Brooke Hills Playhouse: A Collective Memoir, Part 7E

WE OPEN!

It was early June, and we still had a lot to do on the barn and on the first show, but we were only going to unveil the Playhouse once, so we decided to have a real opening night with an invited audience and anyone else who wanted to buy a ticket. Following the show, everyone was invited to a champagne reception in the lobby. We had invitations printed, and we invited the county commissioners and their spouses, the park board members and their spouses, our program advertisers, and numerous newspaper writers, radio and TV personalities, family members and friends from all over the Ohio Valley. Press releases had been running in the area papers for weeks, and we had bought some radio ads.  TV commercials were way out of our price range.  In truth, I don’t know where we got the money for the newspaper and radio ads, but I was sure opening night would be a sellout!

For the first show, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, there was no stage. (There was no act curtain either, and there never has been one.  Our audiences seem to enjoy our scene changes as much as they enjoy the shows!) Bill had told Director Tom Aston that building the stage was one big job we were going to have to put off until the first strike night. Tom agreed as he thought performing on the barn floor would be easier for the actors, who would do all the scene changes. Bill had a bunch of black curtains which were used to cover up the back wall of the barn and create a backstage crosswalk. Curtains were also hung left and right to create entrances and exits while masking the backstage barn siding which bordered the left and right wings.

I say “wings,” but the wing space was only 4’ deep on either side.  When we started doing larger musicals (1977 with Fiddler on the Roof), it would get pretty crowded back there, and I decided (decreed?) that the maximum cast size would be 28.  I have no idea how the wings (or the dressing rooms, for that matter) ever held 28 people.  Over the decades our casts and crews have consisted of some of the most talented, creative, considerate, and accommodating people who ever put on a show. 

All of the set pieces for Charlie Brown were brightly colored.  Snoopy’s dog house was the most imaginative dog house you’ve ever seen–a ladder and steel pipes painted bright yellow which made perches for Snoopy down left and down right. Planks and large wire spools were shifted to various positions by cast and crew members. Various other set pieces (such as a big pumpkin) shifted on and off as needed. I’m sorry to say we’ve only discovered one, sad photo from that first wonderful production.

Most of the cast members of that first show have been featured elsewhere in this memoir. Tom Cervone (T.C.), as Charlie Brown, was joined on stage by Rachelle Dwaihy as Lucy, Tom Ott as Snoopy, Judy Porter Hennen as Peppermint Patty, Elliot Leib as Linus, and Bob Mancuso (West Liberty student from Weirton) as Schroder. Mary Catherine Brehm, a West Liberty student from Martins Ferry, Ohio was the piano accompanist, and Tim Christie played a borrowed trap set (poorly). He swore he’d played drums professionally, but he hadn’t.

July 5, 1972, was about as miserable as a July day and evening could be.  It was COLD and not just cold for July, more like cold for late March!  AND it was wet, raining for most of the day and early evening.  And it was somewhat windy, just because it could be.  Fortunately, people started arriving around 7:15 p.m.  It was thrilling!

All of us who had worked so hard to get to this night were on tenterhooks, grinning nervously at each other through clenched jaws or chattering teeth. Then the house lights went down.  Mary Catherine started playing the overture, and when the stage lights came up, people applauded!  And as the show progressed, people laughed and bobbed their heads to the music, and applauded individual numbers. Many of us not involved directly with the production were sitting in the back two rows of our theatre.  Believe me, we knew we were a part of something special.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown! was a great production. The talent and energy just flew off the stage. It was colorful and playful, upbeat and charming. Tom Aston and his cast and crew made magic with their show. We were all so proud of the production, and the audience, which sadly was nowhere near a sellout, loved it also.

Following the show, we all (Playhouse people and audience) adjourned to the lobby for champagne punch and cookies. Keeping with the barn theme, the punch (spiked and un-spiked) was served from my Aunt Alice’s big canning kettles with big, metal, dipping ladles. Had we known it was going to be cold enough to see your breath, we would have served coffee and hot chocolate!

As the crowd thinned out, John, Bill, and I made our way upstairs to the stage. All three of us, unbeknownst to each other, had snuck a bottle of champagne from the cases. It was a bit of overkill, but we sat in the first row of seats and drank a toast to all of the wonderful people who had helped us bring about the evening. Then we drank to each other and then to the amazing thing we had accomplished in two short months–Brooke Hills Playhouse.

Photos from the opening night reception in the Playhouse lobby. How I wish there were photos of everyone who was there!

In the next day’s Wheeling News Register, Don Daniels (above photo), a well-known, area columnist and a bit of a curmudgeon, wrote a smashing review of the show.  We were beside ourselves and didn’t stop smiling for a week!

