worsens as we get closer to our destination, which is really just a suburb of Detroit. Construction and rush hour make the traffic a mess. Our estimated 5pm arrival time is now long past. In fact, as we creep up on 6pm, the mood begins to turn.
At last, our hotel, the much desired and spacious Hyatt Place, appears on the horizon. In a bid to get us there as quickly as she possibly can, knowing that we have very little time before we have to leave to do the show, Lady D pulls into the lane that she thinks will get us there. Sadly, it is the wrong lane and we are sent back out on to the freeway. Time is ticking past, and we have to head several miles in the wrong direction to find a clover leaf for turn around. When we finally pull up to the hotel, we have a mere 20 minutes to get to our rooms and do whatever we need to do before boarding the bus again to leave for the show. It's amazing what one can accomplish in 20 minutes. I even manage to iron a shirt.
The theatre is prepared for our arrival. Bless our Jeff J.C. and our crew for shopping for food for us and laying out a buffet of cold meats and sushi in the green room so that we don't pass out during the show. (We have heard that William, one of guys who drives the set around in his big rig and a real sweetie, often drives the crew around looking for food for us, ....in his rig! He is pictured above in his new shirt.) The audience, oddly, does not seem prepared for our arrival. They seem non-plussed with anything we do. We feel giddy and playful and willing to do whatever it takes to keep our energy up to entertain, but they don't seem willing to play along. By the end of the show, I am done with them. I feel as though they have managed to take whatever I offer them and discard it in the way one discards an overcooked potato chip. I drop my comedy, my sparkle, my energy, my smile into their vacant laps and they brush them off like someone else's dandruff. During the curtain call, I offer them a curt nod of the head during which my eyes never leave theirs. We are prize fighters staring each other down. We are a divorcing couple, meeting for the last time in the lawyers office thinking, "Let's never do this again".
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