The things you get to say on stage

The things you get to say on stage can be fun for purely personal reasons, outside the context of the play. 

I did a reading earlier this week of a ten-minute play called The Charitable Heart by Tony Barone. It is a reworking of The Gift of the Magi. I played a guy, Jim who must learn the lesson about love from the older guy who had seen it all before. 

Jim has lost his job and is going broke. He laments he will not be able to take his wife, Louise on a vacation this year, like last year when they went to Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos.

When I was growing up back east, we got WOR channel 9 on cable out of New Jersey. They played this commercial where they would sing “beautiful Mount Airy Lodge” in a memorable manner. As I recall, the three syllables of “beautiful” were sung on the same low note, then “mount” lilted upward ever so slightly but it still didn’t prepare you for the way they went up high and full-blast on “airy” and then trailed off back down to the “lodge.” It was fun and silly. I would sing the line to my brothers and sister and whoever else was around. 

So to get to say this line in the play was a delight. Jim didn’t quite sing it but the memory of the past year with Louise brought a smile to his face and put a gleam in his eye. Same with Patrick (me.) I couldn’t believe I got to revive that fun memory either. 

I had the same experience in 2015 when I got to play Doctor “Bones” McCoy in Hello Earth’s production of Outdoor Trek: Amok Time. This was a staged version of the Amok Time episode from the Star Trek original series. That was the one where Spock thinks Kirk has died. When Kirk shows up alive, Spock is overwhelmed with emotion. When McCoy calls him on it, Spock defends his reaction as the “quite logical relief that Starfleet had not lost a highly proficient captain.” To that, McCoy responds, “In a pig’s eye!” 

I probably saw that episode a dozen times in afternoon reruns as a kid. We all laughed at the line and repeated it over and over. So, to get to say it on stage a dozen or so times to audiences that loved the show as much (or more) than I did was another unique, secret thrill. 

Mount Airy Lodge was demolished in 2001. WOR has become something else. But the fun of fooling around on stage lives on. 

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