Don Daniels, Wheeling News Register

Like most things of value, the Brooke Hills Playhouse started out small.  It still isn’t very big.
It is a barn theater and I haven’t seen one of those since a long time ago in New England. And this one is really a barn, believe me. You can see the outdoors through it. And if you look closely you can also see what a lot of work some fine young people have done to make it presentable.
To get to it, you must travel down a portion of dirt road, which is proper for barns. And if the night turns out to be December in July as it was on the evening in question, you are entitled to sit and shiver and wonder when the hell it is that summer is going to get here.
The Favorite Blonde was sporting a blue and white affair that appeared rather flimsy about the shoulders, what with it having only a modicum of sleeve. However, she accentuated that somewhat negative with a James Bond trench coat positive, and challenged the chill with that vagrant electricity which belongs to her only.
This was the opening night of the opening season of the Brooke Hills Playhouse Players and as has happened so often in the past I was once more astounded by the effort expended by so many people to bring a portion of whatever we peasants call culture to the community.
It was a lousy night. It drizzled rain and you could see your breath in your face and people stood about jiggling at the knees and not because of the absence of restrooms. It was cold was what it was.
But the play was a warming thing.
“You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” offers few challenges to Shakespeare or maybe even to John O’Hara.  It isn’t deep until you look at it. Then it becomes a social message and I ain’t gonna get into that because we already got enough social messages from city council to the White House and nobody understands them either.
“Charlie Brown” is just nice, tidy, off the top of the head entertainment and the Brooke Hills Players do it neatly.
I am sure all of you are familiar with the comic strip “Peanuts” and you know Charlie Brown and Linus and Lucy and Schroeder and the rest of the characters invented by Charles Schultz. The strip appears in The News Register daily and Sunday.
You can’t hardly call the thing a “play,” It is simply a series of incidents in the life of Charlie Brown. The most downtrodden citizen of our time. He and his fellow inmates of a psychological wonderland wherein everything, including not-flying kites, eventually comes up roses.
But we will not get into that.
I viewed the offering only as a guy who put a coin in the nickelodeon and said, “Entertain me. Amuse me.” I was amused and entertained. The fact is from the time of a gracious dinner at the Anchor Room until the final nightcap it was a gentle evening and one worth repeating anytime.
“Charlie Brown” will be playing at Brooke Hills through Sunday of this week and then from July 12 through the 16^th. That may be too long an engagement for a barn theater but the people are enthusiastic about it.
I counted six performers and by far the leader was one Thomas Ott, a lean and lanky extrovert who played the part of Snoopy.  Snoopy, dear hearts, is a dog.  Have you any idea how difficult it is for a grown man to play the part of a dog? Ott did it with caninistic aplomb. He is a dancer of skill, a singer of confidence and more than a little of an acrobat. And a pantomimist of surprising capability.  He was playing, don’t forget, the part of a dog. And confronted by a fire hydrant he performed with admirable nobility and grace.  A man has to be born for instinct to do that.
There were others.  Elliot Lieb as the little brother; Shelly Dwaihy as the antagonistic big sister Lucy; Judy Porter playing Peppermint Patty and the title role performed by Tom Cervone. Each played their part creditably but the kudos must remain for Thomas Ott.
This is not a running commercial for the thing so we will omit the names of the producers John Hennen and Bill and Shari Harper and the director, Thomas Aston.
Suffice it to say to you that the Brooke Hill [sic] Playhouse is located on Rt. 27 about four miles east of Wellsburg and there are plenty of signs to show the way.  The price is right too.
It’s a barn theater all right. And to tell you the truth I haven’t had so much fun in a hayloft since…well, since a lot of whens ago, that since when.

Later in the week, a Letter to the Editor from Nancy Paull (who will figure again this saga) was published in several area papers.

It had been a grand opening indeed, albeit cold and wet. Although we didn’t know it when we started on this grand adventure, establishing the Playhouse near Wellsburg was a godsend. Our proximity to West Liberty and its great drama department supplied us with so many wonderful volunteers, talented actors, and willing crew members. I hadn’t realized how many Wellsburgers were theatre majors or minors at West Liberty and how much talent we had in the surrounding area, but it certainly worked to our great advantage. Wellsburg friends and many other friends and strangers from all around the Ohio Valley, theatre majors or no, were indispensable in getting the barn transformed into the Playhouse.  Additionally, they auditioned and were cast to act onstage, or they volunteered to work behind the scenes.  And in the years to come, many more would join us.

*The following is the transcript of the press release at the beginning of this post:

Theater Debuts in Ohio Valley

Professional theater has come to the Ohio Valley.
“We have pooled some of the professional, talented people we have worked with, and our resident staff is solid,” said John Hennen of Wheeling, one of the Brooke Hills Playhouse’s three founders.
Hennen, of Wheeling, joined Chester’s Bill Harper and Wellsburg’s Shari Murphy to launch the theater program which includes comedies and musicals, optional dinner theater and a four-week training program in theater.
Besides drawing from talent “we have worked with,” the trio has a share of talent themselves. Hennen worked this winter as an actor in Williamsport, Pa.  Harper works professionally in Detroit and Miss Murphy teaches drama in Kentucky.
“We are using actors from this area,” Hennen added. Stanley Harrison, Dr. Helen Kelly, and Muriel Shennan from West Liberty State College, all with theater experience, will appear at the Playhouse, too.
And auditions will be held from 1 to 5 and 7 to 10 Friday at the Playhouse, located four miles east of Wellsburg on route 27 in an abandoned barn in Brooke Hills Park.
Auditioning actors will be cast in the first three shows of the six show season: “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Barefoot in the Park,” and “Arsenic and Old Lace.” And Hennen said rehearsals for “Charlie Brown” will begin immediately.
“Charlie Brown” will be cast among the 25 roles available at this week’s auditions. He said those interested in auditioning for “Charlie Brown” should prepare a ballad and rhythm number. He added that those who have had dance training should prepare a three-minute routine.
With “Charlie Brown” playing July 5-9 and 12-16, the only professional summer stock theater in the state has “Barefoot in the Park” July 19-23.  “Arsenic will run July 26-30 and “Story Theater” Aug. 2-6 and 9-13. A yet-undetermined offering is planned Aug. 16-20, and Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” is scheduled Aug. 23-27 and Aug.30-Sept. 4.
Theatergoers may also take advantage of dinner at the Drover’s Inn in a combination ticket price. Season tickets and group rates are available and Saturday performances are slightly higher.
Students may elect to participate in the Summer Theatre Arts Review (STAR) which includes four weeks of training in acting, directing, lighting, scenery, costuming, make-up, theater history and promotion.
Beginning July 9, STAR will hold classes Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. with afternoons to be used for rehearsal.
Information may be obtained from the Brooke Hills Playhouse, 1714 Marianna St., Wellsburg, or by calling 527-3787.